This vast universe of ours is filled with countless wonders, opportunities, and scientific miracles. Two humans, oblivious to such things, will soon come face to face with things far beyond their comprehension.
David never did have an exciting life. He had a somewhat stable one, along with his roommate, which he considered to be his best friend.
He had a lot of expectations for his future, most were... Far reaching, so to speak. But nothing too crazy.
At least, that's what he thought.
And let me tell you, turning into a blue horse was not something within his expectations.
Disclaimer; Earlier chapters were written when I was still inexperienced. Newer ones are better in quality overall.
It all started when I was at work, typing away at my computer with a nice, warm cup of coffee at my side. As I looked around, I spotted my friend James head into the boss’s office. My curiosity grew because James rarely went in there, but I brushed it off as nothing important at the time. It was probably something concerning the broken vending machine; James usually fixes them when they break down around here.
After I'd say, about four minutes, things seemed to start getting heated in there. I decided to go over and check out what was going on, I've seen almost five people go in there in less than half an hour. I didn't think much of it at the time either, but now I’m sure there's something important going on in there. I slowly stood up from my desk and walked over to the front of my boss's office, looking around before I laid my ear against the door.
"B- but, Sir, I need this Job! Without it, I won’t be able to afford rent or feed my family!" James cried out in despair, hoping that the angry man will give him another chance.
"No buts, James! Every single day you arrive late and proceed to do absolutely nothing with yourself!" He growled out as he shook his head. At that point James was on his knees, begging to be given another chance. I turned away from the door again and noticed almost everyone in the small office was around me, listening in on the private conversation too. They had probably heard James screaming and decided to check in on him. Not that I blame them, I was here for the same reason.
Turning my attention back towards the conflict between James and the Mr. Cena, I noticed that the boss was on the phone with a worried tone in his voice, even though their voices were muffled by the door I could still hear what he was saying.
"What do you mean he couldn’t make it? I thought he was already here in California!" He sighed and looked down at his desk “I’m sorry to hear that, I’ll get right on it.” He placed the phone back on his desks and stood up. Pushing his chair in, he walked around his desk and made his way to the glass office door and opened it. "James, I need you to exit my office." He said in a stern and slightly tired voice.
"Sir, I really can’t lose this job, my fami- " James stuttered out before being interrupted by Mr. Cena.
"Due to a turn of unforeseen events, your replacement will not be arriving. Consider yourself lucky" He gestured towards the open door. "Now get out of my office." James scrambled to his feet and made his way out of the room, the door shutting behind him with a dull thud. Softly crying with relief, James slowly walked back to his desk and slumped down in his seat.
"Hey dude, what the hell happened to him?" I jumped, slightly startled by the man’s sudden appearance.
"Shit, Carl! How many times have I told you not you sneak up on me?" I asked, turning to look at him with an annoyed expression on my face.
"Sorry, didn't mean it. Anyway, what happened to James?" He turned around and gestured at him. He had stopped crying and was now staring at his computer screen, and typing like his life depended on it, which it did.
"He almost got fired, poor guy didn't take it so well," I said as I turned around to look back at Carl, who was still staring at James and had an eyebrow raised for some reason.
"Why was he about to get fired?" He asked, his tone curious and slightly concerned.
"From what I just heard two minutes ago, he is apparently late for work almost every day," I said as I headed back over to my desk and sat down. Carl, who apparently had, even more, questions, followed me there and leaned against the cubicle wall that separated my and someone else's workplace.
"That's a load of bullshit." He said as he shook his head, "He’s the first one to get here every morning when the damn building opens!" He said as he looked back over at James, anger spread over his face
"I dunno, maybe it's because the boss doesn't like him," I said, more of a statement than a question. James and Mr. Cena never got along, but since he was the top employee he usually kept his disdain for the man to himself, but it looks like that changed today. "How the hell could he not like him!?" Carl said, his voice wrought with disbelief. "Everyone likes James; he’s a great guy! He also has the highest sales record in the entire office." He stated in a matter-of-fact tone.
"As I said, I don't know; maybe it's because of his background or something." Carl looked at me with a confused expression.
"Wait, was he a criminal or something?" Carl glanced back at James for what seemed to be the fourth time in the last ten minutes.
"That's a story for another occasion," I said as I looked at the corner of my computer screen, I was surprised when I saw what time it was. "Looks like the day’s over." I stood up from my chair and picked up the personal belongings I had on my desk, making my way to the exit, I passed the receptionist’s desk on the way out the door and began the walk to my car. "Hey David, you still up for that game we were going to play at your house tonight?" He called out from the other side of the parking lot, about to step into his vehicle.
"Hell, yeah! See you later tonight." I replied before opening the door and turning the key in the ignition, excited to get home and unwind.
It was beginning to get late as I drove down the empty street. I live a pretty far distance from my place of work, with a small forested area separating my home and the office building. The road I was on cut straight through a portion of the woodland and I was beginning to grow paranoid. There was a large shadow keeping up perfectly with my car. It appeared to be the outline of some sort large animal, but every time I turned to look at it was already at the edge of my field of vision. Being a person who watches and enjoys horror movies, I was understandably paranoid about the ominous shadow.
Being distracted by the shade dancing and moving around just beyond my field of vision, I didn’t notice the dark and creepy thing that appeared in the middle of the road. By the time brought my attention back to the street it was already too late to maneuver around it. Thinking it was an animal I quickly turned the wheel of my car as fast as could, by what seemed to be sheer luck I managed to swerve around the figure. I sighed in relief and quickly looked out the windshield just in time for me to see a tree rapidly approach and smash into my car's bumper. I swear, if I had not been wearing a seatbelt at the time, I would have smashed through the windshield and slam into the tree, probably dying on impact. Luckily, I was wearing my seatbelt, and I was just violently thrust into my steering wheel. While I was losing consciousness I could have sworn I saw the very same shadow that was stalking me of appear right outside the shattered driver-side window.
The first thing I noticed when I awoke was the fact that I was lying over fifteen yards away from my car. The second thing I noticed was that I was on top of a small hill in the middle of a large, open field. At first, I wondered how I could have flown right out of my car's windshield, and I had landed here; I distinctly remembered that I was wearing my seatbelt and I couldn’t have been ejected. But I finally noticed the large track coming from my ruined car’s driver side door.
"Huh." I thought as I looked around, "Did… someone drag me out of my car here and leave me here?" I began to scan the area, searching for the person that must have pulled me out of my seat and left me to die here.
That was when I noticed another unusual thing. "Wait… why the hell am I not in any pain? I just crashed my car, for fuck’s sake!" I tried to stand up but fell flat on my face. Grunting in pain as I picked myself up off the ground, I lifted a hand up to my nose. To my surprise, it wasn't a hand that came into view. It was a hoof, a fucking midnight blue hoof! Panicking, I jerked away from the foreign appendage, trying to get away from whatever creature that must have been near me. I stopped moving when I finally realized that the hoof was attached to my body.
"What the fu-" I snapped my mouth shut as soon as I heard my voice; It didn't sound like me at all! In fact, it sounded incredibly feminine, completely different than my normal voice. As I began to inspect my body, I noticed something very wrong. I was a small, blue horse.
I was completely covered in a midnight blue coat, the same color as the hoof I saw before. I noticed a few other new things as well, two feathery wings on my back, a long and spiraled horn coming from the center of my forehead, and a longer nose than I had before! Taking a few deep breaths, I looked around some more and tried to stand up. After the first few failed attempts I managed to stand up on all four- err, hooves. Now came the real challenge: walking.
As soon as I took my first shaky step, I lost my balance and tumbled down the small hill. I rolled for a few seconds before landing on my now elongated face with my mouth open. "This is going to take some time to get used to..." I muttered before spitting some dirt and plant matter out of my mouth. "What the hell am I supposed to do now?" I stood up again, this time with little trouble.“Maybe I can try to get home; it's only like, a ten-minute walk from here." I thought as I tried to take a step. Thankfully, the ground was more level, and I didn't fall this time. I stumbled forward a few steps and slowly made my way to my car. After I finally made it back to the driver’s seat I began looking for my phone, after a few minutes of searching I found it, broken with the small screen shattered beyond usability. With a sigh, I made my way around my ruined car and began walking down the street, in the direction of my home.
Thankfully for my current situation, traffic was light and very few cars passed by as I made my way back into town, hiding back in the trees when the occasional car drove by. I stopped at the treeline to think about my next problem. My apartment was almost right in the middle of town; normally I wouldn’t have a problem walking there, but due to the current situation of me being a weird unicorn/pegasus thing, walking casually through town was out of the question.
"What the fuck am I supposed to do? Maybe if I... stay behind buildings and off of the main streets no one will notice me." Satisfied with my foolproof plan, I began walking to the nearest empty side street. Luckily, since it was night out, there was no one out to notice me as I hid in whatever alleys I could as I made my way back home. "Okay, this should work... Nothing can go wrong with this plan!"
I began to slowly walk in and out of the small streets that separated the buildings and had few lights, after about ten minutes of walking I decided to peek around a corner and see how far I had made it.
"This is going to take a while..." I sighed out as I turned back into the alley to resume my painfully slow method of sneaking. It turns out that I had only traveled about three hundred meters from where I had begun.
"For fuck's sake! If I knew it was going to take this long, I would h- wait a minute... What's that?” I said as I decided to investigate the strange noise, walking towards a hidden corner. ”It sounded like it came from over here" Once I was on the other side of the narrow street I could clearly hear the distinct sound of someone crying.
"What the hell…?" I whispered as I slowly peeked around the corner of a dumpster and saw a young woman being pinned to the wall by a guy with what looked like a large kitchen knife. I quickly pulled my head back, and my thoughts started to race.
"Ohshithshitohshitohshit! What the hell do I do!? I can’t just walk up to them! They would run off and tell people about me!” I started to panic, if I helped the girl she would tell people that a little blue horse just saved her life!
"Wait… Who would the hell believe that?" With that final thought, I lowered myself into a sneaking stance so that I could go unnoticed until it was too late. I stopped just about ten feet behind them and prepared myself. I was honestly amazed that they hadn’t noticed me by now, probably because they were busy with a mugging.
So without delaying myself any further, I pounced.
Now, I’ve had some dumb ideas in my life, did a few things I’m not exactly proud of. But jumping a mugger to save someone I’ve never met, and probably will never meet again? Yeah, certainly not one of my brightest moments in my boring, yet strange life.
I collided with the mugger and sent us both tumbling to the ground, as soon as I hit the ground wrapped I a foreleg around his neck and held with tight enough to restrain him from escaping, but not enough to actually hurt him, I could have just easily snapped his neck and be done with it, but considering that the girl was still here, that wouldn’t be a good idea, so I settled with the next best option, to stop the oxygen flow to his head.
He struggled for a few minutes before falling limp, After a few seconds I let go of him and stood up with a sigh, I looked around to see if I could spot the girl, but it looked like she ran away while I was choking that guy, oh well, I don’t blame her, I would have done the same thing in her position.
I walked out of the alley, making sure there was no one around, I quietly stuck to the shadows as I resumed my trip to my apartment.
“there it is! Get it!” Someone shouted behind me as I ran past buildings, ‘ So much for going unnoticed! ‘I mentally screamed to myself as I desperately tried to lose my pursuers as I turned corners, jumped over fences, and threw things at them, hoping to stall them enough for me to get away.
“ Come here you freak of nature!” One of them shouted again as they chased me through some abandoned apartments, Now, you’re probably wondering HOW I managed to fuck up so badly that a group of thugs is chasing me, Well, it’s…..A not-so-long yet complicated story, remember that mugger I knocked out? well, said mugger had friends and said friends were NOT happy that I knocked out their friend.
I continued running for what seemed like hours, I look behind me and saw that most have either fallen behind or simply gave up, strange… Oh well, I’m not complaining.
“Oh fuck…This was not what I expected!” I said as I rounded a corner and kept sprinting, I looked back again and noticed they still haven’t gone around the corner, But I can still hear them shouting though.
“ Damn…. For a second, I thought I got away from the fuckers….” I muttered as I look around for a place to hide, and sure enough, there was a wide open dumpster to the far right of what looked like an old abandoned warehouse, as soon as I got within jumping range, I hopped in the dumpster, which was surprisingly empty, for some odd reason, and quickly closed the top, hoping that the thugs didn’t hear the sound of said top closing.
“Wait, where is it!? I swear I saw it turn that corner! “ A thug, probably around the ages of 20, said.
“ Don’t you give me that bullshit kid! The boss is gonna have our heads for this you dipshit!” And older sounding one replied.
The argument continued for a few minutes before I heard them leave, with a sigh, I rested my back against the side of the dumpster and started slightly hyperventilating.
“Jesus fucking Christ…. This is not how I wanted to spend my Saturday morning… I was supposed to relax, maybe own some noobs in battlefield… Not getting chased through an alley as a deformed horse thing… Fuck! “ I screamed out in frustration as I punched the side of the dumpster, expecting my han-…hoof to hurt, but instead of pain, I was presented with a fucking hole, I had literally punched a hole through fucking steal, I probably shouldn't have been surprised, considering all the crazy shit that was gone down this past few ours, but It did Surprise me, hell, Surprised is more of an understatement.
“H-holy fucking baby Jesus on a stick…..” I said in total wonder as I switched between the hole and my hoof with eyes as wide as dinner plates.
“ I….I fucking did that? What am I? fucking superman of something?” I said with total confusion as I slowly retracted my hoof from the gaping hole.
“This day is full of surprises……” I quietly muttered to myself as I shook my head and slowly started climbing out of the dumpster with unease, “ better hurry back to my apartment and find out what in the actual fuck is happening to me….maybe Carl will know…” I stopped for a quick second before snorting.
“ Yeah right, that dumb ass can’t tell the difference between a toaster and a microwave…” I said in amusement as I hopped down from the edge of the dumpster and look around in the alley, hoping to find a quick way out, and after a few minutes of searching, I found a small pathway hidden behind some conveniently placed boxes that seemed to block view of the path perfectly, it’s almost as If someone didn’t want anyone else to go in, odd.
“Ugh… this better lead to an exit and not turn into some cheap horror movie….” I mutter as I step over a few items that were on the ground and enter the badly lit, long hallway-like path that leads to god knows where totally not a cliché movie scene.
“Oh god…. I should have kept my mouth shut…” I say as my long ass horse ears lowered and I sped up the paste, hoping to get out of there before a clown shows up and starts swinging his hammer at me yelling something about fun… Oh great, now I’ve got that stuck in my head if I wasn’t paranoid before, I sure as hell an now.
“Come on Dave…. You can do this, stop being a wimp and man up for fuck's sake!” I said to myself as I gained some confidence, straightened out my back and walked forward with stride, however, that moment was short lived as I heard a noise coming from behind me and reacted the best way someone would have reacted, Ever.
“AHH! OH GOD, WHAT THE FU-“I stopped mid-sentence as I turned around and saw a cute, fluffy white cat.
“O-oh…. Heh, I wasn’t scared… I was just…. Amazed about… T-the… the cat! Yeah!” I said to no one in particular as I nervously turned back and started walking deeper into the small compact path.
“Calm down Dave…. It’s just your fucked up Imagination… Nothing more… “ I whispered to myself and kept on walking, hoping that nothing else came and spooked the living hell out of me, and maybe, just maybe, get back to my apartment in one piece.
“Finally! An exit! “I said as I did a miniature fis-... Hoof pump and ran up to the exit, expecting to come out on another hobo filled alley, but oh boy was I wrong, So very wrong.
“Yay free-….. Oh, that’s just fucked up…” I said with an annoyed tone, because, right in front of me, was one of those small conveniently placed rivers, Hurray for me…
“Of course I had to come across the only river in miles…. Because getting to my apartment was easy enough!” I said as I threw my hooves in the air and started insulting whatever higher power decided to screw me over, half way to my curse-filled rant, I caught a glimpse of what was on the other side, and sure enough, peaking out of the top of some houses, was my apartment, If it weren’t for the fact that I was still mad about the Stupid river in the way, I would have jumped in excitement, but unfortunately, that was not the case at the moment.
".....Well, at least I have THAT going for me....” I muttered as I looked at the river, looking for some way to get across it without getting dragged away by the tide, I kept on searching for the best way to get across before noticing a bunch of rocks, placed as If to act like a bridge that I could hop across.
“What the...... Okay, this is starting to look like it was set up.... Meh, whatever, I’ll deal with that shit later, Now, let’s see if I can NOT fail horribly…” I quietly said to myself as I walked up to the first rock, I very carefully set my hoof down on the first one, then the second, third before I could even register it, I slipped on the third one and went down faster than Kesha went timber.
“AH! God damn son of a bi- “ I was interrupted mid-sentence as I collided head first into a rock, then another, and another, and another, that process continued until the current washed me up on the shore of the River.
“Ugh… Never…. Again…… Fuck my spine...” I groaned in pain as I slowly dragged myself away from the river until I was a few good meters away from it.
“Jesus fucking Christ….that could not have gone any worse….” I muttered as I stood up and tried to shake off the water of my coat, just like a dog would do after a bath, never the less, that failed to get me anywhere as I stood there, still dripping wet from that little swim I had in the lake.
I sighed and started walking back to the street up ahead, not bothering anymore if anyone saw me, I was too fed up with the shit that seemed to follow me, I walked up to my apartment, strolled by the people in the lobby, took the elevator, walked out, insulted a few people, and entered my shitty apartment.
“Well, I could have just done that since the beginning……” I said as I shook my head angrily and headed past the living room and straight into my room.
“I need some fucking sleep…… too tired to care about anything..” And with that, I dropped on top of the bed and drifted up into sleep.
Upon walking up from my slumber, The very first thing I noticed was the constant chirping of birds and the soft grass in front me, both of which threw me off.
Now the former wouldn't have sounded so weird, but since the surroundings of my apartment were flooded with stray cats, any birds would have been dead the second they landed near it.
I slowly opened my eyes, thankfully, I was facing the ground, so my eyes weren't assaulted by the notorious giant white ball of fire hanging in the sky.
I rolled over to my back and quickly threw my arm in front of my face and closed my eyes again, knowing what would happen to my eyes if I didn't.
A frown quickly formed on my face as I opened my eyes a few moments later and saw a dark blue colored foreleg in front of me.
"Oh great, so it wasn't a damn dream, fan-fucking-tastic..." I said in an irritated manner.
A sigh escaped my lips as I slowly stood up and observed my surroundings, I appeared to be in the middle of a small opening with countless trees around me and what looked like a river to my left. A big river actually, big enough to probably be able to sail a pretty big boat in it.
"I'm going to go ahead and say this is just my luck..." I muttered softly as I rubbed my forehead with an annoyed sigh.
After a few minutes of me sitting there, contemplating on what to do, I decided to put all I learned from watching Bear Grylls to the test
"Alright.... So all I have to do is follow the river upstream right? Right." I tend to have a habit of speaking to myself, and no, I'm not crazy, it's something I've always done since I was little, so don't judge me.
"I hope you knew your shit, Grylls..." I thought out loud as I started walking upstream carefully, making sure not to get my new... Hair and tail tangled up in the branches.
After I'd say about 20 minutes of continuous walking, I started entering a creepier part of the forest; the sun began to be blocked out as the trees seemed to grow taller, the soft chirping of the birds became quieter and quieter until they could no longer be heard. The only noise I could hear was the water next to me, and even that seemed to grow more silent.
"Okay, I'm starting to regret following this damn river upstream... Or was it downstream you had to follow..?
...
" Shit, I don't remember now... Well, whatever, if anything tries to kill me, I can use my new iron han-er..... Hoof! Yeah, iron hoof to punch it to death!"
Feeling confident in my newfound punching skills, and with my paranoia- or at least some of it gone, I started to walk faster, knowing if even that the sound of my hooves hitting the rocks lined up along the river drew the attention of some unwanted guests, I could quickly dispatch them.
Oh, boy was I wrong, so very wrong.
I immediately stopped as I heard a roar. It wasn't very loud, but it kept getting closer every time I heard it, and it freaked me the hell out.
With all my previous confidence gone, I found myself running into the trees as fast as I could, ignoring the sting from all the branches hitting my face as I kept running. The only thing preventing me from screaming like a little girl was the constant assault of the branches from all sides, as I ran as fast as I could to escape the big and scary monster, I could have sworn I saw an African style but pass me by, and a zebra doing... Something with a bunch of different flowers outside, it didn't seem to notice me for some reason, must have been very concentrated on those flowers.
After what seemed like 5 hours of me running, I come to a sudden halt at a Hallowed out tree, breathing heavily, I lean up against the tree and slide down its trunk until my ass hit the floor.
"Holy... I haven't run that fast in my life! Must be this new bodies stamina..." I wipe some sweat off my forehead as I rest against the tree.
"What the hell was that?! It sounded like someone gave the Hulk steroids.."
I shake my head.
"Alright David, focus, we need to get the hell out of here and find some civilization.... Wait, why am I even talking to myself? Ugh, old habits fucking die hard.." I chuckle to myself. "Although, I am loving this new voice, makes me sound sexy."
A frown forms on my face.
"Wait, since my voice is a girls voice... that means... No.."
I look down in between my legs and rapidly look in vain for my David Junior.
"Of all the things that could have been taken from me... Why this?!
Half an hour later of me cursing out to every god I could think of and then some, I finally managed to compose myself.
Okay, David. You don't have a dick anymore... It's not the end of the world. This just means new ways to masturbate! Yeah, that sounds good."
Satisfied with my half-assed excused to calm myself down, I got up from the ground and observe my new surroundings.
I was in what looked like a swamp, nothing too special, but what did catch my attention was a yellow horse thing with wings, it seemed to be similar to what I turned into, but I ruled that out since I have a horn, and it... Well, since she was facing away from me, I quickly found out it was a she, and I couldn't say I didn't like what I say seeing either.
I Shaking my head, I quickly dove behind cover and began observing it.
"Alright... I'm not in Kansas anymore..." Just as I was about to keep talking to myself like the crazy nutjob I am, I noticed two other creatures enter the playing field. One looked exactly like the Pegasus thing, except it had a horn, a different hair style and it was purple, and the other one looked like a green lizard with scales on its back all the way down to its tail, kind of cool actually.
I watched them talk about something, which I didn't find it as odd as I would have initially found it if I was human.
"Considering all the crazy shit that has been happening lately, I shouldn't be surprised at all..."
My conversation with myself was cut short as a giant HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING!
"What the fu-"
I was cut short yet again as the thing started to rise above the swamp, it was easily 10 meters tall if not more, and had three heads.
"Holy... Is that a fucking Hydra?"
Luckily it didn't hear me, as it started running after the two horses and the lizard which had been standing there, watching it rise instead of running.
"Pfft, rookie mistake," I say to myself as I see them get chased until they were out of my field of view.
"Oh well, better them than me..." I looked around for a second and picked up a rock, I then proceed to carve "It's all ogre now" on the side of the trunk before dropping the rock and getting the hell out of there.
"Okay, fuck surviving, I have to get out of this forest before I'm eaten alive by a damn dragon or something." I stop and look the way the purple pony came from.
"Alright, if I follow those foot-... Erm... Hoofprints, I could find my way back to civilization, and out of this godforsaken forest."
With my new, bulletproof plan, I slowly made my way to where they had just been a few minutes ago and started to follow purples hoofprints.
"Okay, now all I have to do is follow this, and I'll be out!"
I continued on for about 15 minutes before I came across a path that seems to run down the very middle of the forest, it was big enough to fit literally two tanks side by side.
"Damn, this must be where these ponies use their... Well, whatever they use to transport themselves, seems a little risky though... Oh well, not my problem."
I start to trot down the path in the same way purple was heading before I noticed something... Odd to the side.
In the background, barely visible around what looked like a thick fog, there was a castle, an honest god fucking castle, or at least, that's what it looked like.
"Castles? What's next? Magic?" I say with a snort.
I was about to continue heading down the path, but I noticed that it was getting dark out, fast, so I had two choices, either I keep going and hope nothing kills and eats me, or I take my chances with the spooky castle.
"Fuck it, I don't want to die out here, spooky and probably haunted castle it is.."
I take a left on a small path that branches off into the direction of the castle; it didn't take me too long to get close to it, I was forced to a halt as I noticed the large gap separating me and the castle.
"Oh great, just what I fu-... Is that a bridge?" I said as I noticed a small wooden bridge, which looked like it had been cut for some reason.
"Well, that raises the red flag on my 'stay away' meter..."
I knew I couldn't turn back, and I couldn't see any other way around, so that left me with one option.
"God, I hate flying...."
I Had to use the wings I had on my back, though they seemed a little too small to be able to lift me, I figured they must be there for a reason.
"Alright David, you've seen how birds do it on animal planet... Just do what they do!"
I started out with a soft flap of my wings, testing them out, but as I started flapping them faster, I started to hover, I didn't know how I was doing it, it just felt natural, almost as if I've used wings my entire life.
"Holy... This feels awesome!" I started giggling to myself as I casually flew over the gap in no time, unfortunately, I didn't know how to land, so I ended up with a mouth full of dirt.
"Note to self, practice landings....."
After getting all the dirt out of my mouth and hair, I got up and look towards the castle.
"I hope this is worth it...."
With a sigh, I slowly started walking towards the entrance; my wings seemed to fold subconsciously too.
"Well, that's helpful.."
I slowly opened the door and entered the castle before closing the door behind me.
"It's not conformable, but I prefer a stone bed over a dirt bed.."
I looked at my options for a bed, and none of them were pretty. There was an abundance of books scattered around for some reason, but I learned that sleeping on books is less comfortable than sleeping on the floor, and these books didn't look very comfortable either, so I could either continue onward and try to find a bed, or I could just sleep on the floor.
"Eh, I'm pretty tired... And I've had way worse..."
I laid down in a semi-clean corner and closed my eyes, it did take me a while to finally fall asleep, but once I did, I slept for 5 hours, that is, until something woke me up.
I've been woken up by more than a few things, from my roommate pulling pranks on me, to finding spiders crawling up my face, and a few... Other things I'm not exactly proud of, but I've never actually been woken up by something like... this.
As I quickly opened my eyes, I was greeted by what looked like a baby wolf, that is, if wolves looked like they were made of fucking sticks, seriously, it looked like someone threw a bunch of sticks in a pile and glued them together!
The thing had glowing green eyes with a row of wooden teeth it was gladly displaying to me, it wasn't really scary due to its size, and it didn't help that it had such a cartoonish expression, but walking up to it mere inches away from your face will make you shit your pants, don't deny it.
As I was panicking and scrambling to get away from it out of surprise, it just stared at me, like it wasn't even afraid, seriously, I was probably two times larger than it, but it didn't seem to give a shit about that.
I backpedaled away from it until my back was firmly pressed against the wall, I could have sworn I saw that thing smirk at me as it backed away and ran off, probably to tell its friends that I'm here. I certainly didn't plan on sticking around this place waiting to become the lunch of some weird stick wolves.
"Great... Now I have that to worry about..." With a sigh, I stood up and shook my head. "I should get going; God knows what I will wake up to next time."
I got up and slowly walked outside, carefully surveying my surroundings, not wanting to be caught off guard in case the little wolf things friends were waiting outside, not that I was afraid of them, I just didn't want them to have the element of surprise.
The mist outside the castle had dispersed a lot since the last time I saw it, so I could see details of the castle and its surroundings much better now. Unfortunately, since it was still night out, I couldn't see a lot of the details, but it seemed that my new eyes were better adapted to dark environments than my previous ones, so I could make out certain things, such as that The entire castle was covered in vines. Trees were growing from its walls, tall grass grew freely on the sides of the castle, covering what looked like ruined houses that seemed to form a circle around the castle. Obviously, this used to be a town or a city of some sort, abandoned long ago, probably because of the wildlife, if that's the case, why the hell did they build it in the middle of the fucking forest?! Seems like a no-brainer to me.
"Alright, the coast is clear, time to get the hell out of this place.." As I started walking back towards the ledge I had to come across to get here, I stopped for a second as a sudden thought came to mind, something I should have thought of the second I arrived in this damn place.
"Wait, if I can fly, why not just fly out of the forest! Man, wonder why I didn't think of that sooner..." I extended my wings and gave them a few good flaps."I should be out of this forest in no time with these babies!" Feeling self-confident in my expert flying capabilities, I started flapping my wings until I was in the air.
Slowly but surely, I started gaining altitude until I was clear of the castle and the trees surrounding it, once I was sure I wouldn't crash into anything, I started flying forwards, slowly picking up speed, enjoying the feeling of the air hitting my face.
"Holy hell, this feels fucking amazing!" I exclaimed loudly as I looked down and saw trees pass me by below me, flying felt amazing, it was like when you poked your head out of the car and felt the wind on your face. But the feeling of freedom, of being free to go wherever you pleased, made it easily a million times better.
I continued to enjoy myself for at least four more minutes, after which I started admiring the scenery before me, everything had a cartoonish look to it all, like if I was inside a cartoon. But that aside, seemed so peaceful from up here, so clean. The air felt so much better than that of Earth's too, no doubt because of the pollution that plagued the Earth wherever you went, even the clouds looked puffier and whiter, and they everything seemed to have a thin outline, not very noticeable, but it was there.
Off to the distance, it looked like there was a mountain range, nothing too weird right? Well, on the side of one of the biggest mountain, there was a goddam castle, a honest to god fucking castle. But it didn't stop there, the castle was literally hanging from the side of the castle, it looked like that castle and gravity had a big damn divorce, and then pissed all over logics face!
Taking the time to process the events that lead to me being stuck in a foreign body, and thrown into a whole new world, I started to think about what will happen. My friends and family will no doubt think I'm dead, and Carl will use this opportunity to replace his shit computer with mine, he will probably buy gifts with the steam money I had saved up for the upcoming summer sale and then send them all to himself, greedy bastard. At least I hope he doesn't spend the money opening those fucking cases.
And then there was my family, my dad, my mom, and my little sister; I don't know what they'll do... But I hope to get back soon; I don't want them to think I'm dead, they would be devastated...
"No... I will find a way back, all I need to do is find out who did this to me, and get them to me back!" Of course, things weren't that easy; I probably had to go through some bullshit quest to find some damn useless object to either "save" this world from a great evil or to prove myself. I've read enough fanfiction to know what happens in those types of scenarios. If the guy that sent me here turns out to be a villain, I hope he at least is fucking original and not some cliché type of villain.
I was interrupted as I saw the tree line fast approaching, as I did so, I noticed a small town with old style buildings, a few lights were on at the moment, but most seen to be still sleeping, given that it was still night out 'Finally! I'll be out of this godforsaken forest!' I thought to myself as I started slowing down until I was hovering, I began descending by flapping my wings less and less until I was a mere few feet away from the ground. Thankfully, the cover of night, combined with the color of my coat made it so it was nearly impossible to notice me at plain sight.
I stopped flapping my wings once I had finally touched the grousidesSuccessful landing number one!' I thought to myself with a smirk as I folded my wings to my sides and brushed off some sticks that had fallen on me because of the wind my wings generated.
"Alright... What the hell do I do now?" I had zero clues on what to do now, should I just walk in there? Yeah, that seems reasonable, I mean, I should look the part, all I have to do is act it, right?
"Ah fuck it, better than waiting here to be eaten by a wandering wolf or something," I said to myself with a slightly sarcastic tone as I exited the forest for the first time since arriving here. As I observed the surroundings, I noticed there was a road leading to the town, to the left of said road was what looked like an apple orchard. I debated it inside my thoughts for aa few seconds, while I was hungry, I shouldn't go stealing other people's shit even if it looked like they had enough apples to solve world hunger ten times over. I decided to head down the road and try to communicate with the locals here and try to find out where I am, then I'll worry about food.
I started making my way down the dirt road and towards the town, sparing brief glances around, I noticed a cottage on the outskirts of the town, strangely enough, the lights were on, this was my opportunity to get some damn answers finally!
I trotted over to the cottage, as I got closer, I noticed a lot of animals, mainly birds, sleeping there, along with a...
"Is that a... Bear?" There was a fucking bear in the backyard of the cottage; holy shit was the person who lived in their crazy?! "Okay, note to self, stay away from the garden..." With that thought in mind, I made my way over to the cottage door, making sure not to make much noise.
I raised my hoof and knocked on the door three times before stepping a few steps back and waiting, after a few moments I heard a soft, feminine voice call out.
"Just a minute!"
The voice sounded familiar, but I can't quite place my finger-... Hoof? Eh, whatever, the same thing.
I had waited for about 10 seconds before the door opened slowly to reveal a yellow colored pegasus mare, in fact, it was the same pegasus I saw the day before in the swamp! Looks like she made it out alive, don't see the other two, though, wonder if they lived as well.
I cleared my throat and spoke in the softest voice I could manage.
"Hello Ma'am, I was wonder-" I didn't get to finish before the pegasus squealed in an adorable manner and slammed the door shut, calling me 'Nightmare Moon' for some reason, pfft, fucking rude.
As I stood there staring at the spot where the yellow pegasus once was, the entirety of my current train of thought could have been summarized in one word.
"Fuck."
I only stood there for another two minutes, hoping that the mare would come out a second time and listen to what I had to say, but alas, she never did open the door.
"This is the reason I don't like to be social..."
Defeated, I turned around and started walking down another path that was in front of the cottage; My other choice now was to head into town and find another building with the lights on.
I came across a small river a minute into the walk, it didn't seem necessary, considering that the river is quite small, but hey, maybe it was for a reason.
I continued beyond the bridge and finally entered the town itself, it was seemed a lot smaller on the outside when I last saw it... Meh, it was probably just one of those fancy optical illusions or something along those lines.
I walked down the town's empty streets for quite a while; I'd say for about 20 minutes, give or take, I didn't see much of interest, apart from a few stray cats here and there.
I finally came across a house, well, it didn't look exactly like a house, it looked like someone carved out a tree, somehow it was still alive, though, since all of its leaves still looked alive and well.
I walked over to the front door of the tree house and, like I did before, knocked three times on the door and stepped back, after ten seconds, a unicorn opened the door, the same purple unicorn that I saw at the swamp.
'Huh, so they did survive, they must have one crazy story to tell...'
The purple unicorn stared at me with her mouth wide open, no doubt in shock, was I that damn ugly or something?
Like I did when I talked to the yellow pegasus, I greeted her in the softest tone I could manage and with a smile that could win an Oscar.
She stood there for a straight minute, looking at me with wide eyes and her jaw hanging open, not going to lie, it was starting to make me uncomfortable, so after another minute of having a Mexican standoff with the unicorn, I decided to speak up and hopefully snap her out of it.
"Uh... Hello?" Again, she just stared at me with that same exact expression. Yep, broke her, yeah, I broke her.
"Um... Ma'am? Are you alright?" I took one step closer to her, and that seemed to snap out of it instantly because she dropped down, and fucking bowed to me, to fucking me! The only bowing I ever received was from myself when trying to boost my self-esteem in my bathroom mirror!
"P-princess L-Luna! W-what are you doing here?!" She said.
Oh look, she finally deci-... Wait, did she just call me Princess Luna?! What!?
"I uh... Just wanted to know where I was.." I replied to her with uncertainty.
She looked up at me with evident confusion on her face. "Uh... We're in Ponyville, Princess.."
Ponyville? Who in their right mind would put a town a name with such cringe-worthy pun? It would be like if someone from Earth called a city Humansville! Which is totally not a thing, by the way, don't look it up.
Now onto the fact that she was called me an Princess two times already, and she put the name Luna at the end too, maybe she confused me with their Princess or something?
...
Oh great, I just realized that they no doubt have a monarchy unless this "Princess Luna" she confused me with is in a book or something, seems unlikely though.
"Erm... Right, I knew that... "I rubbed the back of my neck with a sheepish smile. " Uh... Is there a library nearby I could visit in the morning?" If there was any place that could tell me where I am and not give me weird looks while doing so, it was the Library.
She just got even more confused after I asked that "Uh.... This is the Library, Princess..."
"Oh... Well, I'll come back tomorrow..." I flashed her a smile as I turned around and started walking away."Why was she confused by that? How the hell was I supposed to know where the library was?"
I didn't make it far until a flash of light suddenly appeared out of nowhere in front of me, causing me to stumble back and blinding me for a few seconds.
I shook my head a few times and opened my eyes to reveal that the purple unicorn was now in front of me, with a rather... Nervous expression on her face, she no doubt regretted doing that if her facial expression is anything to go by.
She opened her mouth and started saying something, but I wasn't paying attention, I was trying to process the fact that she fucking teleported in front of me! Unless she had a flashbang shoved up her ass and used it to blind me and make it seem like she teleported, but I doubt that.
"-ut we just opened! It is almost daytime anyway." I refocused my eyes on her and stared at her for a few seconds, all I did hear was those last eight words. But honestly, I don't care right now, all I care about is the fact that she said that they were open, that means I could find some books and read up on this damn place, and hopefully prevent myself from looking like an idiot next time.
"Princess?" I blinked as she waved her foreleg in front of my face, or at least tried too, since I was probably twice as tall as her, I probably spaced out again too, I should stop doing that in the middle of conversations...
"Huh? Oh, yeah, that sounds good." I hope that whatever she said was good, and I hope I didn't agree to be sacrificed to their god or some shit.
"Great! Follow me Princess" Okay, this 'Princess' thing is starting to piss me off, but I shouldn't say anything before I read up on this, don't want them thinking I'm some sort spy.
"Alright..." I followed her as she walked past me and entered the library, as I entered I noticed that it was cooler in here, an air conditioner maybe? No, I don't see one, and the room is too big for another one in a different place to be keeping it at this current temperature.
"So... What brings you here this early Princess?" She said as she turned around to face me, the same nervous expression adorning her face.
"I just.. Wanted to read some books that's all" God, I hope she falls for it and leaves me alone so I can do some research...
"Can't you just use the Canterlot Royal Library?" She looks at me with even more confusion, shit, what the hell is the Canterlot Royal Library? Fuck, I need to think of something fast.
"Well, I just wanted to..." Come on David, think of something! "...Be alone when reading?" Good one Dave, you might win the 'Shittiest Excuse of the year award.'
" Oh.. Well, in that case, I'll be in the room upstairs if you need me Princess" She still looked skeptical, but It looks like she bought it, success!
"Of course" I replied to her with a nod as she turned around and made her way up a flight of stairs, leaving me alone with all the books.
"Alright David, time to put those reading skills to the test ..." I walked up to a bookshelf and started looking for any history books, after a few minutes of searching, I stumbled on what looked like a kids history book, it had a bunch of colors on the front with the words 'Brief History of Equestria' printed on it. But what threw me off was that the letters were different from the ones in the English language, yet I could still read them as if I've been reading them for my entire life... Oh well, I'll look into that later.
I sat down, opened up the book, and started reading it.
Alright, I think I got the basics of this down after reading it the third time.
Apparently, I'm in a country called "Equestria" that was founded by three pony tribes after fleeing from somethings called the wendigos, which feed on their hatred of each other and caused it to snow or some shit. I didn't buy into that though, It was probably a mini ice age or something along those lines, but that wasn't important right now.
What really caught my interest was this 'event' that happened one thousand years ago. Apparently, this "Princess Luna' got jelly of her sister, 'Princess Celestia' because she was mad that the people here ignored the night, and she turned all evil and shit, so her sister had to banish her for a thousand years, and they're still alive somehow. But I guess that shouldn't be too weird, considering the shit I've seen during my time here.
" Well, at least I won't be completely clueless..." I set the book down and look other the rest of the bookshelves. "Ugh... At least I know how I'm going to spend my evening.."
I get up and start looking through some of the books after I put back the one that I just finished reading, I pick up some of the books that had caught my attention, one of which interested me more than the others.
"Magic for Beginners? Now there's magic here too...?"I sighed as I sat down on the floor and rubbed my forehead. "I honestly shouldn't be surprised anymore..."
I looked down at the book I had in my hooves.
"Alright, let's see if I even do magic..." I opened up the book and started reading, I read through most of the book after half an hour, from basic levitation to even small range teleportation, man, magic is some cool shit.
"Alright... If I'm reading this right, all I have to do is imagine myself levitating something..." I looked around for something to try and levitate, and surely enough I found a small empty cup on the other side of the room.
"This better fucking work.." I close my eyes and imagine the cup levitating; I started hearing some sort of... Glowing sound if you could call it that, coming from my horn, I didn't really feel it, but I sure as hell heard it.
I slowly opened my eyes and found the cup being surrounded by a glowing light blue wavy cloud thing, most likely my magic. Man, it feels weird to say that.
I tried Imagining it floating slightly above the counter, and It did just that.
Now, the only thing that kept me from freaking out over this was the fact that if I did, the purple Unicorn would hear me, and I wanted to spare myself another awkward moment.
I slowly set the cup down and kept myself from squealing, I had just done magic, fucking magic, I bet Carl would be so jelly of me right now if he saw me.
I calmed down after a few minutes and looked over the rest of the books that I picked up, one was an anatomy book, while the others were books dealing with creatures and geography.
"God, this it feels like high school all over again..."
Alright, so after one damn hour of reading, I've finally managed to read all three books, they weren't that big, but I read them over two times to make sure I wasn't missing anything important
Strangely enough, the purple Unicorn hasn't come down here during all this time; I wonder that the hell she's doing up there, oh well, none of my business I suppose.
I got up and put the three books back in the bookshelf since I didn't want to bother purple up there, I decided to explore the town a little bit, it was still around 5 AM, so there shouldn't be many hors-... I mean ponies walking around.
As I was making my way towards the door, purple decided it would be a super great idea to teleport right in front of me again, blinding me for a few seconds yet again.
When I opened my eyes, I was greeted with an very angry purple unicorn. Shit, what the hell did I do this time?
"You! Impostor!" Oh, shit, the jig is up, she knows I'm not 'Princess Luna,' took her long enough to figure it out.
"Uh, I'm not sure what you're talking about?" I said as I took one step back. God, I need to get better at lying.
"I know you're not the real Princess Luna! So tell me who you really are!" How did she even find out anyway? Does she have a phone line to one of the Princesses and she asked them or something?
I sighed and sat down, even though I was still taller than her, she didn't seem that intimidated, or maybe she was hiding it. If she is, she's good at it.
"Well, it's quite simple my dear," I said as I looked down at her with a poker face that would make even the best poker players blush.
"I'm here to sell propane and propane accessories."
I almost burst out laughing right then and there, she was looking at me with the most hilarious expression ever!
"Propane? What even is that?" She said, her anger momentarily disappearing and being replaced with utter confusion.
Alright, my best chance right now to get the hell out of here is to confuse her enough so she stops paying attention to me, easier said than done.
"What? You don't know what propane is?!" I put on a shocked expression, trying to stop myself from laughing, which was becoming more and more difficult.
"How am I-" I didn't let her finish as I shushed her by putting the tip of my hoof to her mouth.
"Boy I'll tell you hwat, propane is the best gosh darn fuel you'll ever find anywhere!" I said triumphantly with the best Hank hill voice I could manage.
She took a few steps back and looked at me as if I've grown a second head, good. This is all going according to plan.
"Wha- what are y-" I interrupted her yet again by suddenly looking behind her with a gasp.
"Look! they're selling propane there!" Holy shit she actually fell for it! as I pointed my hoof towards a location behind her, she turned her head around to look at said spot, big mistake, those few seconds were all I needed to get the hell outta dodge.
I considered my options for a quick second, I could either use my wings to fly the hell out of here, and risk her being able to track were I went more easily by just simply looking at me, or I could start running and hopefully be able to loose her. not very much in the way of options, but It'll have to do, I didn't have time to think of anything else.
I extended my wings and gave them a few good flaps, enough to get me airborne by a couple of meters, what I didn't account for was the fact that there was a big, fat tree branch right on top of where I took off, so I ended up slamming my head into it.
"Gah! fuck!" Immense pain washed over me as my head collided with the branch, which was odd, since it shouldn't have been that painful.
As the pain eased, the first thing I noticed was that I was still up in the air, I slowly opened my eyes and looked up, or at least, I tried to look up, since it appeared that my horn had been impaled within the branch itself.
"What the fu... oh great, now I'm stuck up here." I sighed and looked down, knowing that Purple had probably found out that no one was actually selling propane, and sure enough, she did. As I looked down, I saw her staring up at me, covering her mouth with her right hoof, probably to try to stop herself from laughing.
"Hey! stop laughing and help me out here!" I yelled out to her as I started struggling to set my self free.
"Why should I? in fact, I think you'll make a perfect decoration until the Princesses get here." She replied with a shit eating grin, that little... "Alright, look, I'll cooperate, just get me down from here, this isn't exactly pain free you know!" I said in an irritated manner as I continued my struggle with the branch.
"And who's to say you won't just go running off once I free you?"
"I promise I won't run! I promise! Just... get me down from here!" She rubbed her chin with one of her hooves for a few seconds, no doubt just trying to raise my hopes. "Alright, I'll let you down, but first.." I was suddenly blinded by another flash of light as I felt something wrap around me and something round, like a ring at the base of my horn, it took me a seconds to realize that she had tied me up.
"There, that should prevent you from escaping" She said with a hint of smugness in her voice.
I opened my mouth to voice my complaints about me still being suspended in the air, but I has interrupted as a purple glow surrounded me and I felt an invisible force pull me down, and since I was tied up, I ended up hitting the ground face first.
"GAH! FUCK!" I screamed in pain as my face make first contact with the ground, unfortunately for me, I couldn't really move, so I just sat there and took it like a man.
"Oh! sorry!" I felt myself be levitated into the air by the same invisible force that pulled me down and moved into the library, It felt strange, almost like if I was covered in a thin layer of water.
"Er.... Purple?" I called out as I was dropped on the couch, I shook my head a bit and looked in the direction of Purple. "What was that?" I asked, now, if I was still in my human body, I would have freaked out by the fact that I had just been levitated through the air, but after witnessing all the shit I've seen, you tend to run out of shocked faces to make.
"What do you mean? I just used a simple levitation spell" She replied with confusion, honestly, after seeing her teleport, I shouldn't be surprised.
Wait, now I remember! I levitated a... lamp right? I really need to brush up on my memory skills...
"Eh... right.." I repositioned myself so that I could be more comfortable on the couch, after a bit of struggling due to the bonds, I managed to get myself into a better position, just in time for Purple to start asking her questions.
"First off, I want to know, and I want you to answer truthfully, who are you?"
Ah shit, what the hell should I tell her? 'Hey, I'm a human impersonating one of your leaders!' No, that would just make me look like an actual impersonator, I don't even know how the hell I got myself into this mess! And I can't tell her the truth; she won't believe me! She'll probably tell the "Princesses" that I'm not cooperating, and they'll send me to the moon, and I heard that isn't a superb experience.
"I'm waiting." Fuck it, if I lie, I'll get myself into even more trouble, might as well come out with it and hope for the best.
"Well.. you see, I was a human, but I got into this terrible accident, and I woke up like this!" I said in the most sincere voice I could manage at the time, but she didn't seem convinced, in fact, it looked like my response brought up more questions than answers for her.
"Right... first off, tell me, what is a 'human'?" Double shit, how the hell am I supposed to explain a human to her? I suck at describing things! Hell, I would probably fail initially to describe a damn square to her.
"Er.... Well, we have two legs, two arms, we stand upright, we are omnivores, and our scientific name is 'Homo Sapiens'" I carefully explained, trying not to mess up.
The levitated a notebook of some sort and wrote a few things down, probably for later reference. She didn't look very convinced though, I couldn't blame her, If an identical copy of the President came up to me and started saying he was a motherfucking alien, I would probably be a little suspicious too.
"You stated that you were in an accident, correct? What exactly happened to the events leading up to the crash, and what happened afterward?" She asked as she looked up from her notepad and stared at me with curiosity, I honestly can't believe that she hasn't started laughing at me and throwing me into the nearest mental Asylum yet.
"I was... On my way back to my home from work, and I saw these... shadowy figures in the tree line on both sides or the road, after that... I can't remember what exactly happened, but next thing I know, I'm saying down on a field, a few yards from where I originally crashed.." I took a deep breath and looked at her, she was writing on her notepad, I took that as my signal to keep going.
"After that, and a little bit of panicking, I made my way to my apartment, and after that, I called it a day and went to sleep.." She stopped writing and looked up at me, waving her hoof, probably wanting me to continue my little story.
"After that, I woke up in a forest, and I made my way to here, end of story." God, that was terrible, I need to brush up on my story telling.
She looked up at me again and set the notepad down right next to her, probably so that she could access it faster if she needed to write some more. "Well, I can't say that I believe you, put I can't disprove what you're saying, not yet anyway. I am going to relay this to the Princesses once they get here though, it's up to them to decide what happens to you" She said as she looked back at her notepad and picked it up, she appeared to read through it again a few times.
"Oh god, they're going to kill me, or imprison me! I'm too young to go to jail!" I admit I was panicking a little bit, but come on, if you were in my situation, you would do the same!
She merely chuckled and set down the notepad on the little wooden table in front of us. "Don't worry... Uh... what was your name again?" She asked me with a sheepish expression on her face.
"It's... David." I didn't want to tell her my full name, not right at the moment anyway.
"Right... David, they're not going to imprison you, much less kill you" She said with a soft tone as she tried reassuring me that I wouldn't die horribly, or imprisoned, unfortunately for her, it didn't too much in the way of reassuring me.
"How would you know?! you're not them!" I admit, it was a weak argument, but at the time, I was pretty fucking scared that they might shit all over my cereal, and that's never fun.
"Because I know them, they wouldn't do that, trust me." She tried reassuring me again and even made a motion with her forelegs to try and can me down. These ponies acted way too much like humans sometimes...
"Alright... let's say that I believe you, what do you think they'll do to me?" She leaned back and thought to herself for a few seconds. "Well, David, I'm sure they'll just ask some questions, and then they will find a way to send you back home." I let out a sigh and leaned back on the couch like she did.
"I'm sure you don't believe me, Miss..." I trailed off for a bit, hoping that she would tell me her name.'Fuck, why didn't I ask for her name? or maybe I did... blah, can't remember'.
"Twilight, Twilight Sparkle."
"Right, Twilight, look, I know my story is hard to believe, I know I wouldn't believe it if I was in your shoes, but it's.. all true, I promise I'm telling the truth.." She nodded her head in understanding.
"It is a weird story indeed.. And I can't tell if you're lying or not.." A smirk forms on her face. "But I know a friend of mine who can!" She stood up, and a purple aura engulfed her horn.
"I'll be right back! don't move!" A blinding flash surrounded the room for half a second before disappearing, signaling that she had teleported away.
I snorted and rolled my eyes. "If I could, I would have.." I sighed and turned my head to look at an open window.
"This day is just turning out to be one big bag of surprise-... Wait, what the hell is that? "I said as I saw two dots appear in the distance, narrowed my eyes a bit to try and get a clear view, and I managed to make out two gold and dark blue objects heading this way. As it got closer, I could start seeing details of the objects, there were two, large chariot like vehicles approaching, and they were being pulled by motherfucking Pegasi.
"Fuck fuck fuck! Twilight! Why the hell did you leave just as they were about to arrive?!" I thought to myself as I desperately struggled against my restraints, trying, in vain, to break free of the chains preventing me from getting the hell out of dodge.
I didn't have a single clue as to where Twilight decided to fuck off to, but it better be damn worth it in the end.
"If Twilight isn't here to calm their fucking tits and convince them not to punt me to the moon, then I'm screwed"
No wait, I won't be just screwed, I'll be royally screwed!
See what I did there?
I shook my head and continued my struggle to free myself from the chains, but they simply wouldn't budge, whatever these things are made off, it couldn't have been steel, hell, I punched a hole straight through a steel dumpster! Although, maybe the chains are enchanted with some magic spell thingy, and the dumpster may not have been made of steel.... God, I can be such an idiot sometimes.
Okay, maybe most of the time.
"Come on, come on! Break you useless pieces of sh-" I was interrupted mid sentence by the sounds of the chariots, they must be getting close now if I'm able to hear them.
"There was to be someway to get out of this da-... Wait, Twilight teleported a bunch of times! Maybe if I think of teleporting, it'll work! Just like the levitation thing!" I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and started imagining the surrounding the surrounding environment; then I imagined myself slowly disappearing for a quick moment, and reappearing on the other couch.
My horn shined Brightly for a second, but it seemed to falter a few times, before resuming its natural brightness, that's strange, almost like if something blocked it for a second, like a wall.
I didn't get much time to dwell on the subject before I suddenly felt myself being teleported to my selected destination.
It felt weird honestly, almost like if I was torn apart into tiny pieces, and put together in another, yet I still felt as a whole, no pain whatsoever.
I didn't know a lot of science, but getting torn apart and put back together is supposed to be pretty painful.
Deciding not to question magic any more that I already had, I opened my eyes and looked to my right, and surely enough, there was a long chain, the one that had me restricted, now in a pile, with the ring that laid on my horn next to it, little cracks on its side.
"Maybe I can make them believe that I wasn't here... They'll go looking for Twilight!" Satisfied with my plan, I quickly grabbed the chains and the ring and stuffed them underneath the couch before quickly dashing upstairs.
Big mistake.
Since I wasn't very experienced with running on all fours, I acted as If I was using two legs instead of four, causing miscalculation with my legs and making me trip and fall face first onto the step above it.
"AHH FUCK! SON OF A- " Before I could finish my sentence, I heard the chariot noises stop, and the sound of hooves stepping on the ground begin
"Shit, they're here! I need to move my ass, fast" With the pain in my face completely forgotten, I made my way upstairs quickly, careful not to trip and fall again.
I reached the upstairs and then ran to the nearest door I could find, I then opened the door and was greeted with a bedroom, obviously belonging to Twilight.
Wasting no time, I dashed under the bed and pulled the covers slightly down, enough so that they cover the small space separating the floor and the bed completely, concealing me from plain sight.
"Alright, I'll have to rely on my good ol' ears for this one.." I controlled my breathing, which had been a little too loud, and laid there, on the floor, waiting for them to come inside.
I heard the door open, and sounds of hooves hitting the wood floor all the way up here, I couldn't hear any talking, so I assumed they hadn't said anything.
Then I heard Twilight, presumably outside the tree house, saying a something, along with another pony, one with some southern accent, say a few words as well.
"Oh thank god, Twilight you beautiful fucking horse, I could kiss you right now!" I let go of a breath I didn't know I was holding in with a long, relieved sigh, with a small percent of my courage restored, I slowly got out from under the bed and started to make my way to the door.
As I approached the door, I started hearing other voices, one that sounded exactly like mine, and another one that sounded incredibility familiar, almost if I've heard it countless times before...
"Nah, it's probably just a similar voice to someone I can't remember right now." As I reached the door, I noticed that I had left it slightly open, not that I mattered now, thankfully.
I took a deep breath and opened the door slowly, I took a few steps out the door and looked to the right, down to where I thought the voices were originating from.
And sure enough, there were four ponies. Twilight, an orange one with a cowboy hat, one that looked like an exact copy of my current body, and one with a long, Rainbow colored mane that waved in an invisible breeze, similar to mine and the other one that looks like me, a brilliant white coat, and was noticeably taller than anyone else in the room.
And they were all staring at me.
I forced a smile, cleared my throat, and said the first thing that came to mind.
"Have any of you heard that the bird is the word?"
Well, that poor attempt at breaking the ice didn't work. Hell, it made things even worse!
"Er, well, uh ... patrolling the Mojave sure makes you wish for a nuclear winter, am I right?" I stated nervously as I forced my smile even more. 'Why the hell am I making these damn references to shit these people have never heard of?' Again, my piss poor attempt at breaking the ice failed miserably, and that was when I realized that I needed to bring out the big guns.
I opened my bag of social interaction once again and reached deep into it, attempting to bring forth the best possible conversation starter since the dawn of humanity.
"Are we just going to fucking stand here for the rest of eternity, or are we going do something?" Best sentence ever: ten out of ten.
I walked down the stairs slowly as to not trip and make a fool out of myself; well, more than I already have, not that that's the point! Anyway, I reached the bottom of the staircase and sat down on the couch, facing them.
"Alright, my peeps, let's get this show on the road, shall we?" I leaned back and somehow managed to summon a bottle of Coca Cola, which I took a big gulp from. I definitely would have freaked out about if I didn't have mother fucking royalty in front of me. 'Damn, I impressed myself with that one.' I thought to myself as I took another sip, this time moving the bottle to the side so I could get a clearer view of the horses in front of me.
Now, they didn't exactly just stand there doing nothing while I took my sweet ass time walking down the stairs and getting comfortable. The white one just stared at me the whole way down; she didn't say anything either. The orange one stared at me too, with an expression I ... can't quite describe. It was like curiosity mixed with confusion, doubt, and a little bit of anger. And the blue one, oh boy, If looks could kill, I would have died the day I was born, if that makes any sense.
Twilight was the one to step forward first, confused, and a little bit worried, strangely enough.
"David, how did you get out of the restraints I put on you?"
"I asked them nicely."
"What?"
"What?"
I smirked as Twilight brought her hoof to her face and let out a grunt of annoyance. 'I can already tell messing with these ponies will be fun.' I thought to myself as my smirk grew wider.
"Now, about abandoning me without telling me who you were getting in the first place ..."
"I went to get my friend, Applejack! She can tell us if you're really who you claim to be." She replied as her eyes slowly narrowed.
"So... she's a walking lie detector?"
"A... lie detector?" She asked as she raised one of her eyebrows.
'Figures, they're probably not very advanced regarding technology.'
"It's... a machine used for determining whether a person is telling the truth by testing for physiological changes considered to be associated with lying, I think."
"Interesting… Well, Applejack will be telling us if you're a liar or not, so go ahead and tell her the story you told me." She said as her friend stepped forward.
She looked like she was about to say something, but being the asshole that I am, I completely interrupted her and started telling my story the same way I told Twilight.
I told her everything I told Twilight and then some. The expressions of the ponies present changed quite a lot through the duration of my story. The blue one, Luna if I remember correctly, didn't look like she wanted to kill me anymore, so that's good. Although she still seemed to have that "I'm watching you." look, which was kind of fucking unsettling.
Twilight didn't show that much difference and mainly kept glancing at the princesses, probably to see how they felt on the matter. Celestia and Applejack looked a lot more interested than the other two by the end, hopefully meaning that Miss lie detector in front of me won't call my story bullshit and have me atomized.
As soon as I finished my story, Applejack took a step back and looked at Twilight.
"Ah can tell ya that she... he… Well, they're telling the truth alright." I released a sigh that I didn't even know I was holding as I leaned back, a lot more relaxed.
"See? I have no reason to lie!" Besides the fate of my future hanging in the balance, I totally had no reason to lie, according to me anyway.
"He is? Oh, this is excellent news! I have so many questions! Like how his world works, or what technology they have, or-" She was interrupted as Celestia put a hoof over her mouth with a smile, though I knew that wouldn't stop the purple menace from dropping a question nuke on me later.
"We all have questions, my faithful student, but how about we ask them one at a time?" She said as she looked back at me, her smile waning slightly.
Twilight nodded as Celestia removed her hoof from her mouth. "O-of course Princess! I just got a little carried away, hehe..." She stuttered sheepishly as she rubbed the back of her neck.
"Well, Twilight, since you seem excited about asking questions, how about you start off?" I said as I got a little more comfortable, knowing that I was going to be there a while.
She nodded as she pulled another notebook and a quill out from seemingly nowhere. Although, given that I did the same thing with a bottle of soda, I'm not surprised anymore.
She cleared her throat and levitated the notebook and quill in front of herself. "Alright, what was your world like regarding technology and scientific understanding?" And there was the question nuke...
'I honestly should have prepared for this ...'
"Well, humanity is currently in the Information Age. Before that we were in the Space Age. Which is far more interesting in my opinion. It was characterized by rapid development of new technology in a close race mostly between the United States and the Soviet Union, which were the two leading powers that initiated it. Rapid advances were made in rocketry, materials science, computer technology, and many other areas of study. Much of the technology originally developed for space applications has spun off and found other uses, such as portable computers, weapons, and even everyday household items." I replied as I carefully picked the right words. I didn't want to be seen as an idiot in front of probably the most valuable horses of Horseland.
I swear, if Twilight wrote any faster she'd set the damn notebook on fire, and what I said caught the attention of the others, especially Luna for some reason.
"Okay, next question... Um, you, Celestia." I said as I turned my attention towards her.
She looked at me, apparently still curious about what I had just told Twilight. "I think I speak for everyone here when I say that I would like you to continue telling us about this ... 'Space Age.'" She said as she stared at me with a perfect poker face.
'Ah, fuck. Thank God I paid attention during class, or I would be in some deep shit right now…’
"Er... Well, the Space Age reached its peak when the United States of America created the Apollo Program, which was a mission that was supposed to land the first humans on the moon. The landing of Apollo eleven was watched by over five hundred million people around the world when it finally touched down on the moon and is widely recognized as one of the most defining moments of the twentieth century. Since then, public attention has largely moved to other areas, such as other planets within our solar system, mainly Mars."
"And what is this… Mars?"
This went on for the better part of an hour, the one question rule being completely forgotten by the ten-minute mark as I was bombarded by questions. To put in perspective, I was a German city during 1944, and Twilight was a fleet of B-17s. During this time though, neither Luna nor Applejack said anything. I was about to see if I could get one of them to ask something, but it seemed Luna was one step ahead of me because as soon as I opened my mouth, she decided to snipe me with a question.
"Can thou tell us more about this... Apollo Program?"
We spent, I'd say, around half an hour talking about all sorts of things. Most of the time it was about the space race, all that stuff. Luna seemed to be interested in all of it, but hey, I don't blame her; history can be fascinating if you don't have someone trying to shove it down your throat for most of your teenage years. Then they just fuck up your whole summer because they didn't fucking like you, and then-
...
Er, anyways, after a few more minutes of Twilight asking me questions and the rest just adding their questions related to the answer I had just given Twilight they finally decided to talk about what to do with me.
And of course, they had to go into the kitchen and leave me out of it.
Rude.
'It would have been nice to have a say in this...' I thought to myself, slightly irritated as I laid back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. It would have been nice to at least get a say in all this, but I guess it's only fair that I don't. After all, I'm the one in a body identical to their nation's leaders.
As I stared at the ceiling it gave me time to think; think about all that's been happening and what would happen if they couldn't send me back… Hell, I already missed Carl! The crazy son of a bitch always had something to say to cheer everyone up when we were feeling down.
But now that he wasn’t here, and I was all alone I started to think deeply about all that's been happening. Pushing the humor has kept me from having more than a few mental breakdowns.
"What if I can't go back... What if I'm stuck here forever?" Emotions that I've been trying to keep hidden started spilling out, filling my mind with things I usually tried to use humor to keep at bay.
Trying to add humor to everything was always how I dealt with these kinds of things. Whether it was a loss of a loved one or some sad story that hit way too close for comfort, popping out jokes was usually my go-to method.
Not very healthy, I know.
But that's not the point right now. I'm all alone here; all alone with nothing but my shitty humor and my Bear Grylls skills behind me. I'll probably fail and end up working at some fast food joint, but I sure as hell won't go down without a fight.
Before I could continue my little internal monolog, I was interrupted by the kitchen door swinging open. Not like when you throw a door open out of anger, but more like 'it was already open, and you just pushed it open completely.'
The two princesses, Twilight, and Applejack all stepped through the door and took the positions they were in before they went to the kitchen. I don't know why they decided to drag Applejack along with them, but I guess they have their reasons.
Celestia looked at me after taking a glance at both Twilight and Luna, almost as if they could communicate by just looking at each other. More so Celestia and Luna than Twilight, but I’m assuming she'll get there someday.
"We've decided to let you stay at the Canterlot Castle, where you will remain until we can find a way to either send you back to your world or disguise you as not to cause panic. I'm not sure if you're aware, but my little ponies tend to be skittish." She said as she looked over at Twilight and giggled slightly, causing her to look away with an embarrassed blush.
It made sense. I didn't know much about pony behavior, but, hey, I'll probably have a lot of time to learn anyway.
"I guess it makes sense, but what about the staff that works in the castle? They'll obviously figure it out pretty quickly." I said as I looked at her with my head slightly tilted to the side.
This time it was Luna who spoke first. "The castle staff shall be briefed on the situation; we have no doubt that they will be thoroughly professional and not say a word to anypony outside of the castle." She said proudly. She didn't go into her old English speech again, which was weird, just a few minutes ago she was talking like we were in the medieval times! I'll have to ask about that later.
"Well, alright then... When will we be leaving?" I already knew the answer, but I had a habit of asking about things that I already knew the answer to; don't judge.
"We'll be leaving right now. The sooner we start trying to send you back the faster you'll be able to return to your world." Celestia replied as she turned to look back at me again.
"Sounds great! I don't have anything to pack, so I guess I'm all set." I stood up from the couch as Celestia and Luna said their goodbyes to Applejack and Twilight.
I walked over to Twilight after she was done speaking with the princesses and looked down at her with a smile.
"Stay frosty, Purple." I then turned around to face Applejack. "See you around, Orange." I didn't give them time to give me a proper response because I was already halfway out the door, the princesses already waiting in the chariot outside.
I waved back at the two smaller ponies one last time before getting in the chariot, which was no easy feat, mind you. I caught myself from falling numerous times thanks to my large wings. I can already tell I'll miss them if I ever turn back into a human.
And back into a dude, more importantly.
I hadn't bothered to even think about the sudden sex change; I just assumed my little Jimmy was there, safe and sound. But I couldn't fool myself much longer, and if anyone knew me, they’d know that I'm a very adventurous man.
Dirty thoughts aside, I managed to get into the chariot after a considerable amount of effort, which both princesses took note of, both shaking their heads and chuckling.
Evil beings, they are.
The guards started to gallop forward and flap their wings, and suddenly we were gaining altitude. Despite them having to carry us and this chariot, they flew like it was almost nothing. It had to involve some spell. Otherwise, I might be staring at two little Pony Chuck Norrises in training.
After a few minutes, we were at a high enough altitude to see clouds pass by. It was an unusually bright day, giving me a full view of the rolling plains below and they were beautiful. Although it did look a bit cartoony, from far away, it almost seemed like a painting that could give Bob Ross himself a run for his money.
Okay, maybe I was over exaggerating a little. It didn't look like a Bob Ross painting, but it still looked stunning, like one of those things that look breathtaking from far away, but once you get close, it looks a lot less impressive.
It seemed like we were going to be flying for a while though, maybe an hour, so I better get comfortable. Which was kind of easy to do, this being a royalty chariot and all.
I looked to the side and saw Celestia looking down at the landscape like I was doing, probably bored like I was. And Luna was... staring at me; I almost jumped in my seat when I finally noticed.
"Er, nice weather we're having, huh?" God fucking... Social interaction simulator 2016 over here.
"Indeed... Say, what did you do before... all ‘this’ happened?" She replied as she looked me in the eyes. Getting straight to it, huh Princess?
"Well, I worked at an office and lived with my roommate and best friend, Carl. I had a pretty normal life, moved out from my parent's house when I was twenty. I originally planned to join the military, but due to some medical complications, I couldn't get in at the time. So I just went to university, got my degree, and got an office job." I said as I leaned back in the seat. I did consider my life to be pretty standard as of a few days ago. I guess I'm just a... average Joe!
...
Okay, remind me to never tell inside jokes that me and Carl made up; I doubt anyone would understand them anyway.
Apparently, Luna decided that this was an excellent opportunity to bombard me with even more questions. Things like 'favorite food' or 'favorite hobby' were thrown around a lot. It was kind of creepy how she was asking those types of questions, but I can't blame her. I would probably ask myself stupid shit if I found another version of me.
This went of for what seemed like forever, but it seemed like she finally needed a break, And by God, so did I. She was talking so much I considered throwing myself out of the damn chariot.
Luckily, Celestia didn't butt in, so I had some time to take a breather. I leaned back in my seat and let out a sigh.
After half an hour of boredom and some awkward silence, I finally started to see the city. And hot damn, was it big.
I wasn’t going to let the distance fool me; this was one big city. And the fact that it was suspended on the side of a mountain made it even harder to believe that it was that big, but one thing stood out more than the rest.
The Castle.
It wasn't as tall as some of those golden towers, but that wasn’t the point. The castle was huge! I thought it was going to be one of those castles that looked small from the outside and on the inside was just an endless maze of hallways, but that's not the case here; the castle looked really big from far away too. Unfortunately, I didn't get to observe it for much longer, as the chariot started to descend, seeming to aim for what appeared to be a large garden.
It was filled with all these weird statues too, everything from what looked like a griffon, to a strange chimera thing with different animal parts. It would have probably looked a little scarier if it didn't have the cartoonish features this world seems too saturated with.
We landed right in front of a large set of doors, causing both Luna and Celestia to step out of the chariot and leaving me to try and get out without falling, which was a lot easier said than done.
I got out about fifteen seconds after them and took a few steps back as the chariot took off in some random direction, probably to wherever they store the things.
I followed them inside and looked around for a bit while they walked. I had got a pretty good image on how the castle looked like inside by just glancing at the outside, but it still caught me off guard. It was like I was back in the medieval ages!
I kept following them for a few more minutes, not paying much attention to where we were going. I was too busy looking at all the shiny things, like a tourist that has never left their hometown.
They led me to a room which I assumed to be a bedroom of sorts; they told me to stay there until I was 'summoned.' I didn't know what they meant by that, but I brushed it off and entered 'my' room.
I closed the door behind me and immediately walked towards the bed. I didn't bother to look around the room at the time, mainly because I was dead ass tired and wanted to get some sleep.
I flopped down onto the bed and immediately started wiggling around like a dog, probably because the bed was the softest damn thing I have ever had the pleasure of lying on.
"Oh my fucking god, this bed has to be made of clouds or something!" I exclaimed as I hugged a pillow close. "These ponies know how to make bedding!"
I finally stopped after what seemed like hours, but in reality had probably only been around thirty seconds, before I finally started to settle down. I began to drift off to sleep as I wrapped myself in the blankets, leaving only my... tail dangling out of the bed sheets. God, I still find it weird to say that.
Although I could have sworn, I heard someone laughing in the back of my head as I fell asleep.
The distant sounds of battle echoed across the war-torn landscape. Buildings in ruins and craters littered the scene in front of me as I sheltered from the debris of a fallen enemy aircraft.
I looked around, searching for any enemies that may be lurking in the shadows and waiting to ambush me. I couldn't see much apart from the wisps of smoke snaking out of the ruins of a distant city.
I firmly grasped my gun in my hooves and started to walk slowly, constantly looking over my shoulder, paranoid that the people who did this were still around the corner.
The stench of death had filled the air long ago; the corpses of men, women, and children laid on the ground, motionless. Their cold, dead eyes still displayed the horror that they witnessed before their life was violently cut short.
As I carefully turned a corner I spotted one of them, one of the things that killed everyone. It stood easily seven feet tall with razor-like claws. It had an elongated head with several spikes protruding from it and completely black eyes. Its skin was a dull, ash-gray color and it was dressed in what I assumed to be the standard armor of the invaders. It had a weapon similar to mine, probably looted off of a corpse of a soldier.
I crouched down and took a deep breath, aiming the barrel of my gun at the disturbing being. I held my breath in as I slowly pulled the trigger back.
"Got you, you son of a-"
"David?"
Everything around me suddenly dissolved into white nothingness as I turned around to find the voice that called my name.
"Oh... Hey, Luna." I said as I watched her descend from the sky and land a few meters away from me with a concerned look on her face.
"Are you alright? You seemed to be having quite the nightmare." She looks around, no doubt talking about the ruin and destruction that was once there.
"Oh, no, I was aware. I was just bored and decided to fight illegal aliens. No big deal." I replied as I spawned a beach chair and changed the scenery to one of those beautiful tropical beaches.
"I figured out that I was dreaming the moment I fell asleep; I thought it was strange since I've never had that happen, so I decided to have some fun. This wasn't the first thing I did. The first thing was a party with all the Playboy Bunnies." I knew she wouldn't get that reference, but that's what I was hoping for.
"Playboy...?"
"Nevermind that. How did you get here anyway?"
"We are the Princess of the Night; we help all of our ponies with nightmares by dream walking." She said with a mixture of pride and what sounded like of sadness for some reason.
'Wait, if I'm her... Or another her... Doesn't that mean I can do everything she can? That means I could dream walk, right?' I thought to myself as I looked at her again.
"Could I do the same thing? I mean, I am you… Sort of." I asked her with barely-contained excitement. Not every day you turn into a horse that can invade people’s priva- Dreams! I mean dreams!
Well, We suppose you could... But it takes quite a lot of practice. It is not something that can be taught from one day to another." She replied as she seems to look down in thought. ‘Oh boy, maybe she'll show me!’
Before I could say anything else she interrupted me.
"We shall continue this conversation later. Thou need to wake up now." What's with her and the 'We' thing? Well, not that I can blame her. A thousand years is a long time. I probably would have forgotten how to speak entirety! I would probably have my own Wilson too...
"Why would I-" I didn't get to question why I had to wake up before I was suddenly pulled from my dream and into the waking world.
My eyes suddenly snapped open as I let out a quick gasp, clearly not being used to being woken up in that manner.
"Goddamn, I'm gonna have to tell her not to do that..." I said as shook my head and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing my eyes slightly.
"How long have I been asleep anyway…?" I stood up and walked over to the window. "Holy... It's already night time! I must have slept for a good nine hours... Better than what I get most of the time." I turned away from the window and admired the room that was assigned to me, and trust me when I said that it gave five-star hotels a run for their money.
It had a large bed in the far left corner, many large, curtained windows, and even its own fancy fireplace! The floor was also covered in what looked and felt like an amazingly plush carpet, almost as soft as the blankets!
I admired the room itself for a little bit longer, taking in the fact that I was actually in a castle, a castle that's being used and had color! Most medieval castles back on Earth were all a dull gray and were only tourists attractions at this point. But this was on a whole new level!
I stopped admiring the main room and went to check out the bathroom, and let me tell you it was one of the cleanest bathrooms I've ever been in. It had a mini jacuzzi and everything! Honestly, eating off the floor here didn't sound like too bad of an idea.
I didn't get much more time to look around the bathroom before I suddenly heard the door open. My horse ears were swiveling around to face the direction the sound came from, but I happened to be looking in the mirror when it happened. I almost d'awwd at the sight; I looked cute as all well when I did that, ain't going to deny it.
I pried my attention away from the mirror and exited the bathroom. I glanced around the room one last time before turning my attention to the bedroom door.
There was what I assumed to be a guard there, same pure white color with gilded armor as the rest of them. He was also a unicorn judging by the horn on his head too.
"The Princesses have requested your presence at the throne room, Pr-... Ma'am. I have been tasked with escorting you there." It looked like he had already been told of who I was, thankfully. It avoided a lot of awkwardness.
"Well, Mister..."
"Private Armored Shell, Ma'am"
"Alright, Shell, lead the way." I walked past the door and followed him out, closing it behind me as he lead me through the hallways and to the throne room.
Have I already said this place was massive? It sure felt like it. I swear we turned, like, five hundred corners before we finally arrived at the large throne room door, and when I said large I meant really large. It could fit three trucks stacked on top of each other and then some.
"Right this way, Ma'am." Armored Shell said as he pushed the door open and gestured for me to go inside.
"Hey, Shell, this door is pretty big. You know what else is big?" I still hate myself for making this joke...
You know, it sucked being the only one that gets the shitty references that I was making. The usual "Go fuck yourself" I got from people when I made those kinds of jokes had been replaced with a look of confusion and a single disappointing-
"Huh?"
I rolled my eyes and looked back at the set of large doors in front of us, waving the guard off.
"It's just an inside joke; don't worry about understanding what it means."
"If you say so... Ma'am." The guard shook his head slightly and trotted away, probably returning to his previous post.
"Heh... I love confusing people." I quietly chuckled to myself as I walked towards the doors, pushing them open and slipping into the room without making too much noise.
"The doors around here are awfully quiet... Any doors of this size back on Earth would squeak and groan like hell if anyone opened them." I thought to myself for a few more seconds as I faced the door and looked it up and down, briefly forgetting the reason I was there.
I shook my head slightly and turned away from the massive set of doors, quickly surveying the area. The two princesses were sitting on a large-ass golden throne with Celestia in the middle and Luna off to the side on another mini-platform that extended from the main structure. Below the two smaller platforms were two water fountains with some flowers placed on the floor in front of them. All in all, it looked pretty damn cool, certainly better than most Thrones I've seen. Not that I’ve seen a lot of thrones, but still...
I started to walk forward, looking at and admiring the stained glass windows as I moved. They all had tons of paintings of what I would assume to be artistic representations of various things. That, the marble floor polished to an almost a perfect mirror, and the red carpet leading to the throne made the whole thing very distracting. Not in a bad way, mind you.
I finally managed to pry my eyes away from all the shiny stuff and pay attention to the princesses once I arrived at the front of the throne room.
Celestia was the first to speak up with a reassuring nod. "Welcome to the throne room... David."
I gave her a small bow, well, I tried to and looked up at her. "This place is certainly... colorful. I'm surprised my eyes don't hurt."
"And not to sound rude, but... What's the reason I was 'summoned' here?" I asked nervously. Seeing them both looking down at me made me feel uncomfortable for some odd reason. I didn't know if I was intimidated or just plain nervous. Maybe the way they looked down on me from a higher position just made me feel small or something.
'Ha, being intimidated by two cute little horses. That'll be the day.' I jokingly thought to myself.
"Straight to the point, I see. Well, my student, Twilight Sparkle, just sent us another letter. It has to do with another pony who came into her library. She didn't go into detail, but it was important enough for her to send us another letter. She also said the pony knew you when she asked them about you. I assume that this pony must be another human, like you." Celestia replied as she looked at Luna, letting her speak.
"We would like you to head down to Ponyville again and talk to this pony. We would go ourselves, but we have an important meeting with diplomats from another nation in half an hour. Thus we are unable to visit Twilight's library for the time being. A chariot is already prepared to take you there. If this turns out to be another human, we suggest that you bring them with you to the castle." Luna finished as she gave me a friendly smile, too friendly if you ask me.
"Er... Alright, which way to the chariot then?"
"A guard will escort you there; he’s waiting for you outside the throne room, and you will see him there."
I nodded and gave her another awkward bow before turning around and heading back towards the giant set of doors.
All of this is so sudden... A few days ago I was doing my usual stuff and them ‘BAM! Transported to some other dimension or something…’ Whoever this pony, or person, or... whatever is, I hope they have some answers to how the fuck I ended up in this situation.
I pushed the doors open again and slipped back out. I looked around for a bit and tried to find the guard that was supposed to escort me to the chariot. Sure enough, I found him waiting patiently for me to the side of the door. He seemed to have noticed me before I noticed him. He was already looking right at me.
"You're my escort, right?"
"Yes, Ma'am, follow me." The guard replied with a slight nod as he began walking down a small corridor to the left of us; I waited a few moments before following him down said corridor to our destination.
We spent a few minutes walking down the long hallways and corridors. We passed by a few maids, both inside rooms and outside. Some briefly turned to look at me, but whenever I looked back, they turned their gaze away from me and back to whatever they were doing previously. It made me wonder if all the staff inside this castle had been informed of who I was or just the guards. I hoped it had been all since it would have avoided both confusion and awkward situations. But I could see the potential security risks and why the princesses didn't want the populace to know.
We arrived at the same gardens that me and the princesses had landed in when I had first gotten here. I swore we had taken an entirely different route... I guess I had been too busy admiring all the shiny stuff and beautiful windows to notice where we were going.
The guard didn't seem to notice that I had stopped walking and was already five meters ahead of me, so I shook my head and hastily closed the gap in-between us, hoping no one else in the gardens noticed.
"I need to stop spacing out like that in random areas... Heh, I should start making a list of what I need to stop doing.'
I smiled at my crazy inner thoughts as we passed by the same statues I saw when I first got here. Seeing them again didn't make them any less ugly though, which was unfortunate. I glanced around one last time as we neared the chariot that was going to take me back to Ponyville. Most of the ponies that were currently around were busy taking care of the garden itself with the occasional guards here and there. The only thing that looked out of place was a bunch of even smaller ponies following a purplish one. I brushed it off as some excursion from a local school.
Before I could continue observing the garden, the guard suddenly stopped and stepped aside, using his hoof to motion towards the chariot in a sort of bowing manner.
"Here we are, ma'am." I looked at him and nodded as I carefully stepped forward and climbed into the chariot, making sure I didn't make a fool of myself like I did the last time.
The guard tapped the side of the chariot once I was inside and secure, allowing him to take a few steps back and causing it to jerk forward and take off.
I looked back at the garden one last time as it began to get smaller and smaller behind me as we started heading back towards the town.
"I wonder who got sucked into this mess this time..."
We spent a good thirty minutes flying towards the horse town. I didn’t have much to do during that time, but the view from that height was fantastic, just like the last time I was in one of those flying deathtraps. A flying wet noodle would be safer than this thing for Christ’s sake!
Not that these ponies listen to my criticism of their poorly designed vehicles, I’ve tried to tell the two guards flying this thing that we would be better off taking the damn train, which I saw on the way down the mountain might I add. But they either shrugged or repeated themselves over and over again about how it’s safer than taking the train. I eventually stopped annoying them about it and kept quiet for the most part, Apart from the occasional comment on something off in the distance.
You would figure that being an exact copy of one of their leaders would get them at least act interested, but apparently, that isn't the case with these two. Unfortunate really, I wanted to fuck with them a bit more, but that idea got thrown out the window pretty quickly.
"I wish I had some aspirin right now.." I muttered to myself as I rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache coming on from all the bullshit that I've had to deal with during the past few days.
After a few minutes of me trying to calm my headache down, I sighed and just leaned into my right hoof, letting it support my head as I looked out from the side of the 'chariot' down to the ground below. We were already nearing Ponyville thankfully, judging by the increased activity on the roads that probably led in and out of the small town. I could see numerous large carts filled with goods, and even more ponies walking along side them, trade caravans maybe? Not gonna lie, that sounded like my cup of tea.
Ugh, speaking about cups and teas, I hadn't taken my daily dose of coffee. Normally I would get really asshole-y without any of my sweet black liquid for that long, but I honestly don't feel any of that at the moment now, Though I'm willing to bet that it's my sexy new body. The more I get to know it, the better it seems compared to my old human one.
And yes, I technically just called myself sexy, but I would look hot in any body, human or alien.
..
Listen, I've never had a girlfriend okay? Lay off.
Ahem, moving on...
The chariot started descending at a more rapid pace as we neared our destination, out of pure reflex I quickly gripped the side and the seat of the chariot with my hooves and tensed up slightly, thankfully I caught myself before I went a step further and looked around carefully, slowly removing my hooves from their previous locations.
"Good, nobody saw that..."
Unfortunately for me, just as I relaxed from my previous little incident, the chariot touched down rather hard in front of Twilight's library, which caused me to jump in my seat and let out a couple of curse words as the chariot slid to a stop right in front of the door. I shook my head and sighed as I carefully got out of the chariot and took a few steps back.
"Hey! Are you two going to wait here or what?" I called out to the guards up front, to which they both only looked at each other for a second, and nodded at me before turning their heads back forward and resuming their statue-like pose, standing completely still.
"Okay, I'll take that as a yes.." I murmured as I made my way around the chariot and towards the entrance of the library.
I started hearing voices coming from inside as I got nearer, although I could not tell what was actually being said, I could identify three of the voices belonging to Twilight, one that sounded strangely like Celestia, and Spike. Now the former and the latter didn't really come as a surprise, but the one that sounded like Celestia sure as hell did.
"Oh great, did someone get wrapped up in this shitstorm too?" I groaned as I stood in front of the door and leaned forward, pressing my ear against it in hopes of being able to understand what they're saying.
"So y..u are fr.."
"Ye..h, ho.. d.."
"Fuck, I still can't hear them.."I cursed under my breath and took a few steps away from the door. I really wanted to see what was happening in there, but alas, I was hesitant to go in. You ever had that feeling of anxiety when you need to confront someone? That was basically what I was feeling at that point. And let me tell you, it sucks major dicks.
"Fuck it, time to man up. Or is it mare up..? Gah, fuck that too." I grumbled as I raised my hoof and knocked on the door.
Almost immediately, the sounds coming from inside stopped for a few seconds. Just as I was about to knock again, I heard the voice of Twilight call out from inside.
"Who is it?" She called out with a raised voice, loud enough for me to hear her.
"Er... It's me, Twilight. You sent a message to Celestia about someone else coming to your library or something?"
"Oh, David. Come in!" She replied as the door was suddenly enveloped in a purple aura and swung open. I carefully took a few steps inside and looked towards the center, and boy let me tell you, I wasn't expecting what I saw next.
Twilight was sitting in a chair opposite to the couch, and Spike was sitting on the stairs reading a magazine of some sort. But that wasn't what surprised me. What did surprise me was fucking Celestia laying on the couch. It took me a full second to realise that it was most likely another person in the same situation as mine. And it took me two to notice that they were all staring at me now.
"God, this is just like the first time I came into a room and became the center of attention..." I thought to myself as I forced a smile. blatantly so might I add.
Before anyone else could say anything, 'Celestia' suddenly sat up and looked at Twilight.
"Wait, did you just say David?" She asked Twilight, who was somewhat startled by her sudden outburst.
"Uh... Yeah, why?" She nervously responded as she looked at her and me.
'Celestia' nods and turns her attention to me and narrows her eyes, making me even more uncomfortable.
"Cheers, big fella." She said in a stern voice, making me raise an eyebrow for a quick second before the realization dawned on me, causing my eyes to go wide.
"No way..." I thought to myself, that was our passcode...
"You're a champion, Sonny," I replied, somewhat doubtful that this is him. Not sure why considering the amount of crazy shit that has been happening these past few days.
Before I could react, she suddenly ran up to be and gave me the biggest bear hug I've ever experienced. I'm surprised my ribs didn't break.
"It IS you! Holy shit David, what the fuck happened?!"
"Carl? Jesus Christ... Let me go! I can't breathe!" I squealed as I struggled to get free.
She let go of me and fell back down on all fours, which caused me to fall back and land on my ass.
"Oh, sorry.. heh." She sheepishly apologized as rubbed the back of her neck.
I greedily sucked all the air my lungs could hold for a few seconds as I sat there, hoof at my chest. "Fuck. A little more and you probably break me in half." I breathed out as I slowly stood up, still slightly out of air.
"How the hell did you end up here?" He... she asked as she glanced back at Twilight, who was still sitting there with her somewhat adorable confused expression.
"Honestly, I could ask you the same thing. All I remember was me getting into a car crash and waking up like this... Plus me trying to get back to our apartment, but that's a whole nother story." I explained to her as I leaned slightly to the left and gazed around the room for a quick second.
"What about you?" I asked her as I looked back to her.
"Well, I don't exactly remember very much after it all happened... But from what I can scrape together I think it involved a car crash... I remember the sounds of sirens and... Gunfire?" She replied as she brought a hoof up to her chin and tapped it as if she was in deep thought.
"That... Damn, and I thought my thing was bad, yours sounded like you were in some crime show."
"I'm not quite sure... It's like I remember this happening, yet it felt more like a dream than anything else." She remarked and stepped back, allowing me access to the room.
"But anyways, come in! We were in the middle of sharing stories about rainbows and sunshine!"
"We were?" Spike's voice echoed throughout the room as he looked up from his magazine, his face turning into one of confusion, much like Twilight's.
'Celestia,' Or should I say, Carl? Ah, fuck it. Carl simply puts one of 'her' hooves up to her mouth. "Shhh, he doesn't know that.."
"I'm right here, you know."
"And I said 'he,' And you're not a 'he,' now are you?"
"Fuck you."
She suppressed a chuckle and patted the top of my head, which given her considerable size compared to me, was like patting a dog on the head. "She won't be letting this height thing go.. Even if she hasn't mentioned it yet, I bet my fucking ass It will come up within the next few days." I grimly thought to myself as I swatted her hoof away and glared at her, which only caused her to smirk. Evil bastard.
"Come on, stop acting like a baby and socialize for once."
"But I... Ugh, fuck you."
"I love you too."
I just responded with another glare, which she brushed off and turned around, walking back towards the couch she was previously at. I followed suit, sitting right next to her, but leaving some empty space between us, just in case she tries anything it will at least give me some room to react.
Our attention was brought back to Twilight as she cleared her throat and looked at both of us, an awkward smile on her face.
"So... Uh, what were saying?" She asked as she turned her attention to Carl.
"Oh, yeah... What was I saying again?"
"I always knew you had Alzheimer's," I said as I leaned back and smirked as she snarled at me. Not surprising considering how we were horses as of a few days ago.
"Shut it, you and I both know how many times you forgot to feed the fish, and they died because of you." She added.
"What?! Those were your fish! not my fucking fish! You were the one who had to feed the things, not me!" I argued.
"You could have at least reminded me!"
I opened my mouth to refute Carl's bullshit, but before I could get a word out I heard Twilight cleared her throat once again, gaining our attention.
"If I recall correctly, you were talking about something along the lines of how you stumbled onto my library?" She asked as she picked up a notepad and a quill that were on the armrest of the wooden chair.
"Ah, right. Well, As I said previously, I kind of suddenly appeared in the middle of the town during the night and found this place after like, an hour of me walking around." Carl explained as she turned her attention to Twilight, either forgetting or deciding to ignore our little argument for now.
"You arrived in the middle of the town? Lucky you. I got dumped in the midst of a fuck-this-shit forest with no sense of direction." I grumbled.
"That brings up a question. What exactly brought us here? Seeing as what happened to us before arriving here match up with one another, maybe there's a reason as to why we both got teleported through dimensions instead of coincidence. Not to mention the fact that we are... Exact copies of the leaders of this place?" I theorized as my eyes shifted between Carl and Twilight, the latter which had been writing different things down before I had even begun talking.
"Wait, did you just say we're copies of some leaders?" Carl asked as she looked at me with slight confusion.
"Yeah, Princesses," I responded.
"Holy shit, are you saying that we're Princesses?"
"No, just copies of the original ones."
"Pfft, so? When you print out a copy of a newspaper, it's still done, and has the same things."
"Carl, how special are you?" I hissed at her.
"Special enough to fuck with you." She replied with a smirk.
I glared at her for a couple of seconds before turning my attention back to Twilight, not bothering to reply to Carl anymore.
"Twilight, what exactly have you been writing this entire time?" I asked her, slightly intrigued.
"Just taking notes on the whole situation. Although your theory did sound plausible enough, it must take a being of immense power to not only bring you through a different dimension but to also but you into the bodies of some of the most powerful magical beings in Equestria! The only thing I could think that would come close are the Elements of Harmony, but I'm positive they weren't the cause.." She mused as she set her notepad down and looked at me, the quill now floating next to her head.
"Do these 'Elements of Harmony' have some counterpart? Maybe someone or something used them to bring us here." Carl added.
"Not that I know of. Although unlikely, I guess we shouldn't rule it out, there is still a lot of unknown things out there." Twilight responded as she moved to get up, but before she could, Spike's voice reached our ears.
"Uh, Twilight? Was it supposed to rain today?" Spike called out as he looked out a window positioned near the stairs, right next to him.
Twilight raised her eyebrow slightly and looked towards the general direction of Spike.
"Not that I'm aware of. Why?" She asked as she walked towards one of the larger windows to the right of the door.
"Because it's raining, and the rain is.. brown? Like chocolate!" Spike exclaimed as he pointed out the window, towards the outside.
I tilted my head slightly to the side and looked at Carl, who merely shrugged.
I shook my head and got up, making my way around the couch and walked over to Twilight, who was looking out the window with another one of her adorable confused expressions. I followed her gaze to the outside and found out the reason for her confusion.
Now, I shouldn't have been surprised really. Chocolate rain did seem a little less intense than the shit I've gone through this week. But it gave off an odd.. feeling if you can even call it that. A feeling of discomfort, if you will.
"No, it doesn't... It even wasn't supposed to rain until tomorrow!" Twilight exclaimed as she turned around and trotted over to one of her many bookshelves. Her horn started glowing as a large book gently levitated down in front of her face and opened itself. I could see her reading something for a couple of seconds before she suddenly slammed the book closed.
"But don't worry, I have a quick spell that'll solve this problem right up, come on Spike!" She teleported to the door and motioned for Spike to follow her, a command which he grumpily accomplished as he set his comic down on the stairs and jogged over to Twilight.
"You two stay here, I'll be back in no time!" She yelled to us and closed the door once Spike was outside. I stood there until I could no longer hear the sound of her hooves hitting the dirt road as she and her little sidekick went off to do god knows what with that book.
"The hell was that about?" I asked as I turn around to look at Carl, which had gotten a bit more comfortable on the couch once I left.
"Your guess is as good as mine. " She replied as she put her forelegs behind her head and leaned back.
"Shouldn't we try to help them out or something?" I said as I made my way over to the chair Twilight was sitting on. Although a tad small, It managed to hold my fat ass up pretty well as I sat on it.
"We may have magic, or whatever. But we don't know how to use it, now do we? Unless you spent all your time here farming up some XP and leveling up your magika." She smirked and closed her eyes.
"Your Skyrim references aren't very appreciated right now." I shot her a glare, even if she couldn't see it.
"Alright, alright. Let me rephrase it; Unless you spent your entire time learning how to do magic decently, I don't think we'll be of much help."
I opened my mouth to retaliate but closed it soon after. Knowing she was probably right.
"Well, why don't we make ourselves useful and use some of these books to learn more about magic? It beats doing nothing." I mused as my gaze drifted over to the extensive collection of books about magic in Twilight's possession. Now that I think about it, that Pony has a weird obsession with magic, I know it's a library and all, but I swear I've seen her read the same book like, three times over!
"What about those guards that were outside? I saw them on your way in." She asked as she opened her eyes and sat up straight, now looking towards the door.
I simply shrugged and got up, making my way towards the magic section of the library. "When I looked out the window, they weren't there. I assumed they left after I was dropped off."
She looked like she was about to question it further, but seemed to give up with a shrug of her own.
"Hey, come over here and read this, maybe you'll get some knowledge into that empty cavern you call your head." I chuckled slightly at my joke and grabbed one of the books about basic magic spells and handed it to Carl, who had finally decided to get off her lazy ass and do something for a change. She rolled her eyes at me and snatched the book out of my hooves before going back to the couch and getting herself comfortable once.
"Give me one hour, and I guarantee that I'll be doing some expert level shit without even breaking a sweat!" She sounded pretty sure of herself, but in reality, I would be surprised if she read the first few pages of the book and paid attention to it.
"Right, when pigs fly." I dismissed her statement and grabbed another magic book, this one a little bit more advanced than the one Carl had. If the titles are anything to go by.
'Magic for fillies/colts.' Yeah, it made me feel a lot better about myself, didn't it?
If Carl did retaliate with a snarky comment of her own, I certainly didn't hear it. Since as soon as I had gotten the book, I walked upstairs and went directly into Twilight's room. I was sure she wouldn't mind if I just laid on her bed until she came back. Now you may be thinking to yourself that it's rude to use someone else's bed without their actual permission. But from the little time I've known that small purple pony, I doubt she would mind in the first place.
I laid back on the bed and sighed, enjoying the soft bed sheets for a couple of seconds before turning my attention back to the book. I cracked it open and started reading the first page."This doesn't seem that hard to understand. Then again it's meant for kids, not fully grown adults. I'll have this magic thing down in no time!" I thought to myself as a large boost of self-confidence flowed through me. I was fucking ready for that book, and it knew it. Even though I could not feel it physically, I knew the book was trembling metaphorically in its boots. In fear of my great knowledge and understanding!
Alright, It turned out this wasn't so easy after all.
After the first few pages, it started to get a lot more complicated. Even going as far as using words I've never heard before! And I bet they existed on Earth as well, but I was too much of an ignorant fuck ever to use most "intelligent" words. The ones that make you sound smart but in reality, you're probably dumb as a rock? Yeah, those.
At least Carl should be faring better, the book I gave her was just about basic levitation and other minor things. I'm sure Twilight would have done the same.
"Speaking of Twilight, it's been like 20 minutes already. Where is she?" I muttered to myself as I got up and went over to the balcony to see if I could spot Twilight.
Instead, what I saw made me question the laws of physics even further.
"Jesus Christ, what the fuck happened?"
I expected to come up to the balcony and see just an ordinary everyday town, you know? But instead what I got was a scene that looked like a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle was glued together in haste and sprinkled with pieces from other puzzles to make the ultimate clusterfuck.
Most buildings were upside down, the hills behind the buildings looked like checkerboards, the roads looked like they were made of soap if the bubbles on the side were any indication. And everything else was either an assortment of the same things mentioned combined or something entirely different.
Did I mention that there were dancing buffaloes and stampedes of bunnies with incredibly long legs?
"Uh, Carl?" I called out as I took a few steps away from the balcony.
"Yeah?" I heard Carl say from downstairs.
"Look out a window, will you?"
"What? Why?"
"Just do it. I'll be down in a second." I glanced back to the outside for a few more seconds before walking out of Twilight's room and made my way down the stairs.
I lowered my head a bit to get a quicker glimpse of the library as I carefully walked down the stairs, trying to spot Carl and see if he had listened to me for once. And sure enough, she was standing in front of the window with an utterly confused expression.
Once I reached the bottom of the stairs using my expert walking skills, I quickly made my way towards the same window Carl was looking out of and stood next to her.
"Did you even bother to pay attention to the outside once Twilight left?" I said to Carl, my gaze still fixed on the scene in front of us.
"Uh... Not really, I was busy reading the book... And I figured it was probably some random thing that would come and pass in like, ten minutes or so." She replied as she took a few steps back before turning around and heading back towards the couch.
"Shouldn't we be... You know, a bit concerned?" I added as I watched her go back go the couch and sit back down.
"Eh, A little. But I wouldn't worry about it too much. Sides, what's the worst that can happen?" She assured me and picked up the book she was previously reading.
"Do you love always jinxing us?" I glared at her as I turned my body to face her.
"Jinxing isn't real; it's just a stupid made up thing fueled by coincidences. All we have to do is wait for Twilight to come back and explain what's going on. And then, if it's something serious, we panic." She casually opened the book back up and began reading where she previously left off.
I sighed and walked back towards the stairs, stopping at the base to look back at Carl.
"When Twilight arrives, call me. I seriously want to know what the hell is going on out there." Carl replies with a dismissive wave of her hoof. Taking that as an acknowledgment, I made my way back up the stairs and entered Twilight's room. I closed the door behind me and went over to the balcony. I stood there for a few seconds as I looked out at the ridiculous show unfolding right outside of the library.
"This is not how I expected to spend my weekend.."
I sighed and flopped down on the bed behind me. With nothing else to do other than continuing to read the book that was beside me on the bed, I simply decided to wait until Twilight finally returned.
After another half hour passed by, I was getting quite impatient, to say the least. Especially since things had only gotten worse out there. The buildings, along with their foundations and even large chunks of dirt underneath them were now floating in the sky, with the sun and the moon rising and lowering themselves every few seconds, and even the animals have gotten crazier! They were taking completely different shapes and sizes that referenced shows and movies back from Earth. I could have sworn I even saw a giant Gorilla dragging around a little foal.
All of this made one thing very clear.
I needed to find Twilight.
Now.
Whatever 'spell' she went off to cast likely didn't work, had only made it worse, or had completely backfired and injured her in some way. And since she was the only pony I knew, apart from the Princesses, that used advanced magic, she was likely the only way or knew the only way to fix this mess.
With my mind made up, I quickly turned tail and headed towards the door with only one goal in mind; Find Twilight, fix bullshit, go back to the castle and sleep until next week in those comfy ass beds they have.
If only it had been as easy as that.
Once I had reached the door, I swiftly opened and made my way down the flight of stairs, a little bit slower as to not fall.
"Carl, you still there?" I called out as I reached the bottom of the stairs and looked towards where Carl was last time I had seen her.
"I'm over here in the kitchen!" She replied from another room, presumably the kitchen.
"What? You better not be making something!" I said as I looked around for the door to the kitchen, spotting it shortly after near one of the bookshelves underneath the stairs.
'What a weird place for a kitchen' I thought to myself as I stared at the oddly placed room for a few more seconds before shaking my head and went over to it. I opened it and was quickly met with Carl, holding a cooking book awkwardly with one hoof, and with a large wooden spoon on the other.
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could say anything, I was quickly interrupted by Carl.
"Before you say anything, I'll have you know that I haven't eaten in almost an entire day. I was going to order a Pizza when I got to our apartment, but then all of... This happened. Aren't you a tiny bit hungry?"
I slowly closed my mouth and let my stare wander upwards in thought, before returning to her.
"Well... No, actually. The last thing I ate was a sandwich at lunch back at work, but that was at least four hours after we called it a night. And it's been one day since that took place. So technically I should be hungry, but I'm not. Maybe it's because of these new bodies?"
"Probably, but I'm fucking starving here. So I decided to try and make myself something to eat." Carl said as she went back to reading the cooking book.
"Well, eat an apple or something. Because we're going to look for Twilight." I replied as I walked up to the counter and knocked the book out of her grasp and took the spoon, placing it back down on the counter itself.
"Hey!" Carl began, but I quickly cut her off by grabbing an apple from a nearby basket and presenting it to her.
"Eat it."
Carl scowled at me before staring down at the apple for a few short seconds. She slowly took the apple with one of her hooves and brought it up to her mouth, taking a bit bite of it as soon as it was within reach.
"Fine, but afterward you're making the food, not me." She said with a mouthful of apple.
"We both know I'm the better cook anyways." I retaliated with a smirk as Carl glared at me. I ignored the glare and turned around, heading out of the kitchen with Carl in tow.
"Okay, let's try not to get separated, all right? Hopefully, if the ponies see us they'll assume we're just another trick or thing made by whatever the hell is responsible for this." I said as I reached the front door, looking back at Carl who only replied with a half nod, still stuffing her mouth with another apple she had taken from the basket in the kitchen counter.
"Alright, let's go." I hesitated for a second as I looked down at the doorknob, not entirely sure if going outside was a good idea. But I decided that we had no other choice apart from sitting on our asses and waiting for Twilight to come back, if she ever came back. Thus I opened the door and took my first steps outside.
Seeing the chaos up close was a lot weirder than seeing it from the relative safety of the library. It looked Unsettling to me, as if there was a presence of every little bit of this fucked up town, watching our every move. Needless to say, I wasn't the only one experiencing this.
"This... Doesn't feel right, David. Maybe we should turn back." Carl nervously voiced out as we continued to walk through the checkerboard-style streets of Ponyville.
Turning back had begun to sound quite appealing at this point. With every step we took, the feeling of being watched continued to grow to the point that we both started to become paranoid.
"I guess... But what about Twilight? We waited for like, an hour and she still hadn't returned!" I said as I cautiously looked around in front of me.
"And what if she's dead, and whatever killed her is going to fucking murder us once it sees us?!" She practically shouted, which prompted me to stop and glare back at her.
"Dude, lower your fucking voice... I don't want anything that could be out here to hear us. And stop over reacting, she could have just been trapped or lost. Not dead." I told her as I kept my glare.
Carl sighed and shook her head.
"Look, I'm sorry for yelling. This strange feeling of being watched is getting to me... But I still think we should turn back, it's been twenty minutes, and we haven't seen a single soul out here. If we continue, we'll just end up getting lost ourselves."
"We have wings, don't we? If we get lost, we can just fly back." I replied.
"I have no idea on how to use these things though. And I'm not sure if flying would be a good idea, to be honest. I'd rather not risk it." She added.
I opened my mouth to counter her argument but soon realized that she was right. There was no telling where Twilight could be if she even were inside the town anymore.
"I... I guess you're right. Maybe we sho-"
Before I could continue, a large rainbow-colored blast swept across the sky, reverting everything back to its original status. The floating buildings fell, and the roads returned to their original composition. All within the span of a few seconds.
"-uld... Head back? What the hell?" I said, perplexed at the events that had just transpired.
"Huh, Everything looks... Normal again. And that feeling is gone as well. Do you think it was Twilight who fixed it?" Carl guessed as she looked around, observing the changing environment.
"Could be. Let's go back and find out what the hell just happened." I responded as we both turned back around the way we came.
"That was rather pointless, wasn't it?" Carl said as she walked beside me.
"Well, how could we have guessed that everything would be spontaneously fixed a little over twenty minutes after we left?" I countered.
Carl's response was to simply shrug and continue walking, leaving me alone with my own thoughts in the meantime.
She might have stopped getting the feeling of being watched, but I sure as hell didn't.
As it turned out, an 'evil spirit' had broken free of its prison and had proceeded to turn everything upside down and inside out, literally in some cases.
By the time we had arrived back at the library, a royal chariot had already arrived to pick us up. It looked like Twilight hadn't told the Princesses who Carl was because the guards seemed pretty surprised to see her.
After a few minutes, we had boarded the chariot and were on our way back to the castle. Another Chariot shortly arrived after we had departed and picked up a statue, neither of us could make out what it looked like from our distance to it.
"Hey, Carl," I spoke up as I pried my gaze from the town and looked up at her.
"Yeah?" She replied.
"I've been wondering... Shouldn't we start thinking of some names that fit us better? It feels weird calling you by your human name." I continued.
"Well, I don't know. Maybe? Thinking up of proper names isn't very easy." Carl said as she looked up, no doubt pondering my question.
"The Princesses seemed to have names that fit their appearance, and their cutie marks. Maybe we can do the same, like Solar Flare or something." I added as I peered out of the side window and out into the distance.
"It sounds cool, but I don't think it would fit. What about... Europa? Or something along those lines."
"Isn't Europa a moon?" I looked back at her.
"It's the best I got. Unless you want to start digging into other languages for space names." She shrugged.
"What about Celeste?"
"That's two letters different than Celestia." She shook her head.
"Since when do you know their names?" I asked with a slight tilt of my head.
"Did you think I spent almost an entire hour doing jack shit? I read a history book." She said and looked at me with a slightly hurt expression.
"Don't give me that look. You and I both know how lazy you are." I retorted.
"We're getting off track here. How about we focus on the names first of all?"
"I guess." I sighed in defeat.
"Good. Now, about that name you mentioned..."
We spent the majority of the ride to the Castle going back and forth on the name subject. Neither of us could agree on what names sounded good or bad. In the end, we decided to seek help from someone more knowledgeable on Equestrian names.
Carl looked down as we passed over the city, admiring the unique architectural style.
"Does everything look so medieval in this world?" She asked, not shifting her view from the city.
"From what I've seen, yes," I responded.
Carl didn't say anything else and continued to admire the city below us.
We touched down five minutes later in a specialized landing pad, which was odd to me. We had landed and taken off from the gardens the last time I rode one a chariot.
"Be careful on your way out, I almost fell the first time," I called out to Carl as I slowly got out of the chariot from my side.
"Pff, I got this." She waved my words of advice away and tried to hop down from the chariot to the ground.
She failed miserably.
I spent a good 2 minutes laughing my ass off at Carl while the guards attempted to help her up. In my defense, I did warn her. Did I not?
She glared at me as she wiped off bits of dirt from her coat.
"Hey, don't glare at me! I have every right to laugh after you ignored my warning." I retaliated against her accusatory glare.
She opened her mouth to counter my statement, but closed it soon after and kept her glare. Our little interaction was cut short, however, as a guard signaled us to come with him. We complied a few seconds later and began walking with them.
"Where are we going?" I asked one of the guards as I glanced towards him. He remained static as he continued to walk.
"The Princesses have requested your presence in the old war room" The guard replied.
"War room? Why are we needed there?" Carl questioned.
"I don't know. I just follow orders, ma'am."
I glanced over at Carl in worry, 'could they be planning to get rid of us or something?' I thought to myself. And it looked like she shared the same thoughts. Or something similar, if the look on her face said anything.
We continued to follow the guard for the next six minutes or so as he took us through the halls of the castle. We definitely wouldn't remember the way out at the rate which the guard was making twists and turns.
As we arrived at our destination, we saw a large stone-like door located at the end of a long hallway. The guard pushed the door open and gestured for us to come inside, which we hesitantly complied.
The door opened up to a flight of stairs, with numerous torches on the walls illuminating the way down.
"This doesn't seem creepy at all..." I muttered as I slowly began to descend with Carl in tow.
"No shit, this is straight out of a horror movie..." Carl whispered as she looked behind her for a second and saw the door close.
"It isn't that bad," I whispered back.
"Just shut up and keep going, if anything happens you'll be the first to die."
"Hey, fuck y-" I began as I turned my head around glared at her. Before I could continue though, Carl quickly put a hoof up to her mouth and shushed me.
Just as I was about to say something that wasn't exactly very nice, we both heard a knocking coming from somewhere in the bottom of the stairs, which caused us to freeze up for a few seconds.
"Just keep going, man..."
I sighed and shook my head as I resumed my walk down the stairs, with Carl close behind me.
Once we reached the bottom of the stairs, we were greeted by Princess Luna, and Princess Celestia, who were both gathered around a large, circular stone table. Which strangely had nothing on it.
The room itself didn't seem all that unusual, it had a circular design to it as well, with various decorations hung on the wall. Some looked like they had been there for quite a while.
"This is what passes as a war room in this place?" I thought to myself as I took a few steps to the left, which allowed Carl to walk up and stand beside me, looking equally confused as me.
The Princesses turned their attention towards me and seemed to be quite surprised when they saw Carl standing next to me. They recovered remarkably fast, their expressions changing from surprised to serious in a second.
"We... Did not expect the new arrival to look like our sister. What is thy name?" Luna spoke up first, directing her attention towards Carl at the end of her sentence. Celestia remained quiet, her magenta eyes scanning over the both of us.
"Uh... My name's Carl. I'm David's friend." Carl responded. A bit nervousness made its way into her voice as she spoke.
"Carl... Such odd names. But we suppose it makes sense, neither of thee are from this world. Nonetheless, come and join us. We have much to discuss." Luna motioned with her left wing for us to come and sit down in one of the several stone chairs that surrounded the table as they became seated.
We both hesitantly made our way towards said table and sat down on the opposite side, with the entrance to the room behind our backs, and them in front of us.
"Now, as both of thee should be aware by now, we cannot simply have thee walking around outside of the castle. It would raise too much confusion among our subjects. Thus we have called the two of thee here to address this issue. And several more that have come to our attention." Luna turned her head towards her sister and nodded, allowing her to continue.
"While outside of castle grounds, you will need to use a disguise. What it will look like depends on your preference. Inside the castle, you will be allowed to roam freely without one. The entirety of the staff has been briefed on the situation, and they have been sworn to secrecy. Does that seem fair?" Celestia began as she looked at the two of us.
I glanced at Carl for a brief second, who responded with a nod.
"Yes, it does. But one question, how will we disguise ourselves?" I asked.
"We shalt cast a spell on thee that will disguise thy appearance and make thee look like an ordinary pony. As my sister said, what they look like will be dependent on thy preference. All thou hath to do is describe it to us, and we shalt take care of the rest." Luna had decided to answer my question first.
Satisfied with that answer, I decided to press on about the 'other' things we needed to talk about.
"You said that we had a lot to discuss, what might that be?"
"We have been trying to figure out who, and how the two of you arrived here. We didn't make much progress, as we had to put it on hold after Discord broke free of his stone prison. That was... Before he decided to approach us."Celestia began. To which Luna responded with a snort.
"'Approach' is an understatement, we were forced to listen to him as he immobilized us and went on a monolog," Luna added.
"Yes, well... While he was rambling on, he mentioned something about you two. He didn't go into detail and refused to answer our questions about the subject." Celestia continued.
Before I could say anything, Carl beat me to the punch.
"What does that entail exactly?" She asked.
"It means that Discord is more than likely the reason you two are here."
Before anyone could say anything else, I quickly interrupted them.
“Hold on, who's this Discord guy anyway? Is it the statue one that caused everything to turn into an acid trip?”
Luna blinked and looked at me with a confused expression on her face.
“Er… Yes, we don't know what an ‘acid trip’ is, but he is indeed the one who was trapped in stone.” She replied.
“Stone, right. Couldn't you just… Break the stone with him in it?” I asked.
Luna replied with a snort. “Believe me, if it were that easy…”
Celestia spoke up this time with a shake of her head. “We don't kill our enemies. We imprison them in hopes of them being reformed.”
“Nonsense, sister! He's beyond that! He's-”
“Not beyond it.” Celestia glared at Luna, which the latter was about to reply, before Carl interrupted the soon-to-be fight.
“Let's… Uh, not get into that stuff right now. We should focus on the task at hand?” She said, a bit timmidly.
They glared at each other for a few more seconds before they both sighed, nodding their heads in agreement.
“Right. We're getting off track. The point is, that if Discord did indeed send you here, he's the only one who can send you back.” Celestia finally said after the brief pause.
“Why's that?” I asked.
“Because he uses chaos magic, which is drastically different and much more uncontrollable than the magic we use. And he wields a large amount of it.” Luna clarified.
“Well, why can't any one of us use ‘chaos magic‘?” Carl spoke up, leaning slightly forward onto the table.
“Because it is simply far too uncontrollable and well… Chaotic for even Alicorns to use.” Luna replied once more.
I wasn't exactly sure how a type of magic of all things was ‘too chaotic‘ to use, but before I could question it further, Carl beat me to it.
“So what is he then?” She asked.
“He's a draconequus, the only one of his kind. Thankfully.” Luna replied, muttering the last part.
“They can wield huge amounts of chaos magic as if it was child's play. But can't use any other type.” Celestia continued.
“Not that it matters, the only limit it has is the wielder's imagination. Only the Elements of Harmony had been able to beat his magic and trap him in stone.” Luna followed up, a frown on her face.
“So let me recap this. You're telling us that there's nothing you can do to send us back?” I asked, a small amount of fear in my voice.
Celestia hung her head slightly and nodded. “As far as we are aware, no. We can try to look for alternate methods, but…”
“...But?” Carl asked.
“But it is unlikely that one will pop up. We're sorry.” Luna finished.
I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn't think of anything. Was there really no way back home? Will we be stuck here for the rest of their lives, however that lasts? I looked over to Carl, who seemed to be sharing my current thoughts on the matter.
“We are willing to provide food and shelter, as well as anything else thou may require as long as thou wishes to stay at the castle.” Luna spoke up after a pregnant silence, a hint of sadness in her voice.
Both me and Carl nodded, thankful for their hospitality.
“Thank you both. I honestly wouldn't know where to go next if you two hadn't come along.” I said with a weak smile.
Carl opened her mouth to say something as well, but she was interrupted by a sudden rumbling that shook the room, causing several dust and cement particles to fall from the ceiling on a few of us.
“The hell was that?” I blinked as I held onto the chair out of instinct.
Celestia looked around the room in surprise, just as clueless as we were.
“An Earthquake?” Carl asked, doing the same thing as me.
“Couldn't be, there’s no fault lines anywhere near Canterlot.” Luna said in a worried tone.
“Volcano?” I followed up.
“There isn’t a volcano around for hundreds of miles.” Luna shook her head.
Celestia quietly stood up and trotted over to the stairs. She motioned for us to follow her with her right wing as she reached them.
“Follow me.”
Luna was the first to stand up and follow her, followed by me and Carl. We quickly trotted, or in my and Carl's case, tried not to fall as we raced to reach topside.
“Stay inside the castle, and do not go outside unless it's absolutely necessary. Understand?” Luna commanded as she glanced back at us, to which we replied with a nod.
`This escalated quickly.'I thought to myself as we continued to make our way to the top, half the time getting a much too revealing look at Pony behind, much to my contained embarrassment.
Although, now that I think about it, Carl probably wasn't having much of a different experience in the latter department.
We reached the top of the stairwell shortly after, just as another rumbling shook the palace, almost causing me to lose my balance. Which I quickly regained after using Carl as a quick stabilizer, much to her annoyance.
Whatever was happening sure had riled up the ponies, as we all heard panicked screams coming from outside the castle. They were mostly muffled by the thick walls, however.
As we passed through the first set of doors, the atmosphere of the castle finally started to sink in. Ponies in formal suits and maids were running around everywhere, while the guards attempted to maintain order. Albeit pretty poorly, in my opinion.
I glanced over to Carl, who was trying to peek out one of the smaller windows that exposed the view of the city. And then over to the Princesses, who quickly rushed down the rather spacious hallway. I ran after then for a second, before stopping and quickly taking a glance back at Carl. Who was still by the window with squinted eyes trying to look outside.
“Carl! Come on!” I yelled over the chaos.
“In a second! I think I see something!” Was her reply.
I bit my lip and turned my head over to where the Princesses had ran off to. They were almost at the end of the hallway, and then back to Carl.
“The fuck should I go with? Ah, fuck it. Bros before hoes.”
I turned tail and went back over to Carl. I stopped at her side and glanced out the window.
“Dude, come on! What the fuck are you even looking at?” I squinted my eyes and tried to look through the window to the outside.
“I swear I saw something flying out there.” Carl replied, still trying to spot whatever she had seen.
I looked over at her incredulously.
“Half of the ponies in this damn cartoon world can fly. Hell, we can fly. You can't be-” Before I could finish, Carl flicked me in the nose with the tip of her hoof, which caused me to take a step back and rub my muzzle.
“I'm not an idiot, dipshit. It was far larger than any normal Pony. Like a dragon, actually. I briefly saw it before it disappeared behind some of those skyscrapers in the distance.” She replied as she glanced over at me.
I glared at her as I rubbed my nose a few more times.
“Dragon? Hmph. I wouldn't doubt it in all honestly…” I mumbled as I set my hoof back down. From the crazy shit we've both seen, dragons didn't sound very far fetched anymore.
“Exactly! I was waiting for it to come out the other side, but it never did. I'm guessing whatever it was landed behind them.” Carl glanced over at me one last time before fully turning her body to face me.
“We should probably go after the Princesses now. They couldn't have gone far, right?” She said, looking in the direction where they had gone. Which was stiff filled with panicking ponies.
I sighed.
“Should done that from the beginning, but… Yeah, let's go.” I quickly turned around and began to trot down the hallway, waiting for a few seconds for Carl to follow suit, before I broke out into a full gallop.
Surprisingly, I managed to not look like a complete idiot and managed to maintain my balance and run decently. With Carl not far behind.
Far above Canterlot castle, a small creature unnoticed by most hovered in place. Its body covered by a large, black cloak, hiding any further features apart from its seemingly humanoid body.
It looked down upon the castle with dark, eerie green eyes. Which were the only feature that stood out in its almost pitch black face. It was originally tracking four targets a day prior. But now, there were two additional ones that had appeared overnight. It was tricky to tell, but they were identical to the original ones.
A smaller, green creature, which closely resembled a goblin, clumsily flew over to the figure. It's little wings struggling to hold the fat little body off of the ground. It seemed impossible for it to be capable of sustained flight. But of course, it flew anyway. Because it didn't care what Ponies thought was impossible.
“M-master, we're ready go on the plan. But we can't get the f-four of them. We don't have enough-” The little green goblin started, stuttering slightly, before it was interrupted by the larger, ominous figure.
“Get the closest ones to the east side of the castle. They're the easier ones.” It replied in a deep baritone voice.
“Wh-What if they fight back?” It stuttered out.
“I trust that they shall be quickly subdued before the other pair are even aware of that is going on. Do we have the vials?” He asked, his menacing voice causing the goblin to shake further.
“Y-Yes, my liege! They're ready!”
The figure began to chuckle to itself.
“Yes, good. Now go, and bring them to me.” He commanded.
“R-Right away!” The Goblin sped off, leaving a trail of dust in its wake.
As soon as it left, he looked back down to the castle.
“Soon, you will be the one begging for mercy, pests.”
Back inside the castle, Carl and David had stopped by a near a large pillar in the now empty throne room. Both panting and resting against said pillar.
“I think… I think we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.” David panted as she moved her foreleg up to her forehead and proceeded to wipe away some built up sweat.
“Y-Yeah?... You think?!” Carl responded, even more winded than David.
They had spent a good fifteen minutes running after the Princesses, had only succeeded in getting lost in the process. Asking the Ponies, even some of the Royal Guard, had been less than successful. With neither of the two groups aware of the location of the two sisters.
“This is your fault! You just had to go look out some fucking window instead of following them!” David growled as she glared at Carl, who replied with a glare of her own.
“And why didn't you keep following them?!”
“I had to go back for your dumbass so neither of us got lost! But noooo, you decided to take your sweet fucking time!” David argued back.
“Oh yeah, and I'm sure you stopping to grab something to drink at the kitchen helped us find them faster!”
“I was dehydrated you dumb sack of s-”
Unbeknownst to the two bickering ‘sisters’, they weren't alone in the room. Far from it, in fact. Over a dozen pair of glowing purple dots stared at them through the shadows.
“Okay, let's just… Calm down. Fighting isn't getting us anywhere.” David grunted as she rubbed her eyes.
“We could wait for them here, right? If they really needed us I'm sure they would have fetched us a while ago.” Carl inquired, now having sat down and rested her back against the white marble pillar.
“I… I guess?” Was David's reply as she mimicked Carl's position.
“Let's just take a breather and try to head back. It's probably nothing anyways.” Carl dismissed with a wave of her hoof.
“I dunno, man. You shouldn't tempt fate.”
“Hmph. I mean, what's the worst that can happen?”Carl shot back with a fatigued chuckle.
David reached over to Carl with one her hooves and bonked her on the horn, causing a hiss of pain to come from her.
“Ow, what the hell?!” Carl snarled as she held her horn.
“If anything bad happens from here to the end of the day, it's your fault.” David replied.
“Come on, you don't really believe that if you say that something bad happens, right? If something does happen it was gonna happen regardless of you saying it or not! It's just a bunch of coincidences! Nothi-” Carl was cut off by David, who bonked her again on her long horn.
“Ow! What was that for?!”
“To shut you up, obviously.”
“Why you…!” Carl began to reach over to David with both her hooves, no doubt trying to do the same thing she had done to her.
As the most likely unwelcomed audience continued to watch the scene unfold, they decided to act now while the Alicorns were seemingly distracted.
From the shadows, six small figures, almost as small as an average mare, leaped out towards the two, who were caught completely by surprise.
“Carl, move!” David shouted as she ducked, a bottle of purple vial passing above her head.
Carls eyes widened as she quickly tried to stand up, only to fall down flat on her face.
“Shit! What the-” She began as she tried to pick herself up, only to have a bottle smash into her muzzle.
The purple liquid quickly spread from the impact point, giving Carl only a second to open her mouth, most likely to scream, before it quickly grew to encompass her head completely in a thick layer of the fluid, and a few seconds later her entire body. Leaving her immobilized.
David's eyes widened in shock as she backpedaled away from the scene. She looked over to the culprits and quickly narrowed her eyes.
She opened her mouth, no doubt to insult them, but didn't get a chance as the small creatures began throwing more bottles at her, prompting her to dive to the side as best as she could from her position.
David concentrated and stopped some of the crystal bottles with her magic, holding them for a split second before sending them flying back at the Goblins, some of which shrieked and began flying erratically to avoid getting hit.
They certainty hadn't expected to have their own projectiles thrown back at them, if their reaction was anything to go by.
“Come get some, you green little cunts!” David taunted as she got up on her hooves and began to slam them all against the walls, intercepting the bottles before they came too close. Soon, it became a one sided battle, in favour of the Human turned Pony.
Soon enough, they found themselves thoroughly defeated, with most of them unconscious and stuck inside holes in the walls, created by their own bodies.
David scanned the group of Goblins with a glare, and eventually levitated a still conscious one up to her face. It shook in fear as it tried to comically run away while being held in the air by telekinesis.
“Who are you people, and why the fuck did you attack us?” She stopped herself and glanced over at Carl, who was still immobilized by the purple substance.
“And what did you do to hi-er… Her?!” David growled.
Before the Goblin could say anything, one of the crystal bottles suddenly dropped on David's horn, causing her to lose focus and take a few steps back. She tried to reach up in panic with her hooves to try and get the substance off, but it was futile. Soon, she was trapped in it just like Carl.
A taller Goblin, easily reaching the side of Celestia, dropped down from the ceiling and glanced at the two fallen Alicorns, before glaring at the smaller, trembling Goblin on the floor.
“You idiots had one job, and still couldn't pull it off? I'll see to it myself that you’re stripped of the rank you clearly don't deserve. Now, get your comrades out of the wall and let's skedaddle. Time isn't our ally right now.” It said with a gruff, commanding tone.
The smaller one quickly got to its feet and shakily saluted its commanding officer and began to pry its fellow Goblins off of the walls, while the larger one picked up both mares on the floor with little difficulty.
Soon, the only traces of the skirmish left were the holes in the wall.
Fifteen minutes later, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were standing in the throne room, along with dozens of guards that were currently cleaning the place.
A group of Elder dragons had attacked the City, destroying dozens of buildings and injuring over a hundred Ponies before being driven away, and in one case, taken down by the Royal Guard.
“I've had guards search the entire castle, and there isn't a single trace of them apart from… Well, this.” Luna gestured over to the numerous holes in the wall. Celestia shook her head and took a step closer to one of said holes.
“I can only sense the lingering presence of your magic here. And since you were with me the entire time, we can safely assume this was David's doing.” She said, glancing over the fractured pieces of marble on the floor.
“Yes, but… They were clearly fighting something here. And since they're nowhere to be found… I think whatever they were fighting must have won.” Luna stated, worry slowly creeping into her voice.
She looked back over at Celestia.
“Can we track them?” Luna asked.
Celestia closed her eyes as her horn began to shine. It stopped a moment later as she sighed and shook her head, opening her eyes as she looked back at Luna.
“I can't seem to sense them anywhere.” She whispered.
“Something must be blocking their magic.” She shook her head.
“We have to find them! They couldn't have gone far!” Luna declared and stomped her hoof, cracking the floor underneath it.
Celestia nodded her head, a determined look on her face.
“Agreed, they may not be us, but they still have Alicorn magic. Whoever took them likely does not have any good intent.”
Luna suddenly looked a bit nervous, but held her stance.
“Y-yes, that is why we must go find them this instant!” Before Celestia could question her, her horn began to glow and she teleported elsewhere.
Celestia was left alone, pondering her sister's sudden nervousness, which was not lost to her. She shook her head as her horn began to shine. A second later she teleported away after Luna.
Darkness.
That's all I saw once I came to. I tried to move my limbs, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't. My chest had little space to expand and contract, making it hard to even breathe.
It felt like my entire body was covered in a extremely tight straight jacket. Which to say the least was very uncomfortable. Thankfully I didn't mind tight spaces that much. But last time I checked, Carl had claustrophobia.
“Sucks to be him. Or her, whatever.” I thought as I tried to open my eyes, only to be greeted by a purple layer right in my eyes, causing me to blink uncomfortably. It was a miracle that thing hadn't gone into my eyes.
It had, however, gone everywhere else apart from my eyes and nose. I couldn't even hear anything apart from my own heart beat.
I began to try and struggle against my purple prison, but to no avail. It didn't even budge, the thing might as well been glued to my skin for all intents and purposes.
Instead of trying to focus on breaking free after my first failed attempt, I began to try and focus on my few remaining senses. I could feel myself being dragged somewhere. The surface was most likely stone, if the feeling was anything to go by.
I could hear muffled talking. Although I couldn't make out what they were saying, it definitely sounded like multiple voices all around me. They sounded close. Extremely so. Most likely the ones dragging me along.
I let out the best sigh I could possibly pull off under the given conditions and closed my eyes.
“I hope this doesn't become a common thing. I HAVE to try and learn how to properly fight with magic.” I thought. God knows how much shit I could do with magic. I mean, Luna can move the motherfucking moon, right? Who knows what else she could do, and by extension, what I could do lf properly trained.
Another ten minutes passed rather uneventfully. It looked like we had entered a cave during that time, since the small amount of light that passed through the hardened liquid quickly vanished, leaving me in complete darkness, even when I had my eyes open.
I felt myself stop moving shortly after. The floor underneath me had changed from a rocky one to a smooth, metal-like one. I still couldn't hear anything, however.
I tried to move once again, to no avail. It was still too strong. There was no way I could get out of it without some outside assistance. As I did so, I felt something being slid onto my horn, making me grimace in discomfort. It didn't hurt, but it did feel incredibly tight, even more so than the purple stuff.
Suddenly, I felt the substance around me begin to loosen slowly. I was able to start moving my forelegs slightly within the minute, and after five, most of my body was free, with my neck and head being the final ones to be freed.
As soon as my mouth was free, I took a big, desperate gasp of air, before letting it all out in a sigh. I did it a few more times before settling down to a normal breathing pattern. Well, as normal as it could be under the circumstances.
I blinked and tried to sit up. Once I did so, I glanced around my surroundings.
I was in a large, bronze colored cage, with bars surroundings all sides. Beyond them, bedrock surrounded it. There was a large gate a few meters away from me, and the inside was completely dark. The only light were torches on the outside.
I felt something cold and wet under my hooves as I sat. I looked down and noticed a large puddle of purple liquid under me.
“Ugh, is that the thing that was on me?” I thought to myself in disgust as I got to my feet and backed away from the puddle. It smelled godawful too.
“Ew..” I muttered under my breath. As I looked myself over, I noticed my entire body was still covered in a thin layer of the stuff. I wasn't able to see it due to the darkness. But now it was entirely visible.
I raised my hoof and looked at it. The fluid dripped down from it as if I've just had a shower with it. I grimaced once again and shook my hoof, trying to get it off.
It didn't seem to work. It continued to fall as if it had an infinite supply.
I squinted my eyes slightly and brought it closer to my face, noticing something.
Weird. It had tiny specs of blue in it, and it seemed more pink than purple.
Before I could speculate any further, I heard something metallic hit the gate a few times, causing my ears so rotate towards the noise as I raised my head to look towards it.
Behind the gate was a large, green centaur, looking at me with an unsettling grin.
“Well well, if it isn't the Moon Princess herself.”
“Well, fuck me sideways and call me your mom…” I thought. Was I really just kidnapped because I was confused with the Princess? Not that it's a hard thing to do, but still.
“No. No no no, you've got it all wrong! I'm not the one you're after!” I stuttered as I took a few steps away from him. From my point of view, the dudes biceps could probably bend steel with little effort.
He raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “Uh huh. Do you think I'm stupid, bitch? You're even more pathetic now than before.” With that, he walked off, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I stood there for a couple of seconds, staring at the spot where the Centaur had just been, before letting out a sigh and rubbing my head.
“Fuck me. Of all things to turn into, why did it have to be someone important…” I murmured. To be fair, if I had a choice it would have totally been a Dragon. That shit must be so much more exciting than being a Pony.
I slowly walked over to the gate and hit my head through, which was surprisingly rather easy, given the space between the bars. I then proceeded to look both ways, only to be met by two sets of corridors, which turned a corner not too far from my cell. If were to try and escape, I'd have nowhere to hide judging from what I was seeing.
I pulled my head back and grunted. Escape was out of the question without some outside help. And I had no idea what these fucks wanted with me anyways. The only thing left to do was wait.
I backed up a few meters from the cell entrance and sat down. I tried to think about what to do while I waited, and eventually I settled for trying to get the stuff off somehow, and not because I wanted to around with it for the sole purpose of entertainment, I swear.
I looked myself over. My body was still covered in the stuff from horn to toe-.. Er, hoof tips? My usual floaty hair was stuck to my neck and back, unmoving. And my tail was stuck onto my lower back/ass area, which made me shudder when I sat down. I'd rather leave the explicit details out, but it was… Enlightening on a few things, to say the least.
Speaking of back, my wings were stuck to my sides, and trying to open them barely worked. They did open slightly, but all the feathers were stuck to each other, and to my sides.
“If these guys don't have a ‘come off’ button for this shit…” I bitterly said. It would be a major pain in the ass to get it off of me, since I'm basically covered in a coat of fur. And fur plus stickly shit was a recipe for bad times and major headaches.
I continued to mess around with my myself, and no not that way, for a good while. It seemed like my captors liked to take their sweet ass time to do whatever they had planned. Not that I wanted to find out, mind you. But I wanted to see these chuckle fucks face to face, and tell them a few not so nice things.
Unbeknownst to me, however, was the fact that they were rather busy with another group of Ponies they had also taken prisoner.
Inside a large, dark cavern, barely lit by the dozens of torches scattered on the ways, lay a throne. A dark obsidian colored one decorated with numerous bone-like protrusions coming out of the sides, and the top. Which upon closer inspection were actually horns from all sorts of species. Namely Pony ones. Upon said Throne sat a large, Centaur shaped figure, covered in armor as dark as the night. With star like twinkles that faded in and out, much like the mane that belonged to the Princess of the Night. Its head was covered in a Spartan style helmet that matched the color scheme of the armor.
The large beast grunted as it looked down upon a sole, small Goblin. Which held a scroll in its tiny little claw, and was trembling in fear.
“Speak” He said, his voice echoing throughout the cavern like thunder.
“M-my lord, the Princesses and the Elements have been captured and imprisoned. W-what now?” The Goblin stammered.
“Now we wait. Without their most important Ponies, Equestria will either fall, or be severely weakened. Other nations will likely prey upon them soon enough. And even their so called allies will be powerless to stop it.” He grunted, his voice unwavering and certain.
“B-but what about the prisoners, M’lord? W-What shall we do with them?” The Goblin asked nervously. Even though their Lord never truly killed or harmed them. His presence alone was enough to make even his top lieutenants nervous.
“They are no threat to us. But make sure they stay alive and relatively unharmed. They are vital for the next phase. Other than that, I do not care what my commanders decide to do with them if they grow bored and restless.” He waved him off, figuratively. His body stayed as till as a stone as he spoke.
“Y-yes, M’lord” The Goblin saluted and ran off elsewhere. Leaving the Centaur alone.
He appeared motionless from the outside, but from the inside he was deep in thought. It all seemed too easy to him. He had certainly expected more of a fight from the Alicorns. The Element wielders were rather defenseless without the Elements themselves. So taking care of them was easy enough. The Royal Guards were distracted by the Dragons he had sent to terrorise Canterlot, and were likely not much of a threat. The only one that could have been a remote threat was that Prince, but he proved to be rather incompetent, if the reports were anything to go by.
He was sure everything that was threat to his plans was taken care of. But he still had a gut feeling there was something left. Perhaps it was the other two identical magical signatures one of his lieutenants had reported. He had written it off as a mere illusion spell they had used to try and trick the Dragons if they were after the Princesses. But the behavior his elite squad had reported did not match the personalities of said Princesses.
As he continued to dwell on the matter, he had failed to notice the two magical signatures that where headed towards his base. Along with hundreds of smaller ones.
Three hours had passed since I was thrown in here for reasons unknown to me. And I've had to sit there doing jack shit for the entirety of that time.
A few creatures had stopped by my cell, either to stare at me or mock me. To which I replied with insults and taunts. It worked rather well in my favour, since they seemed to give up on trying to bother me soon after I got started.
I was currently on the floor belly up, messing with my wings, which I had managed to free after the second hour. They were still covered in that gooey crap though. Playing with them managed to quell my boredom for a while, but even that was starting to grow stale quickly.
Using magic was out of the question, whatever they had put on my horn prevented me for doing anything with magic, much to my annoyance. They just have had this all thought out if they went through this much trouble. Of course, the real Princesses were still in Canterlot.
”Hopefully they're a big enough hole in their plan for it to all fall apart soon.” I thought to myself as I waved a small feather I managed to pull out around.
My mind began to wander over to their other prisoner, Carl. I didn't really know if they took the both of us, or just me. Hopefully she was okay either way.
If we ever get to talk again, I have a few choice words for her. Especially the part where she got tucked within the first second of the Ambush.
My train of thought was interrupted when I heard a metal clang coming from the gate. I turned my head and gazed over, finding the same Centaur that had called me a bitch before standing there with the same shit eating grin on his face.
“Get up, beautiful. My CO wants to have a… few words with you. Heh.” He chuckled as he opened the gate and two Minotaurs walked in, who were easily few feet taller than the Centaur, and dwarfed me by five.
They picked me up rather roughly and restrained me with their massive hands, before taking me outside the cell and making me face the Centaur face to face.
Said Centaur licked his lips and got his face closer to mine, to which I responded with trying to move my head backwards to avoid him.
“Damn, when was the last time you brushed your teeth? I think I can see last year's Christmas dinner in there.” I taunted as I smirked at him, to which he responded with a frown.
His two guards seemed to like my joke, because I heard them try to hold in laughter. Snickering as they tried to avoid the Centaurs angry gaze.
“You think you're funny, bitch?” He growled and proceeded to punch me in the gut, making me grimace in pain and hunch over slightly in the grip of the two Minotaurs.
“F-funnier than your ugly ass? Yep.” I hissed as I tried to hold it in. Damn that hurt like a motherfucker.
His left eye twitched as he reared back his fist once more and punched me across the muzzle, making me yelp slightly as blood dripped down my nose and onto the floor.
I shook my head slightly and maintained my smirk, gazing up at him.
“What are those, baby punches? I've met fetuses that hit harder than that.” I said. I could have sworn I saw steam coming out of his ears as I did so.
Instead of punching me again, he seemed to relax as his smirk returned to his face.
“Oh, I'll enjoy what I'm going to do to you later, whore.” He licked his lips once more and waved the guards off.
“Take her to Erdwich. And tell him to not loosen her up too much, heh.” He chuckled darkly as he turned tail and walked in the opposite direction, leaving me with the two Minotaurs.
I definitely didn't like the way he said that. And I definetly did not want to find out. I wasn't about to get fucked, figuratively or literally, within the first week of me being in this crazy ass world.
The two Guards began to take me down a series of dark corridors. As they did so, I began to try and formulate a plan to hopefully escape his place in one piece.
Suddenly, an idea came to my head.
“Hey.” I said as I looked up at the Guard to my left.
“What?” He responded in an annoyed, gruff voice.
“Your shoe's untied.”
“Huh?” He bent down to check his feet, and just as he did so, I slipped my foreleg from his grasp and dropped down, bucking the one on the right in the back of his knees, making him cry out in pain and fall down. I didn't spend enough time there to find out what happened to them next, since as soon as I did that I bolted down the corridor, running as fast as I could away from them.
I kept running for a few more minutes, before I began to hear voices coming from the front of me. I frantically looked around and spotted a heavy wooden door to the left. I quickly pushed it open and closed it behind me, leaning my back on it as I breathed heavily.
“Fuck me that was close.” I uttered as I slid down to my ass and rubbed my face a few times with my hooves.
Thankfully for me, most of the goo on me had finally decided to fall down quicker to the point that I was no longer dripping the stuff as I ran. Hopefully I did so far away from this door, or they would find me rather quickly.
Speaking of finding, I needed to find where they took Carl. God knows what they were doing to her.
Before I could continue that train of thought, I heard something suddenly drop to the floor and shatter, which caused me to snap my head up and look around the room, trying to find what had made that noise.
A weird, Pony-like creature stared back at me with eyes wide in shock. It looked similar to an insect, with a black exoskeleton, insect-like wings, and holes on its fore and hind legs. As well as a misfigured horn on its head.
It currently sat upon a frail looking wooden chair, and seemed to have been working on numerous crystal bottles, similar to the ones that were thrown at me and Carl. They all seemed empty however.
The room itself seemed rather poorly lit as well. Not on the same level as the narrow corridors I had to run through, but still dark enough to have to make you double take on a few smaller things. There were five stone tables lined up in the center, with sometime of furnace on the far left, with a large cauldron which seemed to be leaking a pink liquid from its edges. The only table that had anything on it was the one in front of the bug Pony. And even that one had barely any stuff on it apart from the things it was already using. The ceiling was plain and smooth, with cobwebs littering the corners where it met the walls. Random items such as empty glass tubes and copper wires were strewn across the floor, giving the room a finishing touch.
We both stared at each other for a few seconds, neither of us making a move, before I finally decided to speak up.
“If you value your life, I'd advise you to not call for help.” I growled as I glared daggers at it, hoping that intimidating it would work in my favour.
It gulped and nodded, slowly taking its misfigured hooves away from the table and help them up in a clear ‘I surrender’ pose.
I carefully stood up and took a few steps forward, never taking my eyes off of the Pony sized bug. If this wasn't a perfect opportunity to interrogate someone, nothing was.
“Who are you, and where am I?” I spoke in the best commanding tone I could muster, trying to copy earlier examples from Luna.
It gulped once more and opened its mouth to speak. “M-my name is D-Detrax,” It stuttered.
”Okay, Good so far. Now I just have to keep it up.” I thought to myself as I took another step closer, causing the now named bug horse, Detrax, to lean back slightly in his chair out of fear.
“That's one question. What about the other?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Y-You're in a cave system u-under the Fenris Mountain range, i-in the badlands.” He replied, trembling slightly.
Now, I had no fucking idea where the ‘Badlands’ were, but I decided to assume it was a fair distance away from Canterlot, if my captors had half a brain.
“What are you, and what are you doing with those bottles?” I said as I took another step closer to him, causing him to visibly flinch.
He seemed confused at my first question, but decided to answer it anyway. “I-I'm a Changeling. And I-I'm just cleaning the bottles.” He said nervously, glancing at said bottles that now lay unmoving on the table.
”Changeling? Aren't those supposed to be Japanese monsters or something?” Now, I wasn't well versed in the world of mythological creatures and such, but I did remember a horror movie that had something called Changelings. And they did not look like what was infront of me at that moment.
“Alright, ‘Detrex’” I began.
“I-it's Detrax.”
“Whatever. Listen, I want you to tell me what this purple shit is, and how to get rid of it.” I took one final step towards him and leaned my head down to glare at him, making him even more nervous.
I gestured towards my body with my hoof to get the point across.
“It's… Ah… It's a special type of liquid that hardens at command.” He began slowly.
“I… I can get it off if you'd like.” He finished, scratching the back of his head as He tried to avoid my eyes.
I may be stupid, but one thing I wasn't was dumb. He could easily had been planning to fuck me over again once he got the chance, and I kept that well in mind.
“How?” I asked, not exactly believing he would do it.
He stayed silent for a few seconds, before looking me right in the eye.
“Astras Novus, Hornus Polus.” He chanted. As I opened my mouth to question what in God's green Earth he had just said, I felt the substance on my body begin to fall away. Within one to two seconds, it was completely gone. The only thing that remained was whatever they put on my horn.
I blinked and slowly brought one of my hooves to my face and confirmed that he had indeed gotten rid of it. The fur on my hoof looked pristine, as if I had finished taking a bath and used every known shampoo and conditioner known to man.
“Uh… Okay, can you get this thing off too?” I pointed towards my horn with the hoof that was already in the air. The thing they put on it was really starting to bug me.
To my disappointment, he shook his head.
“T-That requires a special… Key of sorts.”
I lowered my hoof, but sustained my glare on him. “You seem rather willing to tell me anything.” I accused, still not trusting his word, even if he did get that stuff off of me.
He seemed hesitant to answer that one as he glanced around, before looking back at me.
“I'm not willing to die because of the Lord. Tartarus, I don't want to be here! I was taken prisoner while on a scouting mission for my hive a year ago and haven't seen the light of day since!” He half yelled, keeping his voice low enough so that no one outside heard him.
He hopped off of the chair and walked over to the cauldron, which made me take a step back, my eyes never leaving him.
“They stuck me in this room and forced me to make this… Stuff, which I don't even know the name of. They gave me a few books and made me learn how to produce and get rid of it, and if I didn't get the hoof of it within a week, they'd starve and torture me.” He said in a low voice, before looking back at me.
“I know you don't trust me, but I think we can both help each other get out of this place.” Not trusting this guy was a very big understatement. Call me paranoid, but this could very well just be him trying to get rid of me and fuck me over.
I stared at him for five full seconds, before nodding slowly.
“And how would we do that?” I asked. I wasn't very confident in his, and my abilities to fight off an entire base full of enemies.
He didn't respond immediately, instead just walked over to the table and picked up one of the empty bottles.
“First, we need to get that magic suppressor off of your horn. I don't know how powerful you Alicorns are, but if we can get it off, we can safely teleport out I this place.” He began as he walked back towards the cauldron and dipped the bottle In, filling it with the link liquid.
Oh, fuck me.
I didn’t know how to teleport.
I bit my lip. I barely knew how to levitate shit, let alone teleport anywhere. Knowing that just going with it was bound to end poorly for the both of us, I decided to activate my bullshiting card.
“I… Uh, had my magic drained too much by some… Centaur to teleport.” I lied, not wanting him to think I actually didn't know Jack shit about magic.
He cursed in some language unknown to me. “Already? They're moving fast. You don't seem so drained, did you escape before they could finish?” He asked.
“Er… Yes.” I answered, trying to sound convincing.
“That's good. But that means that we have to go find where they are storing your magic, we won't be able to escape without it.” He nodded and brought the bottle back to the table.
”God, why have you forsaken me?” I thought bitterly as I stayed silent. I was getting fucked into a web of bullshits of my own making. So instead of coming out clean, I did the next best thing.
“Well… I already have the magic, I got it back before I escaped, but I'm too… Fatigued to use complex spells.” I said as I cleared my throat and tried to hold my head up high, to sell my point.
He put a cap on the top of the bottle and picked up a dirty rug, cleaning the spills from the side of it.
“That's… Good! One less step I guess.” He still seemed nervous around me, which most likely worked in my favour in that situation.
I watched him repeat the same thing with a few more bottles in silence, not knowing what else to say. After the sixth bottle, I decided ask him.
“What are those for?” I asked.
“They're for the guards we encounter on the way. If we can't rely on your magic, then we need something to de-” He was cut short by the entire room rumbling, similar to the one Carl and me had felt in the castle.
I blinked and looked around, spreading my forelegs ever so slightly to maintain myself from falling.
“What was that?” I asked Detrax, who seemed just as confused as me as he held the bottles in place with his magic, if the glowing horn and the green aura around said bottles was anything to go by.
“I… I don't know, an earthquake maybe?” He answered, looking around the room nervously.
Before I could answer, the room shook once more, but this time much more violently, throwing Detrax onto the floor, and me up and over the table. I tumbled a few times on it before landing on the other side, on top of some chairs, breaking them in the process.
“Fuck me…” I muttered in pain as I sat up. I shook my head and slowly got up.
I leaned against the table and held on for around ten seconds, looking around in caution.
“I think it's over. What the hell was that?” I said aloud.
I heard a groan come from the other side of the stone table, and soon after a reply.
“I hope... “ He grunted as he got up, rubbing the side of his head with his hoof.
I let go of the table and walk around it, towards Detrax, who was still recovering from the sudden shaking.
“Maybe it's an attack?” I pondered, last time it happened it had been an attack. I assumed so, anyways.
He replied with a side to side shake of his head. “Impossible, no one could ever hope to fi-” He was cut short as we both heard dozens of footsteps coming from the outside of the door. They passed right in front of it and seemed to continue going, fading away until we stopped hearing it.
As soon as the sound stopped, the Earth shook once more. This time to a lesser extent than before.
“I think that may be a yes.” I said as I looked back at him, having been staring at the door prior.
“I… I don't know. But if we're under attack, then by whom?” He asked, a bit shaken.
”This place must have been sealed tighter than a nun’s ass if he's acting so surprised.” I looked back towards the door and turned to face it.
Suddenly, I remembered something.
“Oh fuck, Carl!” I had completely forgotten about her during my little chat with Detrax. I needed to find her, As Soon As Possible.
I looked back at the Changeling, who seemed even more confused now by my choice of words, and then back at the door, before beginning to trot towards it.
“We need to move now, we can use the chaos to escape.” I said to him as I reached the large wooden door. He opened his mouth to say something, but quickly closed it and nodded.
He grabbed a bag from… Somewhere behind him and stuffed the glass bottles into it. He then walked over to the furnace and did something I could not quite see. Seconds later, the entire thing seem to shut down as the fire beneath the cauldron died.
I waited until he was finally ready to go. He now held the bag above his head with his magic and nodded to me.
“Follow me, I know the way to the prisoners ward.” He stated as he walked to my side.
“Prison ward? Why do you want to go there?” It was definitely the place I would visit first to search for Carl, but I wasn't aware of why he wanted to go there.
“I know a few people there, they'd gladly help us get out of here.” He replied as he carefully pushed the door open, poking his head out and looking both ways before opening the door fully, allowing me and him to step outside.
“Follow me.”
Meanwhile, I had dwelled over the fact that he said people instead of some made up word for a few seconds, before snapping out of it and walking outside, and then following the Changeling down the long, dark corridor.
The walk to the prison ward was short, and relatively uneventful. The entire place had shaken numerous more times as he made our way there, and the corridors were mostly empty. The occasional guard we encountered on the way were quickly disposed of by Detrax’s magic-in-a-bottle shit.
I carefully peeked my head through a heavy metal door, before slowly opening it wide enough to allow me to step into the room, followed closely by Detrax.
“Okay. Now what?” I whispered as I looked back at him. He pointed towards number of cell doors at the end of a tall, wide hallway.
I nodded slowly and looked forward, taking careful steps as we started to pass through the cells.
Inside said cells were numerous creatures unknown to me, as well as Minotaurs, other Ponies, and what looked like Griffins.
Once we reached the last of the cells, what I saw made me stop in shock. And even Detrax had to double take at one of the occupants inside another cell.
Inside the one I was looking at were two, dirty and half naked humans. Yeah, you heard me right. One man, and a woman. The latter barely looked older than twenty, and the former looked like he was approaching his thirties. The both looked beaten to some degree as well.
The man looked the most roughed up of them all, and wore what looked like Camo pants, and a plain, green shirt. He wore a pair of dog tags around his neck, and was sitting on the floor next to the woman, glaring at me through the cell bars.
The girl on the other hand was… Happy to see me? She looked at me as if she was my biggest fan or something. It was a bit creepy, to be truthful.
Without giving much thought to it, I immediately tried to open the door, which was locked by what looked like an old, heavy duty lock. Instead of looking around for another way in, I gripped said lock and pulled back on it.
To my surprise, the lock broke almost instantly. I looked at it in my hoof for a second before discarding it by throwing it behind my back.
I pushed the door inwards, grunting as I struggled for a second. The lock may had been easy to break, but this door felt heavy, and it scraped against the rocky bottom as it opened, giving it some added resistance.
As soon as I finished pushing the door open halfway, I stepped into the cell and looked down at the two. The man had gotten up by that point and was glaring at me with distrust.
“Look, I'm not were to hurt you. I was a prisoner here too, and we're breaking the hell out of this place.” I told him slowly as I took a few steps back, gesturing them to exit the cell.
The woman almost literally jumped at the chance, getting up to her feet quickly, much to her companion’s presumed annoyance, and rushed out of the cell, taking in deep breaths.
“Oh thank god, I swear I couldn't stand another second with that smell.” She panted as she leaned against the wall with one hand.
The guy came out next, eyeing me suspiciously and keeping his distance. I had come to the assumption that he was military, if the attire and the dog tags were anything to go by.
I decided to try and gain his trust by acknowledging it, completely unsure if he was going to relax a bit, or be more suspicious of me.
“You're military, right? United States?” I began, his eyes went wide a bit at that mention. He wasn’t expecting me to know that.
“I'm from Sacramento, California. I can explain later, but right now we have to get out of here.” I finished. He didn't look completely convinced, but sighed and nodded his head.
“Sergeant Romeo Luis, United States Marines, first Division, first tank battalion." He finally said.
”Damn, a Marine here of all places? This is going to be interesting.” I nodded back and looked back, trying to spot where Detrax had gone.
He had managed to get one of this locks open without having to rip it off, and was currently helping Celestia, or rather, Carl out of the cell. She had looked better, but it didn't look like anything major had happened.
She wore the same thing I had around my horn on hers, and still had that purple residue, which Detrax had quickly finished taking off of her.
I walked over to them and smiled at Carl, who spotted me and returned the smile.
“Took you long enough.” She squeezed out. “One of those Centaur looking things kicked me in the stomach when I insulted his mother. What about you?”
I rolled my eyes. “What, you were waiting on me to rescue you? Why not the other way around? And I also insulted one of those cunts, got me bad in the… Muzzle.” I said as I rubbed my muzzle slightly, the blood dripping from my nose was still fresh.
Carl seemed to have stopped the two humans behind me, because she looked over my shoulder with wide eyes.
“Are they-”
“Yes, they are. We can ask questions later. But now, let's go!” I told her, to which she and Detrax responded with a nod.
“Follow me, I know the way!” Detrax announced as he rushed past us all. Me and Carl Looked at each other for a second before nodding and quickly following after him, the two humans also following after us after a two second delay on their part.
Just as we exited the room, a group of ponies crashed into Detrax, me and Carl, sending us all tumbling to the ground. The two humans stopped at the entrance and looked at the mess of limbs and colors.
I groaned as I rubbed my head, slowly getting up to my feet.
“The hell…” I looked down and saw the one who had crashed into me.
“Wait, Twilight?” I asked in surprise.
Twilight stopped and looked up at me with wide eyes.
“Princess?”
Princess Luna stood on the edge of a large airship bristling with cannons and other weapons. Her ship was part of a twelve strong fleet which was headed towards the location of David, Carl, and the Elements.
Her sister was on a separate ship equal to hers. The ships were specially made for them, if the color schemes on the hulls said anything. During her and after her banishment, airships were commonly used for commercial and military purposes. For the past thousand years, the military airship fleet had dwindled in numbers, before dropping to barely a hundred just after her return.
She had pushed the Council to allow the building of more airships, but it was a slow process. Equestria hadn't seen a major conflict in centuries, they thought there was no need for more, and even wanted to downgrade the numbers.
She and Celestia had mustered every available ship in Canterlot and formed the small fleet. And in her opinion, it was far too little. But they could not waste any more time. The lives of her friends, new and old, were in danger.
She was currently looking towards the horizon with a nearly emotionless face. But inside, her mind was in turmoil.
Heaven's know what the brutes the kidnapped them were doing with them. She shuddered to imagine so. Truth be told, she was a lot more worried about their safety than anything else.
She and David had quickly before friends. Or at least she believed so. They had spent a long time talking, and even though it felt weird to technically talk to herself, she felt better and more open talking to her than to any other Pony, apart from Celestia.
Maybe it was because she looked so much like her. But no matter the reason, she was damn sure she wasn't going to let somepony hurt those that she considered friends.
As the fleet continued their course for their location, her mind began to drift to more… Graphic scenarios.
She flinched slightly as those thoughts crossed her mind.
Nightfall fell upon the Equestrian fleet as Celestia lowered the sun and Luna raised the moon, the darkness serving as added stealth as the airships approached their destination.
Luna sighed as she finished raising the moon. She had been in deep thought for the past few hours, and with Celestia being busy discussing the battle plans with the General and the Captains, she was left alone.
Of course, she already knew full well the way it was going to go down. She and her sister made them after all. Celestia had insisted she assist the meeting, but she politely declined. She wanted some time alone to think.
She was interrupted from her current thoughts as she heard the clip clop of metal shoes hitting the wooden floor. She recognized the sound well.
“We presume everything went okay, sister?” Luna asked with a smile, keeping her eyes off to the horizon.
She heard a giggle.
“Mostly. A few Captains seemed hesitant to go through with it, but I managed to convince them.” Celestia replied as she walked next to her. She leaned her head down and nuzzled Luna’s neck gently, to which she replied with a nuzzle of her own.
“That's good. It was the most viable option after all.” Luna stated.
Celestia nodded and followed Luna’s gaze off into the distance.
“I know you're worried. I am as well. But you and I both know they're still alive. And hopefully unharmed. Try not to worry too much, sister. It may cloud your thoughts.” Celestia reassured as she looked down at her. Luna responded with a sigh.
An hour ago, they've picked up the magical presence of the Elements and themselves, which they instantly knew must be Carl and David. It provided a much needed relief, but their condition was still unknown.
“We know. That's what's keeping us from taking off and flying ahead of the ships.” Luna responded as she returned her sister's gaze.
Celestia began to open her mouth to respond, but was cut short as the airships horn suddenly interrupted them, causing her ears to flatten against the side of her head in discomfort.
“I forgot how loud those were…” Celestia complained, to which Luna responded with a giggle.
Ponies began running out from below and manning their stations, the rest of the ship following suit.
“Dragons ahead!” They heard the Captain shout from the bridge, causing them to turn to face forward.
As the Captain had proclaimed, there were indeed dragons ahead. Several of them in fact. All of them being huge elder dragons that looked similar to the ones who attacked Canterlot.
Instead of targeting them, however. The seemed to be attacking a certain spot on the cliffside of a mountain. Two were flying around the top, firing fire onto said mountain, and two more were grounded. They were spewing flames everywhere beneath their feet. The Alicorn sisters could barely spot a few flaming figures falling down the side of the mountain.
Luna’s eyes widened as she put two and two together.
“That's where they're being held!” She shouted a little bit too loud, causing Celestia to flinch and rub her ear.
“It would seem so. Come, a must prepare.” Celestia extended her majestic wings and flew back towards the bridge, leaving Luna alone.
She narrowed her eyes at the scene in front of them and glanced back to where Celestia had gone off to.
Without saying a word, her wings unfolded and she dived off of the front, falling for a few seconds before flying off at high speeds towards the fight.
I blinked as I looked down at the lavender Pony. She certainly was one of the last ones I expected to come across down in that hell hole.
“No. It's me, David. That's Carl.” I said as I pointed over to Carl, who was currently on the ground tangled with A blue Pegasus and a white Unicorn, the latter seemed to be apologizing three times every second as she tried to help Carl up.
She rubbed her head and got up. “David? What are you two doing here, and who are…” She trailed off when she saw Romeo, and the yet to be named girl. The ladder which was looking on with her hand over her mouth in shock, barely hiding clear excitement.
“The ones who captured all of us confused me and Carl for the Princesses. Which is probably a good thing in the long run.” I said. “As for those two. They're humans, What we used to be before… You know.”
Twilight stayed silent for a second, her eyes scanning every inch of their bodies, making the two of them slightly uncomfortable.
“We need to get going. From all the rumbling going on, this place could probably collapse.” I finished
She glanced at the ceiling as the entire place shook again and nodded.
Detrax walked over to us before she could do anything else. “Tell your friends to follow me, I know the way out.” He said. Twilight stared at him for a few seconds with a surprised expression before shaking it off and looking back at the other Ponies.
“Alright, girls. Follow us so we can get out of here!” As soon as she said that, Detrax was already off. Twilight and me took after him soon after, with seven other Ponies and humans in tow.
Outside of the base, there was a fierce battle going on.
Or rather, a heavily one sided battle.
The Minotaurs were no match for the giant flying lizards, who with every swipe of their tail, and every exhale of fire, dozens were quickly downed.
Unfortunately for the Minotaurs and most likely the dragons, a third player was about to enter the battle. And they had brought along a very pissed off Alicorn.
Speaking of, Princess Luna was quickly closing in on the battle on her lonesome, much to her sister's dismay.
She had her armour on, which she had used previously to battle beings like Sombra, Discord, and many more. It hadn't seen use in over a thousand years, but thankfully the spells cast upon it prevented it from deteriorating as time flew by.
As soon as Luna entered the premise of the battlefield, she was spotted fairly quickly by a few Minotaurs on what looked like turret mounted cannons, similar to the ones used by Military airships.
It took them a moment to register her sudden appearance, and it costed them dearly. Luna’s horn began to glow brightly, and soon after the turrets themselves were surrounded in her aura. Before they could react, she ripped them off of the ground and sent them flying at different targets, one being a group of Minotaurs, and another one being a dragon. The dragon seemed annoyed mostly as it impacted it, but the Minotaurs stood no chance.
Luna began to fire magic beams at the shocked Minotaurs as she flew by, making short work of them as well.
The Dragons soon took notice of her presence as well, and began to fly after her to try to bring her down, to which she responded by slamming one of them into the side of the mountain, and sending a singularity spell at another one, ripping in half.
Combat magic had always been the Princess of the Night's specialty, while Celestia was better on healing and levitation spells. They were both quite adept in each others fields as well, however.
As Luna continued to utterly destroy everyone in her sight, she had failed to notice that her attacks were causing more damage to the mountain than everything else combined. And when the Fleet got within firing range and opened up, the stress on the underground cave system proved to be too great, and it began to cave in.
The last five minutes had not been going well, at all.
After we had gotten a move on, the shaking had gotten much worse to the point that none of us could stay upright during it. We had reached a large cavern soon after with a freaky looking throne in the middle. The place looked deserted thankfully.
All did not go well, however. The other passageways leading out of the cavern had collapsed, and so had the way we came.
“We’re trapped!” Detrax screamed as he frantically banged on the large rocks covering the exit, trying in vain to clear the way.
“We can't just stay here, we'll die!” Rainbow Dash, which I had learned her name was when I heard Twilight say it, yelled back as she flew above us, desperately trying to find a hole in the ceiling we could use to get out.
Romeo had managed to somehow find some of his gear, which included an M16A4 rifle, A 1911, and a water canteen. I hadn't had the faintest clue where he had found it, but I had come to the conclusion that he picked it up off of some boxes we passed by on our way here.
He was currently kneeling down and talking to the girl, who was sitting on the floor with her knees pulled onto her chest and her hands on her head. The fear was clear on her face.
The rest of the Ponies apart from Carl, Twilight and me were trying to aid in getting the rocks that covered our escape routes off, but even then knew it was futile.
I looked over at Twilight, who had been observing everything with fear in her eyes. “Twilight. You're smart, right? Don't you have a spell that can get us out of here!?” I said with panic in my voice as I picked her up and shook her by the shoulders, shaking her out of her trance.
“I… I can try to teleport us out, but I've never done a teleportation spell on this many Ponies!” She answered.
Carl spoke up this time. “Can't we help you?! For God's sake we apparently have the magic of the two most powerful Ponies in this country!”
“I mean… Yes! You can, But you don't know how to! It takes years to master teleporta-” I cut her off by shaking her more.
“WE DON'T HAVE YEARS!” I shouted. Perhaps a bit too loudly, as the entire cavern shook and everyone covered their ears at the volume of my voice. Twilight’s mane was even blown back the force.
She regained her composure fairly quickly and rubbed her ears. “Well… The only way we could do this is if you both reinforced the spell using your magic! It's the easiest way!”
"Great!” I say as I drop her to the floor. She falls down and huffs as she hits the stone floor.
“Okay, everypony, gather around us now!” Twilight shouted as she sprang to her hooves. Her friends immediately stopping what they were doing and doing so. Detrax followed after, will having a panic attack, and the two humans got to us last.
Twilight’s horn began to shine brightly as a purple sphere formed around the group. She opened her eyes to reveal two glowing orbs in their place instead.
“Add your magic, now!” She shouted.
“YOU NEVER SAID HOW!” Carl shouted back as she covered her head with her hooves, rocks from the ceiling now starting to fall on us.
“JUST THINK ABOUT DOING IT, FOR CELESTIA’S SAKE!”
I paused for a second and closed my eyes, following Twilight’s ‘advice’. Thankfully,said Pony had removed the 'magic suppressors' off horns. God riddance too, it had begun to bother me too much.
I imagined my magic surging through my body and up to my horn. From there, I pictured it flowing from my horn and into the magic sphere above us, mixing with it.
As I opened my eyes, Carl seemed to be doing the same with a magical yellow aura flowing from her horn and into the sphere. I glanced up and noticed I was doing it as well. The auras mixing and creating a pleasant to look at light show.
“You did it! Now to cast it!” Twilight exclaimed as her face showed that she began to concentrate more and more on casting the spell to get us the fuck out of there.
Another, much stronger shaking suddenly struck. It was easily strong enough to throw us around in directions just as Twilight finished the spell.
The spell was casted, no doubt about it. But as we were all thrown to the sides, Twilight had lost control of a now out of control yellow, blue and purple sphere that continued to expand outwards, engulfing the cavern, us, and part of the mountain with it.
Luna stood on the bridge of her flagship, observing the battle below as it was wrapped up by a final volley of cannon fire and magic spells. All the opposing side lay either dead, incapacitated or had surrendered.
“That was reckless, Luna.” Celestia said as she shook her head, glaring at her slightly. “Who knows what they had in store for us. They could have seen us coming and prepared to take us all down.” She sighed and stepped closer to Luna, nuzzling the top of her head.
Luna responded with a huff. “I can take care of myself, sister. It was nothing I couldn't handle.”
“We still haven't seen their leader, he could be their most powerful warrior, easily a match for you or me.” Celestia berated as she looked down at her.
“Hmph! I could-” Whatever Luna was about to say was cut off as a huge burst of magic suddenly flew in all directions, disorienting the two sisters.
Before anyone could ask what the fuck had just happened, a rapidly expanding sphere shot out from the rock and covered most of the battlefield, along with numerous Equestrian ships. Including the ones the Princesses were on.
To everyone outside the sphere, space time seemed to distort around it as it held it's size for a brief movement before imploding in on itself, leaving in its wake a huge, clean cut hole in the side of the mountain.
I awoke with a weak groan. Most of my extremities were in intense pain and my chest felt like it was on fire, causing me to grimace as I let out a pained whimper.
Pushing past the pain, I tried to weakly move my right foreleg only to find myself unable to. Attempting to move my other foreleg or my hind legs proved unsuccessful as well.
I began to panic as I opened my eyes and found myself face to face a large rock that blocked my vision.
“Ugh… What the hell?” I whimpered as I tried to lift my head slightly, only to find that my horn had also gotten stuck in some rocks as well, preventing me from moving my head.
As I started to regain my senses, what had happened prior began to come back to me, I remembered the spell being casted, being thrown around like a ragdoll, and then… Nothing.
”Must've blacked out by that point.” I thought as I tried to remain calm. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as my horn began to shine. A few seconds later, I felt the rocks being lifted off of me and thrown to the side, freeing me from my prison.
I groaned as my horn stopped glowing and I sat up, rubbing the side of my head with my hoof.
“Bloody hell that hurts…” I muttered as I stretched my wings out out of instinct, rewarding my ears with a few popping sounds.
After a few seconds, I took my attention away from the pain and focused on my surroundings. It looked like I was still inside the cave system, but not in the same location I was when I passed out. Gone was the high ceiling and wide walls of the cavern, now replaced by a rocky tunnel. Not as wide or tall, but still enough to fit a car through it without much effort.
Light seemed to make its way into the tunnel somehow, indicating that I was possibly close to an exit.
“Where the hell did that spell send me? I asked quietly to no one as I slowly not up, trying to ignore the pain that shot through my body. As soon as I was up in my hooves, I cautiously walked over the rocks and began to make my way towards the source of the light.
As I trotted through the tunnel, I spotted numerous Minotaurs pinned by rocks on the ground, unmoving. I stopped to look at them for a second, but quickly shook my head and moved on. They were the bad guys after all, right? I didn't need to help them.
My ears perked up as I heard a feminine groan coming from up ahead. I picked up my speed as I approached the source of the source of the noise. Turning a corner, I spotted a figure underneath some rocks. I quickly trotted closer to it and began lifting the rocks out of the way with my magic.
After a second or so of lifting rocks, the person underneath became visible, and I froze for a quick second.
It was the girl that was with the Marine. She looked pretty rough, with numerous cuts and a swollen bottom lip. A trail of blood flowed down her forehead and dropped onto her neck area once it reached her chin. Snapping out of it, I quickly went about lifting the remainder of the rocks off of the girl. Within ten seconds, she was finally free.
She didn't seem to notice my presence immediately as she sat up, the motion erecting a pained whimper as she brought her hands up to her face and rubbed it. Once she took them away, she noticed the blood on her hands and her eyes widened, panic beginning to spread across her face.
Before she could freak out further, I took a step towards her and held out a hoof. “Are you alright?” I asked. Her attention was awarded to me almost instantly, the panic in her face quickly replaced from panic and fear, to one of wonder and excitement.
Before I touch upon the sudden change of mood on her part, she took my hoof and got up, not letting go of it as she took a step closer, making me slightly uncomfortable.
I noticed was still taller than her by almost four inches, not including my horn. She didn't seem all that small either. I vaguely remembered that I had been abnormally tall when I got turned into a Pony while I was still back on Earth, but I hadn't been paying much attention to that back then.
”Cool. I've always wanted to be taller than average.” My attention as brought back to the girl as she looked up at me in awe.
“Woah… I can't believe you're real… You're even prettier in person!” She giggled excitedly as she reached behind my head and began to pet my mane.
I blinked at her forwardness, not exactly used to girls coming up to be and petting me. I began to internally question how the fuck she knew who Luna was, and if she knew what personal space was.
After snapping out of my current train of thought, I looked down at the girl with a confused expression and took a step back from her, causing her to flinch and quickly retract her hand.
“I'm sorry, but… Who are you?” I asked. I didn't intend to tell her that I used to be a human as well, figuring that playing along would prevent a whole lot of confusion and explaining.
Her eyes widened for a second as she stammered for a second before finally finding the words she was looking for.
“M-my name is Angelina, Angelina Smith.” She finally answered as she brought up her hand to look at it, and then used it to rub the side of her head in pain, if her grimace was anything to go by.
“You seemed to know who I was. How's that?” I questioned further, trying to sound a bit more regal.
“I, um…” She sighed and looked back up at me. “It's complicated, let's just say that you have a big following back where I live.” She smiled faintly.
”What kind of… Am I some sort of cartoon character of something? Fuck me.”
I stared off into space for a short moment before I looked back down at her with a slightly forced smile. “I'm glad to hear that. But let us move on to more important matters. We need to find a way out of this cave.” I said as I put on my best Luna impression, minus the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ she liked to use.
She nodded with a smile, but quickly flinched as she remembered her injuries.
“Hey, uh… Could you possibly fix my injuries with your magic? If it isn't too much to ask.” She asked in a hopeful, yet careful tone.
Now, I didn't even know you could use magic to heal, and I certainly didn't know how to do that. But if using magic was just as simple as thinking about something happening, like when I had summoned a coke bottle and used levitation, how hard could it be?
“I can try, but I'm… Not very well versed in such magic. It may not be very effective.” What I told her wasn't entirely false either. Hopefully I didn't end up messing her up even more if I fucked up.
She shrugged in response. “It's better than what I've got going on right now. Go for it!” She insisted, to which I sighed in response.
“Alright, close your eyes.” I said, and she obliged with no hesitation. There was no reason for her to close her eyes, as far as my knowledge went, I just didn't want to look like I had no idea what I was doing.
I closed mine as well soon after and began to concentrate on healing her. I made sure to picture her face as detailed as possible as I felt my horn heat up ever so slightly.
It shined brightly for a couple of seconds before it began to die down. As soon as it did, I opened my eyes, and then widened them slightly.
I had somehow done it. She looked in perfect shape. That was most likely not the case, since I only focused on her face and the injuries I could see, but it was a definite improvement.
She seemed to notice this as well, as her expression changed to one of relief as she opened her eyes and slowly rubbed a hand across her face. “Woah. That felt… Weird.” She looked back at me and stepped closer, before hugging me. I stayed still out of awkwardness as I felt a drop of sweat build up on my forehead.
“Er… You're welcome, Angelina.” I said nervously as unfolded one of my wings and patted her on the back with it.
She pulled back once she noticed my discomfort and rubbed the back of her neck, chuckling nervously. “Sorry, I got a bit carried away.” She said as she turned around towards the direction I was walking towards.
“You were going this way, right? Towards the light. Let's keep going.” She told me as she began to walk, leaving me behind to think.
I blinked a few times before following along. “Do you know where we are?” She asked as I caught up with her, looking at me in hopes that I knew.
I simply shook my head. “I almost just woke up buried under rocks too. Hopefully we find the others before we reach an exit.” I said. She looked back forward and nodded.
“What happened back there? One second y'all were casting a spell, the next I'm thrown across the room and wake up here." She asked as she looked back at me once again.
"I don't know. I had the same experience." I wasn't lying either. I didn't know what the fuck happened when Twilight casted the spell.
I certainly hoped that everyone managed to make it out alive. I didn't know how resistant my body was to physical harm, but given the fact that I had rocks that weighed hundreds of pounds fall on me and not have given me any outside injuries made me guess it was above average. I didn't know why that one Minotaur that punched me had gotten me to bleed though. Either his fists were made of metal, or that thing I had on my horn was disturbing some kind of magic shield that prevented certain level of physical harm. It still did hurt like a bitch to have all those rocks fall on me though.
She seemed doubtful for a second before nodding and turning her direction forwards.
We didn't talk much after that, just kept walking. I did catch her taking several glances at me, but nothing else worth noting.
As we continued to walk, my mind began to wonder back towards what Angeline had said minutes ago, about me, or Luna, had a large following back on Earth. Either I had somehow missed a cartoon about horses that 'had a big following', she was lying, or she was from a different Earth. I settled for the first one for the time being, seeing as it was the most logical-ish.
I was snapped out of my current thoughts as Angeline nudged me and pointed towards something further into the cave tunnel.
"I think I see the exit! Come on!" She yelled as she began to run over to where she had supposedly sawn the exit of the cave. I shook my head and ran after her, catching up with her fairly quickly.
We both reached an opening soon after, and were temporarily blinded by the sudden change of light. As soon as we adjusted, both of our jaws dropped in shock.
I spoke up first. "Are we... Are we on the fucking moon?!"
We both started out in shock at the landscape in front of us. A vast, grey wasteland stretching as far as the eye could see with the Earth hanging above us. It looked a lot closer than our Earth would though, appearing larger in the sky than the moon did in its sky. The rest of the sky was filled with darkness, not a star could be seen.
I took a step forward, only for my hoof to meet open air, causing me to almost fall forward if it wasn't for Angelina grabbing a told of my tail and pulling me back.
“The hell…?” I muttered as I looked down. We were easily a hundred or so meters above the ground, and tilted to a slight angle. I could see numerous bodies and rocks lying beneath us.
Angelina gulped as she looked at me. “Are we… On the moon?”
”No shit, Captain obvious.” I thought as I glanced over at her. “It… It looks like it, yes.” I looked back to the somewhat empty land in front of us, wondering how exactly we were able to breathe here, and why the gravity seemed so similar to the one back home.
I turned my attention to Angelina, who looked at me with a concerned expression. Before she could voice any of her thoughts, I beat her to it. “I think it's best if we split up here. I'll search the ground below, you look deeper into the caves. Sure to not get lost.” I told her as I looked back down. She seems hesitant to comply, but nodded.
“Uh… Okay, we'll meet up here right?” She asked.
“Yeah.” I answered. She nodded once again and walked back into the cave, disappearing from sight once she turned the corner, leaving me alone.
I sighed as I let myself relax. “Well, I better get to searching.” I closed my eyes and stepped closer to the edge. Looking down, it gave me a sense of unease and fear as I observed the distance between me and the ground. Despite having wings, I was still scared of heights.
“Alright, David, you can do this. You've done it before…” I reassured myself as I slowly extended my wings.
“Wait, is there even air for me to fly here?” I asked and looked back at my wings, giving both of them a quick flap which pushed me up in the air by about two feet. I fell down quickly afterwards.
I sighed and shook my head. “Harry Potter made more sense than this.” I looked back forward and crouched slightly, closing my eyes as I pushed myself forward and was propelled into the air. I waited for a second before I began to flap my wings, which prevented me from falling.
I hovered in place for a second before looking downwards and taking a dive towards the ground, hoping to find the others.
A fair distance away from the giant piece of rock that once belonged to a mighty mountain, a huge Centaur roared.
“Curse these Ponies! Who was the one responsible for the mix up?!” He roared as he stood to his full height, towering above the remainder of his command chain by over a dozen feet.
“L-Lord Megaron, it was Friar. H-He chose to go after the ones we captured instead of the… ‘real’ ones.” A Minotaur, who wore what looked like an old Soviet Officer uniform, stuttered as he lay on the ground, covered in cuts and bruises.
Megaron growled at him as he paced and forth. “Now that little mistake sent us to this damn place! Who knows how long we'll be trapped in here!” His officers flinched at the volume of his voice as a few visibly leaned away from him.
He opened his mouth to give them a proper vocal fucking, but something near the remains of the mountain caught his eye. Blinking, he turned his head to face it and narrowed his eyes, smirking once he identified what it was.
“Well, looks like we're not alone up here after all. Gather everyone you can find, we're going lunar hunting.” He chuckled at his own joke for a second, before turning his head to glare at the rest.
“Well?! Get to it!” He barked, and his officers quickly complied, beginning to search for weapons and the remainder of his minions.
He turned his attention to the blue dot flying downwards towards the ground in the distance with an evil smirk on his face.
“Is she's here… Then the rest are likely to be here too.” He growled as he rubbed his hands together in a typical evil villain fashion.
“Time to get some well deserved revenge.”
I flew over the field of rocks and bodies, scanning the ground in hopes of finding someone from our group. I had spent a good five minutes looking for them, to no avail. They must still be within the cave system.
I stopped for a second and did a double take as my eyes landed on a particular sight. Off to the far left there was the corpse of a dragon. Or what remained of it for that matter. It looked like it had been torn in half by something, it's entrails lying to its side as a literal pool of its blood rested around it.
I scrunched my nose and looked away from the rather gross sight. “Hokay, I wouldn't want to mess with anyone who could do that.” I muttered as I began to slow and angled myself to land.
My hooves touched the lunar surface shortly after as I folded my wings to my sides. I looked down at the dust and raised my hoof, looking at the print caused by it below.
“That's one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind!” I exclaimed as I giggled to myself. Come on, you'd do the same if you were in my position.
My giggling settled down as I placed my hoof back down and glanced around the area. Unfortunately, I couldn't spot neither Carl, the six ponies, or the Marine. Only the bodies of Minotaurs and the occasional dragon lay on the ground, unmoving.
Just as I was about to turn away, I noticed something glimmering out of the corner off my eye. I stopped myself and narrowed my eyes toward it, barely being able to make out an egged shaped object floating in the distance, with what looked like a boat hanging from below its belly.
“Is that an… Airship?” Before I could speculate further, I heard a heavy thump behind me, causing my ears to swivel around to try and face the noise, my head followed soon after.
Standing a few meters away from me was a fucking massive Half Minotaur half Horse looking thing, Centaur. He looked ripped as all hell, with a broad chest and biceps that probably had their own set of biceps.
My eyes widened as I took a step back, causing the Centaur to chuckle. “What? Scared of me already?” He taunted as he took a step closer. Suddenly, I felt a force grab me and pull me into the air. Before I got off the ground, I tried to grab onto the lunar surface, filling my hooves with grey dust.
As I was pulled to eye level with the Centaur, I noticed that the duel devil looking horns that rested on his head were glowing, a bright red aura surrounding them both.
I focused my eyes back to look at him in the face, which wore a wide grin. “I thought you were a Changeling when I found out you weren't the target I was after. But you have the same power as the real thing, so I suppose it didn't matter in the end.” With that, he began to open his mouth.
Inside my mind, I was freaking the fuck out. I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about, but I decided that if I didn't act, it wouldn't turn out well for me.
I quickly remembered the dust I had in my hooves, causing me to grin.
“Pocket Sand!”
Before he had any time to react, I threw my hooves out and filled his eyes with the sand-like substance, causing him to close his mouth and let out a roar. He dropped me to the ground as he lost focus on his magic.
Taking the chance, I quickly got up to my hooves and extended my wings, taking to the air a split second later.
“And here I thought they had all fucked off to hell.” I mumbled as I flew further away from the Centaur, who was cursing out a storm and desperately rubbing his eyes.
Before I could get any further, numerous large goblins with what looked like bag wings on their backs flew in front of me, bashing what appeared to be spears tipped with a dark, crystal like substance.
I had no idea what it was, but I wasn't about to sit pretty and wait while they shoved their spears up who knows where, so I prepared to fight them. “Well? What are you staring at? Cometh at us, bro!” I shouted at them as I spread my forelegs wide, gesturing them to come at me. They seemed a bit out off by my display as they glanced at one another, but shrugged and charged forward at the same time, ready to impale me with their long pointy sticks.
I waited until the last second before I shifted my body to the right and dodged the one in the middle and the one to the left, slipping right in between them. Not giving them a chance to re engage, I quickly grabbed a hold of the goblin in the center and threw him to the ground with brute force, but not before grabbing his spear just as he fell, ripping it from his hand… Claw thing.
He impacted the ground with a thud and remained unmoving, knocked out by the impact.
Using the spear, I blocked an incoming thrust as the other two Goblins turned around for another go. My left hoof remained locked around my spear as I raised my right one up, delivering a nasty right hook to my attacker. His head twisted to the side and remained that way as he fell like a rock. The punch might have been a bit too hard.
Before my mind had any chance to wander over to the topic of my absurd strength, I was quickly reminded of the last one, which was staring at his companions in shock.
Taking the opportunity, I threw my spear up in the air slightly and pulled my hoof back, grabbing a hold of the end of the spear swiftly before throwing it at him at high speeds. It passed straight through his left shoulder, erecting a sharp cry of pain from him as he was forced to the ground from the force of the spear.
I looked down at the defeated trio, and was about to make a snarky comment, before another road filled the air, causing my attention to be brought back to the Centaur, who was looking at me with red, rage filled eyes.
“I'll take that as my cue to fuck off now, bye!” I didn't give him the chance to reply if he did hear me as I sped off into the distance, keeping a hold of the confiscated spear in case I would need to use it again.
I heard him let out another roar of anger as I flew away, followed by the sound of projectiles flying past me. Bolts of red and green energy hissed by as I began to Bob and weave around, trying to make myself a harder target.
“Can't these jackasses just bugger off already? What the hell do they even want from me?!” I gritted my teeth as I dodged another bolt of what I presumed was magic, not willing to let any of them hit me as long as I could help it.
“Fuck this.” I shouted as I took a dive. The shots were soon directed once again towards me as I slowed my descent and hit the ground, turning around to face the source.
Five regular sized Goblins, accompanied by a much larger one, easily three times my size, were quickly gaining on me as they continued to fire in my direction.
I knew that on the ground they would likely hit me sooner or later, so I decided to try and use my magic to shit on their parade. My horn was set alight as I began to concentrate, imagining a shield around me. And soon enough, a shield that matched the colour of my aura surrounded me on all sides.
They continued to fire their shitty star wars knock off bolts at me, now becoming more accurate as I remained stationary. They couldn't land a shot however, as they all bounced off of or were stopped completely by my shield, leaving me with a triumphant smirk.
They soon stopped firing once they realised that they were doing jack shit to me, and settled with hovering a couple of dozen meters away from me, the largest of them glaring at me.
“You think your weak little shield will save you, weakling? I, Captain A-” Unfortunately for him, he barely got to start his monolog before he felt himself being slammed down into the lunar surface. Over, and over, and over again.
After the tenth time, I finally released my telekinetic grip on him, leaving him in a body shaped crater.
“Sorry, my dude. I'm not interested in buying whatever you're selling.” My smirk remained as I turned my attention back to the remaining five.
“But I am, however, interested in delivering some serious ass kicking.” I said as my wings unfolded and I took to the skies, hovering in place just at their current height.
To emphasize, I levitated my newly acquired spear next to me.
I haven't paid attention or updated this story in a while. The latest chapter right now sits unfinished at about 1-2k words in my docs, and most of my drive to continue writing it has been lost.
The truth is, I don't like my own story. Well, not completely anyways.
I first started writing this back in 2014 and by god it was awful. You think those earlier chapters are bad? You'd vomit out of your eyes if you saw what originally took their place. I thought it was a great story back then, but as time went on and I tried to roll with the stuff I had given myself, well... It started to feel like more of a chore than an anything. I had to force myself to write new chapters, and wanted it to be done and over with as soon as possible. It led to a lot of shitty chapters that I'd avoid editing like the plague, afraid to see what monstrosity I had spawned previously. I know people generally criticize their own work at a much harsher level than their readers, but I was downright afraid to read what I had posted for the entire website to see.
With that all said, I still like the concept. God knows there's not enough human-turned-Luna stories, and too many human turned-Nightmare ones. And the ones that do exist are either dead, or poorly executed. Like this one, actually.
I want to start clean on this idea, instead of having to follow the path I set for myself years ago. That means re-writing this entire thing from the ground up. Completely new story, and a new main character.
The concept will remain the same, obviously, and the comedy aspect would remain largely untouched, save for the retraction of the stale memes I seemed to want to force into the ending of every chapter. There's fresher memes now.
But I'm not sure if I should go for it. On one hand, I'm probably not going to pay much attention to this story, leaving it effectively dead for months on end. And on the other, I could give myself much more room to expand and do things right if I re-wrote the entire thing. Before I did anything that drastic, I wanted the opinion of you guys. What should I do?
Should I try and keep this going for as long as I can? Or do I start fresh?
Regardless of what I do, I plan to leave this story up. The re-write will be drastic enough to deserve a separate template, so I don't think it would break any rules.
Show me the way, brothers. And we will find the Queen.
