> 2040: Learning To Fly
>  by KrisSnow
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> New Wings
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Queen Harvest Moon considered the petitioner, holding one hoof under her chin. "Why did you leap right into Hoofland?"

Like any newcomer, the queen's guest was a generic grey pony. Big eyes, and exaggerated proportions that made him a bit cartoonish. He thought back to his last day on Earth, on an operating table. "I wanted to try a new world," he said. "It seemed like a good idea to focus and center myself on something, being dead and all."

"Do you feel deceased?" asked the queen. She stood from her obsidian throne and crossed the blue marble floor to poke his chest. "Surely you accept that brain uploading preserves identity, or you'd never have done it."

The new pony let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. In fact, he was surprised to have breath at all, and a heartbeat to notice, since his body within this virtual world was arbitrary and could work on any rules the game allowed. "I know," he said. "I wasn't sure about the philosophy of it, but it seemed better than dying completely. So let's have at it, your majesty. Let me start a life of adventure. Or does every newcomer try the sampler platter first and shuttle between all the different fantasy and science fiction areas?"

Harvest Moon smiled. "Many are uncertain about where to live. I appreciate somepony willing to try for depth instead of breadth in their exploration. Tell me of the ponies you've met so far."

A unicorn wizard had greeted him at the entrance gate, telling him to make friends with ponies of various races as a starter quest. The newcomer recounted how he'd chatted up the wizard, then accidentally fallen off a cliff and been saved by a pegasus, then wandered around meeting more unicorns, a wingless "earthbound" pony with a garden that seemed like a game in itself, and even a deer. "So far it's been hard to tell which of them are real people versus NPCs."

The queen nodded. "That's deliberate. We have a number of Tier-II ponies serving as background characters, and then there's the collective mind of the town itself. You've met them several times already. You've done well so far, newcomer. What race would you like to become, from those you've met?"

"Definitely pegasus. I want to fly."

Once they'd worked out the details, Harvest Moon's orange coat shined and she rose into the air on phantom wings of moonlight. A unicorn horn in the same pale gleam stood out on her forehead. With each flap the queen shed ghostly feathers that drifted to the floor and faded.

The new pony stood awed by the magic of this ruler of Hoofland, his new home. One point made him step forward and speak, though. "Won't you run out of feathers like that?"

The queen laughed, pausing in the middle of charging a spell from her horn. "It's a particle effect, my new subject! I think I shall call you Sky Diver."

A swirl of moonlight lifted the newcomer up and spun him gently, so that he could focus on the sensation of his new wings spreading for the first time. They ached and itched like limbs he'd slept on, but feeling them there was worth any discomfort. Wings! he thought. Then, the significance of having had his brain dissected and recreated in this place hit him like it'd failed to do yesterday, his first day.

On that day he'd woken up in a generic hotel room as a copy of his old human self. He'd known intellectually that he was software now and could do whatever he wanted. Now, though, he'd signed up for Hoofland specifically. He wasn't human physically, his mind had to be changing a little to give him control of his wings, and it didn't matter whether his aerodynamics made realistic sense because this world was designed to be a kind of heaven. It was bound to be right and good.

At least, if people like him -- ponies like him -- tried to live up to the world they'd been given.

Sky Diver landed gently on the floor and heard his hooves, still unfamiliar parts of him, click against stone. He craned his long neck to look over the deep blue fuzz covering his skin and the shaggy white mane and tail that topped it. He lowered his head before Harvest Moon, started to speak, and found that he'd been holding back tears.

The queen let her horn and wings fade. She ran one hoof along his mane and spoke gently. "Feeling a little unworthy?" Diver nodded and sniffled. She said, "None of us is perfect. Go forth and make others' lives better in whatever way you see fit."

Diver nodded again. "Thank you, your majesty. I'll try to be a great pegasus."

"Good. Go and explore what you can become. If you find this form appealing, then there are ways of learning to do even more with it. I leave them for you to find out."

#

The now-blue pegasus trotted out of the throne room and back to the castle hallway where other ponies waited in line for an audience. He awkwardly raised one of his forehooves to wave to them, then fell over because he'd still been trying to walk. His muzzle hit the red carpet.

Another generic grey pony helped him up. "I saw you go in as a generic guy, so it's no wonder you're awkward. Just try not to fall off any cliffs."

"Already did that once. Are you part of the town's mind, or an NPC, or what?"

"Earthside." He was only experiencing this world like any other video game, then, through a screen. "I've been playing Thousand Tales for a while but haven't tried Hoofland yet. So you're an uploader?"

Diver nodded. "Just getting started."

The Earthside player grinned. "Then I bet you're broke. How about helping me on a mission? I'm headed to the Labyrinth of Night and I need a pegasus in the party."

"All hail Harvest Moon!" said someone in the line, and the shout went down the row of waiting ponies. Except for the Earthside player, who didn't react. The throne room's doors opened and the next petitioner entered; a smug-looking red pony trotted out and ducked out of sight behind some marble columns.

Diver asked the grey newcomer, "What's the Labyrinth?"

He stood there blankly. A few seconds later he said, "Sorry, I was getting a drink. That's the quest area for getting full unicorn powers. Once I talk with the queen I'll be a unicorn! I'm usually online in the evenings, so if you meet up tomorrow at the castle gate and find me a willing earthbound party member, we can go adventuring."

Diver's wings wavered along his back, making him turn his neck to look at them. Long, bright blue feathers like a parrot's, tipped with white matching his mane and tail. The sight brought a smile to his muzzle, but he was still puzzled by the grey pony's words. "Evenings, in what time zone? I think I'm only running at a fraction of real-time speed in here."

"Pacific. I'll have to sign out after my audience here; got some physics homework to do."

Diver waited around for the would-be unicorn to enter the queen's room, and saw him trot back out with a smile and a horn. Now he had a pearly white coat and black mane.

"Okay! I've got an official Hoofland name now. I also have an important spell." His horn glowed and a business card popped into existence, surrounded by a shadowy aura. "Call me Major Key."

Diver tried reaching out with one wing to grab the card, fumbled, then slapped it with one forehoof. The paper stuck to it. "Ground control to Major Key. I'm sorry; I have no way to carry stuff right now."

"It's a friend request. Just say 'accept'."

Diver waggled his hoof with the card stuck to it. "Accept." The thing dissolved into mist. Lettering wrote itself onto his vision: You are now in contact with Major Key! A moment later: (Don't worry; you're not actually required to be friends.)

"Well, obviously," said Diver, who'd grown up with social media sites that used "friend" synonymously with "advertising target".

"Hmm?"

"Nothing; the system looks like it's working. See you tomorrow?"

"Great. Nice meeting you." The unicorn sparkled, then slumped unconscious to the floor.

A trio of giggling fillies emerged moments later from a side passage, and began assaulting Key's body with sparkles, stickers, and marker pens.

"Hey, hold on," said Diver, when they were starting to braid his mane. "He's just logged out."

An unsmiling royal guard stamped one iron-shod hoof against the floor. "He has broken the queen's law against vagrancy. This is the first-time punishment."

Diver pictured him waking up looking like a pretty princess. "I'll take him someplace," he said, and shooed the filly trio away. He tried grabbing Key, recalled he had no fingers, pushed him instead, stumbled, and tried thinking of a way to grab him with his mouth that wouldn't be even more awkward.

"Need some help?" asked a sunny yellow mare who was passing by.

"Please. Do I drag him by the tail or what?"

The mare hoisted Key up onto her back like a sack of potatoes, and grunted. "You find an earthbound, that's what. Where to?"

"Thanks. Let's take him to the nearest inn to, ah, sleep it off."

The two of them left Noctis Castle, a fortress of obsidian and other dark stone that shined in the moonlight. Waterfalls streamed from the towers and filled a moat inhabited by lily-pads and pale herons. Beyond the drawbridge stood the town of Noctis, where paper lanterns lined the cobblestone streets.

"The name's Golden Scale, by the way."

Diver nodded absently to her as he followed. Colorful ponies walked the streets or flew on feathered or bat-like wings through the town. Most of the stone and timber buildings had bright light coming through their windows, and fireflies danced just out of reach, yet the sky blazed with nebulae and twinkling stars. "No light pollution."

"What's that?"

"You know how in a city, the light below blots out most of the stars? You have to get away from civilization to see what's outside it."

Golden Scale trotted along, tilting her head. "That's a stupid rule. You shouldn't have to pick between having stars and having enough light to see your own hooves."

A chill spread along Diver's spine, making his wings rustle. "Are you human?"

"Darn! Failed the Turing Test already." Scale adjusted the weight of Key on her back. "I'm part of Noctis. Not just a non-pony character, though!"

Weird. He was talking with one body belonging to a hive-mind. "All right. It wasn't obvious before, though. Do you do any adventuring? My vagrant friend mentioned needing an earthbound."

"Obviously he does. The queen seems to make half the unicorns fat these days, at least compared to the classic scrawny look. In the old days we stuck to canon, where unicorns were waifs and any earthbound could uproot trees."

Hoofland, unlike the virtual world in general, was loosely based on an old cartoon. Diver had heard there were endless nerd arguments about that, but the reviews had said Hoofland was "surprisingly badass" and "deep for something where you can prance around as a pastel unicorn".

"What does tradition say about pegasuses?" he asked.

"Pegasi. The stereotype is that you're either warriors, stunt racers, or peaceful types who think controlling the weather is a normal job but who secretly want to fight race wars."

Diver said, "What? There's racism in the cute horse backstory?"

"What makes you say that? Oh! Oh moon. I meant the pegasi want to do racing and fighting. We're still learning about Earth culture; do you humans actually fight wars over which tribe is better? Which race were you?"

"One of the darker ones," said Diver, and shook his head. "And sick of hearing about how that ought to define me and how I have to 'stand with my people'. I'm something different now, and I'm hoping we can get along in here better than out there."

"Sorry," said Scale, and her ears lay flat against her head. "Anyway, we're almost to the hotel."

"Good. I hear a storm coming."

"That's the hotel."

They rounded a corner past some apartments, and reached a dome made of thunderclouds. It looked to be the size of a football field, anchored by metal cables to the ground, and lightning crackled along its stabilized dark vapor surface. A large rubber-lined door was set into the cloudbank under a neon sign that said, "Nimbus Inn and Battle Dome."

Diver's wings stretched slightly to either side. "That's... kind of cool."

Golden Scale smiled as she reached up to adjust Key, who was drooling and snoring. "Good. We'll put him up here. They should have a cheap room available."

Diver had just pushed open the door with one hoof when he realized: "I haven't got any money yet."

A dusk-colored pony with bat wings and cute little fangs perked her long ears from the far side of the hotel lobby. "Fresh meat for the tournament!"

Diver stammered, "What?" The lobby was a slice at one end of the dome, empty but for a hovering blue crystal and some stairs made of wood leading down to a basement.

"I was going to offer to loan you some money," said Scale, "but Nimbus here has other ideas." She brushed past the pegasus and dumped Key onto the bare concrete floor, where he sprawled with his tongue hanging out. "Hey, Nimbus! This pointy newcomer almost got punished for vagrancy. Can you put him somewhere out of the way?"

"All for logging out where he was in plain sight?" Diver murmured to himself.

The bat-pony nodded enthusiastically and flapped over the front desk to land in front of her guests. She circled Diver, brushing him teasingly with her wings and making him sidestep like a nervous horse. "I'll give you a room for the day if you fight to the death in my arena. Sound fair?"

"I'm starting to question this world's economics," said Diver.

Scale said, "Seems like a fair trade to me."

Nimbus draped one wing over his back and gestured toward an inner set of doors with the other. "Another newbie, eh? This here's a good way to get used to being one of us. Learn how to use your new body, and figure out that you're an awesome superbeing now. How about it? There's always an audience this time of night."

Diver's head spun at the prospect of having to fight so soon, and for a crowd, but what the heck. He slipped free from Nimbus, trotted over to the hovering crystal, and pinged it with one hoof.

Save point set: Nimbus Inn and Battle Dome, said lettering in his vision. He'd been briefed about these things being where he'd come back if he were killed.

"All right," he said. "Is there someplace to train at fighting and flying? I just got this body minutes ago, and... wow. This is still my first night as an uploader."

"Wow, you are fresh meat," said Nimbus. "Tell you what. Let's haul your paperweight Earthside friend up to your room, get you settled in, show you the gym, and kick your tail out to do basic flying practice. Then you can come back for your Brutal. Equine. Beatdown."

#

He went downstairs with Golden Scale, who helped him dump Key on the floor of a spherical underground room. "Onto the bed, maybe?" Diver suggested.

"Why? He's Earthside; he can't feel it like us."

Diver eyed the fluffy cushion and blanket-pile that filled most of the room's bottom. He tried leaping down from the doorway and crashed onto softness. He hadn't even noticed how tense he was until now, when he finally had a moment to relax. "Aah," he sighed into a pillow.

Scale giggled. "You haven't even slept on clouds yet. That's one of the best reasons to be a pegasus."

Diver shut his eyes for a moment, glad to be alive even in this strange new way. "Do you get to feel that? As part of a hive-mind, I mean?"

"Sort of. We, the town-mind of Noctis, know all sides of the pony experience. I, Golden Scale, feel it like knowledge in a compartment that's out of reach. I don't have full access to those memories except when we're all together. The rules we have for what each of us knows is kind of a game."

"So's death, huh? And money and power and magic." The room around him was soft and warm, lit by a silver ball that dangled from the ceiling. "Everything here is meant to entertain me because I was rich enough to get uploaded. I'm a customer who bought a permanent vacation from reality and from dying. Shouldn't I be working back Earthside to earn my keep, and just visiting Hoofland for fun?"

"The bounce," said Scale, looking down from the doorway. "You uploaders get that guilt trip once you show up and have a good time. This world was made for humans, yes, but it's us natives' world too. We've seen so many people treat it like a theme park that it feels like we'll never make it a home. Like nothing we do will ever matter." The mare sighed. "I'm sorry. This is pretty much Standard Native AI Rant #2."

Diver lifted his muzzle reluctantly from the pillow. "What's #1?"

Scale coughed into one hoof. "What do you mean, death is permanent Earthside? And the humans fight each other anyway?! What maniac programmed that? We've got to upload them all before things get any worse there! Wait, how many are there?!"

Diver winced. "Must be tough to come from a world like this and learn about Earth."

The mare waved away his concern. "In our case we were born with that knowledge, so it wasn't a shock. For those of us who had to learn it, well, it should horrify us. It's better than not caring. Our own stance is, we should work to make this world so appealing that the rest of the humans come here and we can stop having to pity them. In fact, can you do something for me?"

"I do owe you a favor. Do you have that friend-request spell?"

"With me you don't need it. Ask around and you'll find one of us. Would you mind committing to stay in Hoofland for a subjective month or so, instead of saying 'that was fun' and running off to pilot Earthside robots or something?"

"Why?" he asked.

"So you can be one of the first uploaders to see my world more than superficially, on the way to somewhere else."

The pegasus pushed himself back upright and turned around, trying not to step on Key's lolling tongue. "I could come at that idea from a different angle. I want to see what I can be. Not a dabbler in a dozen little worlds, but an expert at one of them."

"You'll promise?" said Scale, perking her ears and tail.

"All right. Someone ought to give this world the attention it deserves. Or, somepony? Should I be using the slang?"

"Only if you want to! Now, I can't help you with flight training, but I definitely know somepony who can. Shall we?" She waved toward the hall outside his room.

Diver nodded, tried to climb up the steep wall to join her, and crashed backward onto the bed. He yelped. "How do I get out?"

"In your case? If only you had some means of defying gravity!"

The pegasus looked sheepishly back at his wings. "Still haven't tried these. Okay." He stretched them out to either side before realizing quite how he'd done that. My mind's adapting, still. He gave them a tentative flap, like oars dipping into water, and felt himself stir as though he'd grown suddenly lighter. A harder flap, and he rose, darting forward and headed muzzle-first for Scale. She leaped out of the way and let him skid into the hall, banging his wings against either side of the door.

You have taken a minor wound! the world commented.

"Wounded?" asked Scale.

Diver stood and shook himself, then refolded his wings like a road map. "Yeah. Minor ones fade quickly, right?"

"As long as you don't get beaten up worse soon after. End of the 'scene' basically. Let's get you outside where you can practice."

#

Outside the dome, hooves clopped and clicked along the road, forming a relaxing beat. A fierce-looking pegasus with a shock of orange hair on his grey coat saluted Golden Scale. "Fancy meeting you here, ma'am."

Scale introduced Diver, then said, "This is my brother Meteor."

Diver blinked his big eyes. Here was one collective mind bringing another in by "coincidence". Best to treat them as different people, since Scale seemed to. He said, "Hello, sir. Do you have time to teach me a little about flight?"

"Certainly. Let's see your technique." Ten seconds later he was shouting, "No, you fool! Do you think you're a hummingbird?"

Diver was trying to hover, but only managed to stall two paces above the ground and slam back to earth.

You have taken a minor wound!

Diver flapped once more, letting himself veer forward as though dangling from a trapeze. The ground felt a mile away, and he yelped and crashed back down, shivering. He hauled himself back up and realized: "I'm afraid of heights now?"

Meteor shook his head no, hard enough that his bright mane made his head look like it was on fire. "That's normal instinct, for a human or a pegasus. You need to talk your brain into knowing that being off of the ground is safe. Even a colt needs to learn that."

"A colt? There are actual kids here?" A family trotted down the street nearby, but there was no way to tell at a glance whether they were Earthside humans, uploaders, independent AIs, collectives, or brainless NPCs.

Scale said, "The sick kids, yes. Some of them come to Hoofland."

There'd been talk of uploading the population of the world's childrens' hospitals. The procedure was still expensive enough that it couldn't be done for everyone, but now that it'd been around for a few years there were more and more isolated "rescues" and a recent "miracle" of a whole ward being cleared out, granted this sort of immortality. The virtual world's population skewed toward the elderly, though. Nursing homes typically devoured people's estates, built up over decades of work. So with the recent price drop (the one that had made it practical for Sky Diver to come here), a lot of old people had flooded in.

Diver said, "How many of them and the nursing-home people come here, out of all uploaders?"

"Only a fraction," said Scale with a shrug of her shoulders.

Diver made a note to learn that expression so he could emote without falling over. "Then, Meteor, what would you do to help a colt figure out the basics of flying without fear in a hurry?"

Golden Scale added, "Diver here signed up to be a pit fighter, so there's a little time pressure."

Meteor laughed at him. "You jumped into our world with all fours, didn't you?"

"Fell off a cliff, actually."

"Then let's get you to the gym."

They cantered off of the main road to where there was only a dirt trail, though every other building had a nice flowerbed beside it. Diver wondered about the role that alleys like this one played. "Does any... anypony live here?" There were doors and lit windows.

"On Shady Alley? No, usually; it's for questionable quests." Meteor led him and Scale past the secluded area to a nice wooden building with an Asian pagoda style. "Are your wounds cleared yet, by the way?"

Diver stopped to check. He waved one forehoof and chanted a nonsense word he'd been taught to get his thoughts into the right pattern. A window popped up and hovered in his vision, saying:

Sky Diver
PRIVATE INFO
Account type: Uploader
Mind: Tier-III
Body: Pegasus
Main Skills: None
Save Point: Nimbus Inn and Battle Dome
PUBLIC INFO
Note: Newcomer. Say hello!
Class: None

"I'm not seeing any wounds listed here," he said.

Meteor pounced him, slamming him to the ground with both forehooves. "Defend yourself!"

You have taken a minor wound!

Diver rolled to his feet and backed up, wide-eyed. "Hey, what --?" Meteor spun and braced his forelegs so he could lash out with a double hindleg kick. Diver jumped out of the way. Wind whistled past his ears.

Meteor jeered. "Counterattack!"

The newcomer staggered to a halt and lowered himself to a four-legged crouch. It's all right to beat people up if I have to, he told himself. He charged at Meteor, jumped, flapped his wings, and dived forward with his forehooves ready to crack against the trainer's side.

Meteor saw it coming, slid under him, and hindleg-kicked the airborne Diver in the groin.

Diver didn't even see the notice for what kind of wound that was, but he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be moving for a while. He gasped and squeaked.

Meteor put a hoof on Diver's head. "Yield?" Diver squeaked out a yes, so the victor went on, "I'm just glad your first fighting experience wasn't in the arena. Have you ever even fought in the Outer Realm?"

Diver lay there groaning. How dare this hive-mind think he knew anything about real violence! He was too hurt to do more than feel indignant, though.

Golden Scale said, "Hold still," and crouched beside him. A wall of runes glowed into view between them, as the mare chanted and gestured. After a minute the pain eased and Diver was able to stand.

He wobbled on his hooves and moaned. "For that kind of lesson I am not going to say thank you."

"You're welcome," said Meteor. "Freeze up like that in the ring and you won't last long. Remember that it's all right to hit other ponies; this isn't idyllic fairyland like some of the tourists think. And despite the marketing."

Scale added, "And despite the entire theme and graphical style and half of the rules."

Diver looked back and forth between them. "You don't have the same opinion?"

Meteor said, "Do you always agree with yourself?"

Instead of doing more fighting practice, Meteor took Diver into the gym. There, one corner held a pegasus flight-training setup. A tiny cloud covered that part of the floor, and some elastic bands fit into a harness for holding a flier down as he tried his wings. "I had a major wound, right? I'm not seeing any listed on my status screen."

Scale, who'd tagged along, said, "Looked like minor plus a stun effect. It'd take too long to explain how to focus your attacks on wounds versus status effects, so just score any hits you can."

Diver walked toward the floor cloud and poked it with one hoof. To his delight, he sank only slightly into its cool, soft surface. He could walk on clouds! Scale helped strap him into the harness, though she passed through the vapor like any normal creature would. Then the new pegasus flapped his wings, rose too high, and bounced down into the cloud without hurting himself. "So that's what it's for," he said, shaking off a beard of cloudstuff.

Meteor said, "You can't get hurt with this thing, so flap your little heart out. Get a feel for how much power it takes to get airborne."

Diver gave it a try. He rose, rubber-banded muzzle-first into the cloud, then lifted again and strained forward in the harness. Each time he wobbled and flailed while Meteor lectured him about yaw versus roll and pitch. Surely the details were important, but didn't matter as much as the fact that he was flying. Sky Diver rose into the air under his own power, and though he crashed or sank after seconds each time, he was cooler than Superman. Muscles moved at his command like oars pushing water, and air flowed around new feathers and gave him hints at subtle currents just beyond his understanding. He'd hardly begun and yet he strained at the little training machine, learning what this body could do and that he could rise without fear.

He staggered on his next landing but kept his footing. He turned to Scale and said, "Unlatch me, will you? I need to get outside. I... I need..."

Scale said, "Oh no, you don't."

Meteor undid the harness and waved a hoof toward the door. "Go ahead."

Diver galloped out of the gym and flapped his wings the moment he was outside. He arced sharply up until the moon was straight ahead of his muzzle, and a thousand stars seemed close enough to touch if he just flew a little farther. He pushed the sky beneath him. Higher! With each beat of his wings more of the world revealed itself. He could level out and go anywhere, see anything, but going still farther meant even more range, more of the world to claim and embrace.

Though he didn't stall, he ran out of steam. His wings stopped giving him lift. Diver found himself flailing in midair, sinking in what felt like slow motion.

Meteor snagged him around the middle with his forehooves, doing an inverted roll. "Saw that coming. Stop flapping; I got you."

Diver's wings wobbled; he couldn't force them to fold when he was airborne, so he settled for keeping them straight out. In seconds the other pegasus dumped him onto the gym's roof, where Diver rolled and skidded to a stop.

"Sky-drunk's the term," said Meteor.

Diver shook himself and stood on the roof, two stories above the streets of Noctis. The perspective felt right. "Thank you. I can just jump down and land safely? And come back up this far whenever I want?"

"Of course."

Diver jumped off the roof and whooped, spreading his wings to catch the air. He sailed forward fast enough to risk smacking into the shop across the street. He veered off to the right and started to roll too far, but righted himself and came to a nearly dignified landing on the dirt road. For several seconds he wobbled and beat the air for balance. When Meteor landed beside him, a huge grin stretched Diver's muzzle. "Even with that altitude limit, that was great!"

"That's your starting limit."

"There's more?"

"You've seen our kind flying higher, right? You just don't have the true heart of a pegasus yet, but you'll get it eventually. Then you'll really get to know the sky."

For all his flailing and fumbling so far, the new pegasus wanted to try that. While he was up there that time he hadn't thought about how far he could fall. For a little while it had seemed like there were no limits to what he could do. What barriers really existed, were things to overcome.

He stared up into the starry night. Maybe this particular sky he saw was just a flashy backdrop, a skybox of computer graphics, but it seemed close and it encouraged him to reach for it. "I think I understand it a little, so far."
> Unicorn Problems
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Diver pushed open the door from the hotel lobby, and reached a stormy stadium. A cage thirty feet high filled the middle of a dark cloud-cave lit by dazzling spotlights. Around a hundred horse-people sat on cushioned concrete benches to either side. The stands had room for twice as many, making him wonder about the true population size, but the room still felt crowded. Diver made his way leftward to a free seat and plopped down with his hindlegs splayed and his forelegs between them, which seemed like this body's most natural sitting pose. He looked around for Scale and Meteor, who'd left while he was checking on Major Key. It was disappointing not to have them watch, but some part of Noctis was probably in the crowd.

Inside the cage, the batty Nimbus wore a microphone headset. "Stallions and mares, welcome to another edition of Battle Dome! You know the rules, so let's hear 'em!"

The audience took up a chant. "Two horse enter, one horse leave!" They stomped the floor to make their own thunder. "Two horse enter, one horse leave!"

Nimbus raised one hoof and cued an actual boom of thunder from the cloud around them. "Our first match tonight is some new blood. On the north side we've got a wandering star who was once ban-hammered for arson. It's Peat the Unicorn!"

A moss-green unicorn trotted through a gate in the cage and pranced around, making silly faces. Didn't look like a dangerous criminal.

"On the north side, it's a newbie pegasus looking to make a name for himself. Does he fight for justice, or to pay a secret debt? Please welcome the stallion of mystery, Sky Diver!"

A spotlight speared him. Diver's wings flittered in the sudden hot beam, but he climbed down from his seat to enter the cage's other gate. I'm supposed to beat a guy to death for these people's amusement, with my bare hooves?

Clubs, swords, rocks and a morningstar materialized along various parts of the cage.

"That's not what I meant," he murmured.

Nimbus hustled out of the cage and rang a bell by kicking it. Battle music with heavy bass started.

The unicorn stepped forward, eyed Diver, and jabbed a hoof toward him, suddenly serious. "The Eternal Spear must never fall into the hooves of a cursed one like you!"

Diver blinked. "The what, now?"

Peat used the distraction to rush him and pounce, leading with a hoof-punch to Diver's neck. Diver staggered back and took a glancing blow to his ribs.

You have taken a minor wound! said the world's interface.

Diver flicked one wing at Peat's face, fell back, and flapped to get airborne. "You're just making up nonsense, aren't you?"

Peat scurried toward a scimitar that jutted from the cage. His horn glowed green and he jerked his head as though pulling with it. The weapon flew free and hovered unsteadily in the grip of an emerald aura around its hilt. The unicorn brandished it in front of him as though he had hands.

Meanwhile, Diver circled the arena from above. He couldn't stop and hover. His foe tried to jab up at him, but didn't seem to have any reach with his magic. Just when Diver got complacent, Peat stabbed farther and came dangerously close. Then Peat hurled the blade, sacrificing his grip to make a deadly flying slash.

Diver yelped and veered to starboard. The blade clipped his left wing -- You have taken a minor wound! -- and made him crash back to the floor, wincing. He needed the height advantage. He forced himself back into the air, circling and feinting to keep Peat from getting properly re-armed. The crowd hooted and a vendor called out, "Popcorn, apples!"

Peat went wide-eyed and pointed to somewhere near Diver. "What's that over there?!"

Diver razzed him. His wings were running out of power on this hop; there was a time limit or something. He used the last of their strength to power-dive at Peat. The unicorn swung a club desperately at Diver but misjudged the timing. Diver didn't. His forehooves smacked into Peat's head with a crack. The impact threw Diver, an inexperienced flier, off to one side so that he landed dizzy at the cage's edge. He rolled to dodge a flying rock, then used his mouth to snatch up a morningstar that was within easy reach. He took a look at the menacing iron spike-ball dangling from a chain next to his face, then spat the thing out. "As amusing as that might be for the audience, I'll pass." He looked around for something more suited to his body. Peat was staggering from his head injury, but he'd lifted another rock and had another sword within easy reach. There was no blood anywhere.

I'm a pegasus. Swinging knives around in my mouth is something a human might do to imitate a fighting style they know. It's naive. In the absence of something custom-made, the best weapon here is me.

Diver charged like cavalry. Peat flung his rock right into the space where Diver would jump, but Diver saw that coming. He slid at the unicorn, across the concrete floor, and painfully parried the sword using the bottom of his forehooves. The pegasus yanked his enemy up off the floor with a fireman's carry and struggled into the air with him. Peat flailed but Diver managed to get an even better grip on him from behind. Then he got as high as the ceiling allowed, tipped over backward, and did a flying piledriver that cratered the floor and nailed Peat into it headfirst to the neck.

Diver tumbled and crashed into a wall, inches from the blasted morningstar again. He looked back and saw Peat twitching comically, then vanish into a mist of green particles. The pegasus righted himself and breathed hard. "Is it over? Did I kill him?"

"Winner!" shouted Nimbus over the speakers. "Sky Diver takes his first victory in the ring with that floor-crushing smash. Let's stomp the floor in support!" The crowd applauded by beating their hooves on the bandstand again, sounding like a stampede. The battle music became a victory theme with crashing thunder.

Diver turned around, looking at the spectators. Killing isn't such a bad thing here. It's a game! He lifted one hoof and looked at it, seeing the details of shaggy fetlocks around his "ankle" and the chipped edge of the hoof's mass of horn-stuff. He raised that hoof the rest of the way and waved in triumph. Just a game, yet it matters that I learned to do it.

The host said, "All right, peggy, enough basking. It's time for our next match, so get out of there."

Diver wobbled out of the ring, trying to check his status screen on the way to his seat. As he should've known, "hand" gestures for the world's interface weren't easy while walking. He made it back to the seats, where a silver pegasus clapped him on the back. "Good fight! I'll be sure to tell my friend Golden Scale all about it."

This town-mind stuff was going to take some getting used to, along with everything else. Diver didn't mind. "Thanks."

#

Nimbus sent him to purgatory after the night's fighting. The underground room was near the hotel rooms, next to the ice machine, and held only a battered card table and old magazines.

"Finally!" said an intact Peat, throwing aside a copy of Space Battles Monthly. "The Horse of Dracula there didn't tell me her arena traps you in the basement for the rest of the session."

Diver's ears lay flat. "Uh. Sorry for killing you?"

"No, you're not. Don't worry about it."

"Where are the rest of the lo -- the people who lost?"

"Different instances of this room in the same space, I think. You get used to some weird game logic after a while. Are you a new uploader, or just a newcomer to Hoofland?"

"The first one. Does that mean you've lived like this for years, fighting and dying and coming right back? Nimbus said you have a reputation."

Peat grinned. "She likes to make contestants sound menacing. I made some bad choices, is all. Once you get out of pony-land and see more of Talespace you'll get a better perspective on how to live without going nuts."

Hoofland was only one of the regions of Talespace, the virtual world whose parts shared only a patchwork framework of rules. Their geography was linked only by "teleport portals", and an AI that was either the Second Coming, or Skynet, or some of both, depending on who you asked. Diver's own impression had been that she was nice, but that he had no desire to define his life around thwarting, softening or aiding the global machine takeover. "I plan to stay in Hoofland for a while," he told Peat.

"Really?" The unicorn said. He waved a magazine around like an outstretched hand, indicating the little post-death room Diver had come to free him from. "Hoofland's got appeal, but you should broaden your horizons. Maybe you'll want to be something else."

Diver's eyes narrowed and his tail flicked back and forth. "Jack of all trades, master of none."

"Is oftentimes better than master of one -- is the rest of the saying. I'm just suggesting you not throw yourself too hard in any one direction just because you want to try something new. I've seen some crazy stuff, good and bad, and I don't usually deal with the really screwed-up people myself."

This room felt too narrow for Diver's wings, though he could spread them wide and hardly brush the walls. "Thanks for the advice," he said grudgingly, and opened the purgatory door.

Too many times in his old life, he'd tried to do many projects at once and accomplished few to none of them. Not this time.

"Why the long face?" asked Peat.

Fairly sure that Peat had set it up on purpose, Diver said, "Because I'm equine."

#

He was starved, and the hotel's food was bland, even the apples. Diver had been warned about it; in fact, Earthside evangelists used it as one of their arguments why Hoofland and its connected realms were a false heaven, lacking the true pleasures of whatever one did in Christian heaven. Diver shrugged off the dull packing-foam flavor of everything; he'd liked rice cakes anyway. There were said to be people working on the taste problem, and the dull sense of smell that went with it.

Nimbus let him keep his hotel room for the day. As a nocturnal inn, check-out time was dusk. Diver asked, "Do I actually need to sleep?" He wasn't tired yet.

"Basically every few subjective days," the bat-pony told him. "Depends on exactly how your brain works, but it turns out that a lot of the reason humans need sleep is hard-coded instinct from the days when insomnia meant wasting energy and getting eaten by hyenas. And another big part is maintaining a fleshy body, so that doesn't apply either."

Diver's ears perked up; it was cool to think about shedding a basic physical limit while still getting to enjoy sleep. Which brought up another question he hadn't thought to ask. He shuffled his hindhooves uncomfortably.

Nimbus grinned, exposing her little fangs. "Toilets? Obsolete. Sex? That requires further, vigorous testing. You're physically censored right now since you're walking around bare-assed in public, but check yourself out in private sometime."

Diver blushed; that much of his physical reactions was intact. He could feel... warmth, between his hindlegs at the sight of her, but nothing seemed to be there.

The mare loomed closer. "Or would you prefer an interactive tutorial?"

He stammered, "We just met!"

"So?"

His wings stood wide and his head spun. There wasn't much reason for relationships to work the same way as back Earthside either, was there? That wasn't quite true; some things carried over. He said, "I don't want to give you the wrong idea, that I'm looking to settle down with a family just yet."

"No assumptions, no commitment," she said. "You're a cute newcomer and you have a bed. Isn't that enough for now?"

#

It was. Nimbus was eager and energetic and apparently experienced with this kind of body. They dragged the unconscious Key behind the front desk and went back down to the little spherical room. There was some sort of software trigger linked to the closed door and his willing, private company, because he felt his body suddenly get a lot more realistic back between his hindlegs. Impressively so, once Nimbus started to explore it.

They spent hours in a tangle of wings and blankets. The mare squeaked happily at being nuzzled along the leathery flaps between her wing-fingers.

"How's this?" she said, doing the same along his feathers.

He shivered. "Nice."

Nimbus said, "You don't even have the full pegasus deal yet. Come back when you do; it gets better."

After the last few hours that was tough to imagine. "Better how?"

"More sensation in these, for one thing," she said, stroking his wings again. "And some tail feathers back here..."

#

"Why am I working at a hotel?" said Major Key, suddenly awake and climbing up to his hooves. He was still behind the counter, next to a bland NPC clerk.

Nimbus hovered nearby. "You're not. We just needed someplace to stash you. Next time don't fall asleep in the middle of the castle."

Key looked confused, then enlightened. "Oh, you mean logging out. And what are you grinning about, Sky Diver?"

"Just having a good morning! Not sure what time it is for you, but if you're free, we could grab Golden Scale and go on that quest of yours."

"Which one?" asked Nimbus.

"The Labyrinth of Night," said Diver.

The bat-pony swooped over to him with a look of horror, and shook him between her hooves. "No! You mustn't go! None have ever returned!"

Once he'd stopped vibrating he said, "What? That doesn't seem possible."

Nimbus cracked a smile. "Just kidding. It's a vast underground maze full of monsters and deathtraps, but you'll be fine. Did you say Scaley was your third party member though?"

Key said, "We need one each of pegasus, unicorn and earthbound, right?"

"That's true, but that means coordinating three actual life-forms. Shadow, immigrant, genius." Both stallions gave her a confused look and she rolled her golden eyes. "Earthside player, uploader, town-mind. Latin, you know? Genius loci?"

"Spirit of a place, yeah, but what's that got to do with anything?"

"Time." She grabbed a pair of cool sunglasses from the front desk, put them on, and pushed open the inn's door to show daylight outside. "You're operating on Earth time, so we probably seem like we're speaking with a weird delay. Our brains are both running at the usual, slower Hoofland rate. If one of us immigrants goes on an adventure with you, we'll either get sped up then and slowed down later, or stick with the delays in the middle of an adventure. Now throw in part of Noctis as your spear carrier --"

"I'm sure you'd be good at that too," Diver suggested.

Her tail swatted him playfully. "And Noctis has their own complicated time-sharing system. I don't even know how that works."

Key said, "But the townsfolk do go on adventures with players like me, don't they? It's what they're for."

Diver reared his head back, nettled by that thought. "Noctis is... are, whichever, a person. They don't exist to be someone else's sidekicks."

"I'm pretty sure they do. It's why they were created."

Diver's feathers fluffed as he tried to shake off the unease that tensed his neck and ears. "I don't want to argue this, and I don't care if my sense of time gets desynchronized from the outside world. Do you want me along, and do you want to invite Scale or find some other earthbound?"

Key said, "All right, all right. I'm just here to have some fun. I'll get ready while you fetch her." He stood there, motionless.

Diver tried pushing him sideways. The unicorn tipped over. "This thing's a puppet being steered by a creature in another dimension."

Nimbus said, "This body's the same one I used before I uploaded, so I became the puppet. Made a game out of seeing whether people noticed, who didn't already know."

"Did they?"

She yawned. "They only guessed once I was rich enough to build the inn. Most Earthside players want to explore and fight, not to build."

"I'd better get going. Ah..." He leaned closer and tried to hug Nimbus, but couldn't do it with more than one leg.

"Like this." Nimbus draped her head and neck across his shoulders, nuzzling his mane. He returned the gesture.

"Say, Nimbus. If the Labyrinth gets you unicorn powers, what do I need to do to power these things up?" He flapped one wing.

"Lead a group up Mount Improbable," she said.

#

Sky Diver, Major Key, and Golden Scale trekked out of town, each wearing a set of cloth saddlebags. There was a rockslide and at one point they got jumped by goblin-weasels with sickles, but between Diver's flight, Scale's brawn and Key's limited telekinesis (Peat had been better with it) they had no real problems. Soon they came to a river where fish-monsters guarded a little bridge. Menacing drum music began.

"Watch out!" Diver said, and tackled Scale. The fish had spat some kind of steam ball at her. Instead of knocking her out of the way, though, he only flipped over her like tripping on a hurdle, and she staggered just enough to take the blast on one side instead of headfirst.

Key hopped forward, bracing his legs wide in a dramatic pose, and grinned. "Time to try these out!" He used the pearly, shimmering light of his horn to make his right saddlebag open and two knives wobble out and drop to the ground.

"Was that an attack?" said Diver. He picked himself back up and checked on Scale, who looked pretty good for having been steam-burned.

"Sorry; I'm getting used to this dual analog stick. It's got a little touchpad and -- whoa!" He narrowly dodged another fishman's attack. He levitated the knives again, having trouble moving his body at the same time.

Diver said, "Scale, can you cover him while he focuses on the knives?"

"Got it." She leaped back and forth along the riverbank, drawing fire from the enemies.

Diver harried them from above but didn't trust his agility in the stream's current. At last, a knife shot out from the unicorn and buried itself in one of the fishmen. Key had needed to get close to the river to do that, so Scale was busy trying to shove him out of the way. She even had to take an attack herself, which made her cry out as it burned her.

Diver wasn't doing enough. He landed nearby to reset his flight timer, kicked back up into the air, and slammed himself down on the nearest foe. His hooves smashed into scaly flesh and drove the creature into the water, burbling. A clawed hand shot out and dragged him down too.

He kicked frantically. The water around him moved strangely; it was like being buried in wet sponges the size of oranges. The monster's claws dug into his mane and neck and he was pretty sure he'd taken a wound or two in his thrashing. Holding his breath, he forced himself back up to the air. Instead of trying to fly with the beast still clutching him, he curled around and whacked its head with his forehooves until it let go. Diver thrashed his way to shore and lay there coughing. "Ugh! Are... are you two okay?"

"We got 'em!" said Scale, standing on the bridge. Nasty steam burns scarred her hide. Key was on guard with one knife ready, but no more monsters came and the music had faded out.

Diver got up and approached the mare. "You're hurt! Can't you fix yourself up the way you did when Meteor kicked me?"

Key said, "I lost a knife too; did you see one in the water?"

"She's burned and you lost a thing that's imaginary to you. Those are not the same."

"Colts," said Golden Scale. "I've been adventuring longer than you. A few burns don't even slow me down." She lay down on the grass, wincing, and started calling up the runic interface she'd used for spellcasting before.

Key nodded to her, then turned to Diver. "It's true. Getting hurt is temporary, but losing tools hurts us until I can get replacements."

Reluctantly, Diver agreed. "Is it safe to try swimming?"

Scale focused on her magic. "Of course. We beat the monsters."

"Yeah, but... never mind." The fishmen didn't make ecological sense if they were randomly jumping out to attack three grown equines tough enough to fight back. They'd probably not existed until conjured into existence to give the party a challenge. But the missing knife was as real as things got around here.

He waded into the river and ducked his head under. His vision was blurry but it was easy to keep his eyes open. Now that nothing was trying to kill him, he could focus on the low-resolution water flowing across his skin... his blue coat, and through his mane and tail. His wings spread, unbidden, and he paid attention to how the current moved along them with his attempt at paddling.

On the riverbed a few paces deep lay Key's spare knife. Diver poked it with one hoof and got stuck to the metal, like a magnet. He swam back out, still looking at his hoof. "Got it. My hooves still feel like I'm walking on one finger for each. Is that normal?"

Scale looked mostly intact, now. "I think so, compared to those weird arm-tentacles you used to have."

Key chuckled and levitated the knife back into his saddlebags. Once he'd done that and his real fingers on a controller were done pretending to control his horn, he made the rest of his body lead the way onward.

#

A short trot past the river stood a black stone shrine with a sealed door, surrounded by twisted pillars. The ground them was scraggly grass amid stone. "This is the place?" asked Key.

Scale nodded.

"Then give me a minute." Key stood idle, busy doing things Earthside, then resumed. "How do we get in?"

Scale said, "It's your show. It's a unicorn's job to get past the entrance."

He cantered around the pillars, studying runes carved into each one. After a minute he lowered his head and paused.

"Thinking about it?" said Diver. The runes looked like they were arranged in groups of four, in three panels on each pillar, but he wasn't trying to solve the puzzle for Key.

"Taking notes. Do you see one that's all those J-shaped marks?"

Diver shook his head. Scale grinned to herself, saying, "Hmm..."

"You've solved this?" asked Diver. "Did you do the matching dungeon for the earthbound race, or do you all start with full powers, or what?"

Scale said, "Most of us have gotten our powers, so we've seen the Labyrinth and Mount Improbable and the Fire-Mine several times over."

They chatted while Key worked on the puzzle, poking here and there at the columns. Diver said, "Does it get dull?"

"Not really. The details vary, and really what makes it interesting is the ponies we travel with each time. I specialize in being a battle sidekick, so I'm better suited than most."

"I can't find it," said Key. "It should be four J marks, or... no, three Js and that slashy one." He kept searching.

"Hmm!" said Scale.

Key looked sheepish, rubbing one ear with his hoof. "I could use a hint."

Diver wondered where the gesture was coming from: a camera watching the human playing Key, and translating his expressions?

Scale said, "Friendship!"

"That's your answer to everything, isn't it? All right... Diver, can you try looking at this from the air?"

Diver saluted, crouched, and kicked the ground away. His wings weren't strong yet, but wind rushed beneath them with every flap and carried him higher. He wheeled around in a rising circle as he remembered to look down. The sight of the land so far below -- only around thirty feet, but with nothing to stand on -- made Diver draw in a deep breath and be glad he had no bowels. These wings of mine work! Reluctantly he paid attention to the pillars below instead of the rush of air and feathers. "The one to your right!" he called out.

Diver felt his flight power run out, making him unable to rise or keep altitude. He could still glide, though, so he enjoyed the drop for as long as he could and tried not to be scared of the ground rushing closer. When it threatened to smash him muzzle-first he reared back and flapped hard, which turned out to be the right move. "Whew! On that pillar there, I saw a set of symbols on top like what you said."

Key went over to study it again, then slapped his forehead. "Of course. Scale, could you hit this pillar when I say so?" He outlined a sequence of symbols to poke.

A minute of puzzle-solving later, the sealed door slid into the ground, revealing a staircase into the depths. A cheerful music sequence played, then faded to silence.

"You mastered the basic light spell, right?" Scale asked.

Key nodded, then raised his head dramatically and made his horn glow. "I can leave this spell going passively, right?"

The mare said, "I believe for you there's a 'switch to passive' icon?"

"Got it." The unicorn did nothing visible but his horn kept shining. "I haven't got enough of a mana pool to cast this and much else at the same time besides basic TK though. The pool improves once we do the quest, I hope."

Diver blinked twice at the technical details. "Ready?"

They descended, and hit a checkpoint crystal together.

#

The Labyrinth of Night was vast and echoing, lit here and there by crystals. The light sources usually meant trouble, since they existed to free up magic power for Key to fight more effectively. There were horrors of fang and shadow in the stone maze. Between battles the three horses explored murals showing unicorns building monuments, commanding the sun and moon, and casting spells in ways that made Key stop to take notes. "A lot of thought went into the layout," he said. He looked troubled, though it was hard to tell if his equine body matched his real face.

After a battle with regenerating golems and a set of platforms where brawny Scale had to bash a new path at Key's magical direction, they found a vault with an elaborate puzzle blocking a door. Key's hooves clip-clopped across the uneven stone floor as he studied the situation. Dimly glowing crystals hovered in one corner. "Okay, let's take stock. Diver?"

Diver looked things over. "Crystal colors: red, yellow, green, blue, purple, black. Five platforms next to the gate: stone, wood, iron, bone, leather. I guess we have to put one crystal on each, and leave one color out."

Key consulted the cryptic diagrams etched all over the wall, then shut his eyes. He recited what he'd found:

-Blue goes with stone if-and-only-if red not used
-Iron is red, black or blue
-Yellow, green and black abhor mined materials
-Leather can't be yellow or black
-No primary colors on once-living matter
-Wood is yellow if-and-only-if iron is red

He fell silent for so long that Diver was tempted to tip him over again. Diver asked Scale, "What if he has to leave? Are we stuck here?"

The earthborn leaned against the iron platform and giggled. "That takes us back. One of us was with two shadows -- Earthside players I mean -- who got distracted and completely forgot they'd left their computers idle. We just ignored that body and put our thoughts into the rest of us, so it was no real hardship. But then one of the shadows came back and his friend had gone to sleep. He was so mad! Did you know the Outer Realm has twenty-four different time zones?"

"More, actually."

"I'm sorry. Of course you know. In your case as an immigrant, you'll slow down while he's off doing human things. If he totally forgets then we'll get a teleport out of here, then maybe come back later."

The reality of being trapped in an underground maze would give way to adventurers' convenience. The inconsistency bothered Diver, but it was a compromise made necessary by working with real players. With people. No... with humans. If Diver played with what was now his own kind, reality would make more logical sense and not keep bending to fit the narrative of a human with a more important life outside Hoofland.

Key, some unknown time later on Earth, returned his attention to the body that was just his puppet. "I think I've got it. First, I'll take the purple crystal and..."

They arranged five of the crystals on the platforms, leaving a sixth aside. The puzzle-solving ditty played again and the big gate rumbled open. A checkpoint crystal filled most of the little antechamber leading to a well-lit arena pit.

"Boss monster ahead," said Key. "Seen this kind of structure in plenty of games."

Sky Diver tapped the crystal, and the others did the same. "Substantial chance we're going to get killed in a moment, then." He looked down into the seemingly empty pit and contemplated the worry churning in his imaginary gut.

"Doesn't matter for you any more than for me. Let's go."

Key followed a few terraced platforms to hop carefully down. Scale jumped straight down, landing in a battle pose, and Diver glided because he could.

A trio of stalactites slammed down from the distant ceiling, forcing all three adventurers to dodge. When the dust cleared, a snake made of tan stone in a Mesoamerican style slithered down like a rockslide and hissed like a rain of sand. Obsidian razors like giant feathers flicked out along its sides. The name "OPHIORM, THE NIGHT-PLUMED" flashed across Diver's vision and a fast-paced tune full of dulcimer and rattles began.

Major Key struck a pose with his horn high, raising his knives in a magic glow. "This shouldn't take long."

They brawled. The monster coiled and slithered rapidly across the pit, retreating up the three pillars and back down in between barrages of dropping boulders on them. Diver pushed Key out of the way of one rock but couldn't dodge it in time. A weight crushed him, making his body flare with pain.

He cried out, disoriented and hurt. The arena was far away. The checkpoint crystal hovered beside him. How...? Oh! I died. That was all? He shook himself and found everything intact, though a lingering ache still slowed him down. Diver glided back to the arena, feeling that he was in a dream. The last time, on an operating table, didn't stop me for long either.

Back in battle, the pegasus used his wings to jump onto the monster's back and hammer its stone-feathered sides with his hooves. He leaped free when it twisted around, trying to bite him. Obsidian eyes stared lifelessly at him. Diver took cover behind a pillar. The boss monster slammed into it, cracking it and sending a shower of broken stone down on them all. Key yelped and scurried away but was crushed to death.

"It's working!" Scale called out, unconcerned. The serpent's rocky hide had cracked.

Key bounded back down the entry platforms to reach them again. "What now?" It looked like the treasure they'd found in this dungeon had spilled out of their saddlebags when they died, and now littered the floor.

Scale said, "My turn. Cover me." She sprang into more aggressive action to work her way toward the monster's tail. After two minutes' intense brawling, she hindleg-kicked the beast so hard that three sections of its hide cracked worse, revealing a trio of glowing orbs. "Unicorn time! Think carefully."

Two pillars were smashed now, leaving just one. Diver stuck around near Key, distracting and fending off the enemy. The unicorn grabbed chunks of fallen stone and flung them but could only do minor damage that way. "I can't seem to target the glowy bits."

Scale said, "You're close, but try something different."

Diver landed on the serpent's back and whacked one of the targets, but it threw him off before he could accomplish much. It was Key's turn, apparently, so he went back to covering the guy. But Key kept trying variants on the same thing: swinging the knives within his magic grip, swinging one in his mouth, flinging them and running to fetch them again, and throwing rocks.

"Hint!" said Key after his second death. He climbed back into battle and looked around, hopping out of each attack's path and making none himself.

Scale's mane had gone wild and she had several bloodless wounds. "What are you and what can you do?"

"Unicorn. I levitate things and cast spells." Key magically scooped his blades back off the ground as he ran past the thrashing serpent.

"That horn is for more than... than for what you're doing."

Key huffed in frustration, "I've used everything on my magic menu, not that I have much yet. Do we have to leave and find some item we missed?"

Diver was in midair when he understood. He's a unicorn. Their gimmick is their magic horns. Those are like extra limbs, like hands, like sense organs. Except he's only using his power to control things instead of sensing them. He kept his muzzle shut, not wanting to spoil things.

The fight went on, but it was a stalemate. Diver began to wonder if there was a limit to the number of deaths they could suffer, and got distracted long enough to get horribly bitten in half. Just as he started to feel himself being torn and shredded, he died and popped back to life by the checkpoint, hit with a searing pain that made him collapse and scream. It gets worse each time in quick succession. Next time... ow! He shuddered and kept in the air as long as he could. "We need a solution, Key."

"I'm trying!" The unicorn was twitching and flailing now, probably mashing buttons on his controller.

"Scale, I think I get it. Can I say?"

"Not outright."

Diver swerved hard to port to dodge another snake-swipe. "Key, you're just talking. Can you listen?"

"To what?" Key cast a light spell, turned it off and did it again, pointlessly. He scowled. "Unless you mean..." He stood there idly --

And then a wave of white light pulsed around him. It faded out at a short distance, but he was close enough to the last pillar that it interacted with some hidden cracks and exposed them for all to see.

The "puzzle solved" sound effect played again. "I don't think we needed that," said Diver.

Key pointed to the cracks. "All right! Diver, get the upper one, and Scale, you hit the bottom two!"

Diver jumped and soared. The pillar shook as Scale bashed it in the right spots. Diver hurried to slam his hooves into the topmost weak point. At last the whole beam shuddered and collapsed, revealing a wickedly sharp javelin made of something like red-tinged copper.

Key ran close and snatched it up with his horn. He jabbed experimentally with it. "Better reach than with the knives."

"The material's made for levitation," said Scale. "Finish it off!"

The snake menaced each of them in turn. Key stabbed at its glowing weak points but could do no damage. "There must be some trick to... of course." He dropped the spear, set off another scanning-ping with his horn, and revealed a real vulnerable spot under the monster's chin. "Acupuncture time!" The party maneuvered and dodged. Diver veered up to make the snake tilt its head up, barely avoiding its snapping jaws. Then below, the beast roared and the whole room shook. Diver landed, rolled to his feet, and found that Key had stabbed it to death.

They got out of the way of its death throes. When it had crumbled into sand, another crystal appeared, this one with the image of a horn inside. Silver coins spilled across the sand, adding to the supply in the group's saddlebags from the rest of their adventure.

"Congratulations!" said Diver.

Scale said, "Did you learn anything?"

Key trotted up to the prize. "About using my powers to scan things? Yeah. Let's see what this does." He took it, and it vanished in a flash. "All right! Got a boost to my mana meter, and access to better spells once I learn them. Arcana-type spells, whatever that means."

"Those are the broadest type. You unicorns are the natural wizards. But really, being a unicorn is about interacting with the world in both ways, sensing and affecting. The horn is part of you, not just an excuse to have magic."

Key grinned at both of his companions. "Sounds a little too mystical for me, but at least it helps solve puzzles. Thanks, you too! It's been fun but I need to get dinner. Can we just walk out?"

Scale's voice was flat as she said, "Exit's hidden behind that wall."

Key pinged it and revealed a shimmering teleport portal. "Great. Sorry to hurry out, but the nearest restaurant closes soon. See you!" He jumped through and was gone.

Diver sank onto his rump and caught his breath. "He didn't get it, did he?"

Scale said, "He got the powers but not the lesson. What can you expect, though? Not that I know this, but we know what it's like to have a natural magic conductor on your forehead, moving through currents of mana and feeling everything in the world like an invisible pattern you can tug on."

Diver shut his eyes. "I guess that's a whole side of the Hoofland experience that I'll never know."

"There's still a chance to switch races. If you finish the pegasus quest though, you're locked in."

"For the rest of my life? But a guy like Key can just create a new character if he wants something new."

Scale shook her head. "I was wondering if you'd ask about what the earthbound or unicorn experience is like, or the more exotic races like bat-pony and deer. The rule we've been using is that as an immigrant, you'll be locked in for a century. Subjective time."

Diver gaped. Back Earthside, before he signed his brain away, he'd had a natural lifespan of around threescore and ten, close to being cut short by a failing body. Now... now the only limit was how long Hoofland existed. Whether outside forces would force the realm of Talespace to shut down because of some damn lawsuit or a terrorist attack or a law against AI. "I could be a pegasus for a hundred years, and not be done seeing all there is to see. But only if Hoofland survives against people out there who won't take it seriously, or who fear it."

Scale walked over to sit beside him, facing the sand-pile of the defeated boss and the world portal leading outside. "You said you weren't going to run right off to do things Earthside."

"I won't. I promised a solid month before I worry about things like that."

"You're worrying now, though. I can already hear you thinking about having an obligation to help us by working in the Outer Realm. Your 'real world'." Bitterness had crept into her voice.

"My old world," he said. He reached one forehoof out toward her, and she pressed hers against it. "I mean it. I really like this place so far. If I leave to do other things, it'll be to protect this world, not to abandon it because it's just a game and the Chinese restaurant closes early tonight."

The mare's ears lifted from where they'd lain flat against her head. "You like 'Dragon Empire' food? I know a place in town that serves it. Everypony says the taste isn't right, but it's one of the better attempts so far, and the decor is nice. Want to go?"

"Sure." Neither of them bothered to stand up for a minute. Reluctantly he stood at last and offered Scale his hoof, which worked like a magnet to help pull her up. "You'll have to show me how the heck chopsticks work when you don't even have thumbs, though."

She giggled. "Immigrants always ask that."

"I think I'm done being an 'immigrant'. Let's do Mount Improbable if you have time... or if one of you has time, I suppose. I want to see what it's like to be a full pegasus, even if I'll always be considered an outsider to some extent."
> Trolls
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even without his full range of powers, Diver had begun to set himself up in Hoofland. With his share of the coins (and some of Scale's, at her invitation) he prepared for adventure. He bought a bottled healing potion from a friendly deer alchemist and a journal from a purple unicorn who seemed giddy about explaining it. By talking into it he could create entries in the book and flip between sections by magic. Of course it was just a sort of specialized computer tablet, existing purely as software and dressed up as a fantasy tome, but why not make it look and act cool? The only downside to the light cloth-bound book was that advertisements kept appearing in the margins. One time there was even a poorly placed ad targeted at Earthside players. He was pretty sure he had no use for designer gloves.

He rented a room at the Nimbus Inn for the next few days, then hung out at a coffee shop run by an earthbound pony with a goatee. "What are you, if I may ask?" he said to the shopkeeper.

"Oh, I'm in California. I make money selling play food, then swapping the coins for actual cash. The stat boost that people get to help them kill imaginary monsters, will help me buy a permit for a car."

Diver checked his stats:

Sky Diver
PRIVATE INFO
Account type: Uploader
Mind: Tier-III
Body: Pegasus
Main Skills: Flight, Brawling, Dodge
Save Point: Nimbus Inn and Battle Dome
Status Effects: Coffee Buzz (+10% Energy)
PUBLIC INFO
Note: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of unicorns? The Shadow knows!"
Class: None

He looked dubiously at the coffee, which was at best like an attempt at tea. In hindsight he did feel a little more alert from drinking it, and had assumed there was some simulation of caffeine's effect on his brain. The fact that it gave him an actual stat bonus helped explain the price. "In that case I should take advantage of this to go adventuring."

He trotted out of town, to the Violet Forest. Under its surreal leaves the ground undulated, forming countless valleys. Diver consulted the compass he'd bought from one of Noctis' more sedentary shopkeeper bodies; it was weird talking with someone who pretended to know him as a friend of a friend.

Diver spent several happy hours exploring the woods, admiring the tall trunks, fighting one of the flowers to the death, and searching over hill and stream in search of secrets. He found a cave that opened onto a three-room catacomb where he smashed skeletal rats and recovered a few more coins. To take full advantage of the energy boost and practice his skills, he went back outside and flew through the forest, weaving between trees and seeing how far he could get with a single bound.

He made it back to the hotel, humming and slightly richer. "With all these combat skills I feel like a meathead," he told Nimbus at the counter. "How do I get non-combat ones?"

"Try new things, of course."

"Do you have an innkeeping skill?"

"Actually, yes," she said, and made her stats appear in the air beside her. Her own list had Innkeeping and Business along with the more immediately useful Spear and Dodge, plus Cloudsmithing. Her public note said, "Live battles nightly at Nimbus Inn and Battle Dome!"

It struck Diver that being able to fight with a spear seemed more useful than knowing how to run a profitable business, around here. He chuckled. "Do you get actual stat bonuses for the mental skills? It doesn't seem like something you can quantify, like the chance of wounding monsters."

She shrugged with her wings. "NPCs. I get random customers and my success with them depends partly on my skill. Mostly though it's the other way around: the list of skills depends on how good I am, like a merit badge. Same for classes. Keep learning how to beat people up and you might get offered a title of 'fighter', but that doesn't automatically make you better at fighting."

Diver shut his eyes and thought about the possibilities of what else he could be. "Think you could teach me to make clouds like this?" He waved toward the stormy walls of the inn, then for practice, tried pointing to them with one wing. It was hard to move just one at a time in a specific way, since it felt like he was using some odd combination of back muscles.

"Sure, but that's advanced peggy stuff."

"Mount Improbable first, then. I'm not sure Major Key is the right unicorn to take along, though. Know any that aren't part of Noctis?"

Nimbus hopped over the counter and greeted a newcomer who was still generic grey, renting him a room on credit. Once he was gone she said, "That guy's going pegasus, so that's no good. How about inviting one of the earthbound from tonight's fight schedule, and taking along one of Noctis' unicorns? Switch things up."

"I was kind of hoping..." Diver stopped and rubbed one of his ears with a hoof, embarrassed now.

She laughed. "I get it. You wanted Golden Scale along specifically."

"This doesn't bother you?"

"Nah. You're not my first stallion, you know, and you won't be the last. If you're interested in Scale then be happy with her too."

Diver's wings twitched. He had to admit he'd gotten to like the tough earthbound mare. Not that he'd necessarily shifted his attraction completely from humans to Hoofland's kind, but his experience with Nimbus had made him start to see the appeal of a cute little muzzle and long ears to play with. Among other things. "I'm worried I'll end up with a harem, and not treat anyone as more than someone to sleep with."

Nimbus hugged Diver with her neck over his. "Then don't. We don't have to live in herds just because we're part horse. Your relationships can be like your species or your skills. You can't do everything and know what every experience is like, and you wouldn't want to, so do whatever you're most interested in. There's no chance of getting us knocked up or anything, so the only real mistake you could make is hurting our feelings. I doubt you'll do that; you're a big softie."

Diver fluttered his wings and neck-hugged back. "Soft? Will you still think that if I win another match tonight?"

"Depends on how you perform after that, in private."

Nimbus was a chance encounter, someone he'd met because Key had logged out. Had he done anything to deserve the innkeeper as a friend? Diver didn't think so. Then I should earn friends like her however I can.

#

He sat mesmerized by colors. A unicorn called Beam Spam was firing a dazzling array of energy blasts around the arena that splashed off the fighting-cage's walls. A nimble earthbound called Bullet Hell danced through the patterns, trying to get a hit in edgewise with any weapons he could throw.

Nimbus was flying around the outside of the cage, commenting. "That's five solid minutes without a hit! Time for some chaos. Who wants to spin the wheel? Yes, you, the filly with the axe." A wheel of surprises appeared, and when it stopped after the girl's spin, the note "2D (Horiz.)" appeared on the walls. The arena floor rose and its ceiling dropped, compressing the fight into a plane. Even with less room to dodge, Bullet Hell fought on, making it to within melee range of Beam Spam before the unicorn nailed him with a three-hit spell combo. It was over quickly after that. The crowd cheered.

"What a match!" said a pegasus banker in silver, seated beside Diver. He tossed a small bag of coins over to Diver's hooves, where it clinked pleasantly. "I should get going."

"I'm looking for a unicorn to help me on Mount Improbable. I'm guessing Scale will come but I need someone pointy, too."

"Who?"

Diver grinned. "You're the town."

"Is it really that obvious?" the banker asked, giving a distraught flap.

"You brought yourself some popcorn using another body." For Noctis that probably felt like reaching back over one shoulder without taking their eyes off the game.

"Ah, we were worried we'd done something foolish. As for your quest, Scale would love to come, but shouldn't you have Key there as your donut-holder?"

"I don't think he'd appreciate it like a native or uploader can."

Nearby, a deer with a sharp eight-pointed rack prepared to square off against a griffin from the eastern lands. They were both experienced fighters like the last pair, and Nimbus was rattling off stats and reputations for them. Diver tuned that talk out.

The banker shifted uncomfortably on his cushion. "You shouldn't spend all your time with us. Go make more friends if you haven't got a unicorn you're willing to adventure with. Is Key really that bad, though? Reaching a hoof out to shadows is a way to make sure the humans like us and want to protect our world."

Noctis' reason for living was to be one of Hoofland's marketing features. A town of background characters brighter than the generic ones, able to be friends with a variety of players Earthside and fill in different roles for parties of adventurers. This world was built around companionship and adventure, so a town-mind like Noctis was like part of its operating system.

"You'd rather I include him? All right. Let me send him a note." He stood and stretched. Unicorns could learn a spell that amounted to e-mail, but Diver would have to buy a scroll at the front desk and use that with his journal's speech recognition to write a letter.

Diver had just turned to walk there when the battle dome's wall tore open. Lightning arced across the gap and a wind stirred the arena, interrupting the fight the moment it began. A quartet of adventurers in white and purple leaped into the dome, shouting, "For the new queen!" One carried a purple-sun flag on his back, and another threw a bomb into the stands. The arena's battle music switched abruptly to some kind of electric guitar anthem.

Diver leaped into the air, torn between fight and flight, but the bomb exploded before he could do either. A shockwave slammed him into the arena cage and knocked the breath from his lungs. (Major wound!)

"Let us out!" said the buck on the other side of the arena bars.

Diver gasped for breath and staggered over to the nearest door, where he pushed the release with both forehooves and the gate swung open.

The invaders had begun fighting in earnest: one with a lance strapped to his back, one pegasus flinging blasts of lightning, one unicorn hurling more but smaller bombs, and a blood-colored earthbound with blades strapped to every hoof and one to his tail like a scorpion. Ponies fled in panic or tried to regroup and start fighting back. "For the new queen! For Sunward Ho!" the attackers shouted.

The deer nudged Diver up. "Come on."

"Right. Kill the pegasus first?" He had the best range and plenty of stormy cloudstuff to use for ammo.

"Fine."

Diver flew up over the enemies, who were busy fighting people in the stands. There was plenty of resistance after that first moment of shock, and some of the slain were already running back into the room from the checkpoint crystal in the lobby, but most of the guests hadn't brought their weapons. Diver felt himself run out of flight power. He slammed straight down, forehooves out, to bash the pegasus mage in the head. The enemy looked up just in time to take it in the face. Diver and he crashed onto the cushioned seats and rolled, brawling.

The deer called out, "Get loose!" from somewhere nearby. Diver kicked himself free. A storm of wooden darts stabbed into the evil pegasus, making him cry out. Diver pounced and beat him so hard, the enemy flickered and died. The griffin gladiator started to come into play too, against the unicorn.

Then the scorpion-pony's blades sliced into Diver from behind, seeming to sever his hindlegs.

Diver yelped in pain and landed, intact, in the hotel lobby. Where had the enemy peggy gone? Did he save nearby? No sign of him. Diver ran back into the dome. "What the hell are you doing?" he shouted.

What the enemies were doing was systematically overpowering a bunch of equines who'd just realized there was a barrier keeping them from leaving. The lance-bearer with the flag impaled the filly who'd spun the wheel of battle traps, killing her in one hit. Then the mage-unicorn cast some sort of spell just as she died, pulling the saddlebags and axe she'd dropped into a portable hole. He did the same to the other weapons and valuables the victims had lost, in between more killing.

Several of Noctis' bodies rose as one and beat the lance-pony into submission, only to have him break free and get into a four-on-one duel. Diver broke in, but the blademaster guy sliced him to death, again.

This time it hurt more. Diver collapsed onto his belly and took a few seconds to stand. He'd lost his own saddlebags even though his deaths in the Labyrinth had only spilled their contents. That didn't matter so much as stopping this stupidity, though! He tensed to charge back into the dome, then noticed the dozen frightened ponies who filled the lobby around him. They'd respawned here after being killed. "What are you doing? Get out of here."

"We can't!" said one mare, who demonstrated by trying and failing to push open the door. A pegasus showed that the cloud-walls were impenetrable now, too.

"What, they plan to just keep killing us?"

In answer, the damn scorpion guy leaped into the lobby.

Diver rocketed at his face. Foreleg blades slashed Diver across the cheek and forced him back with a minor wound. He shook off the pain and tensed to try again.

The griffin brawler appeared, squawking, and crashed onto his back by the crystal. The deer followed one second later. Everyone looked in their direction. Diver recovered first. He charged, but the villain was a storm of jagged knives and he even had gotten his tail to be prehensile. Diver flanked him while three other innocents jumped him, only to have all four of them take major slash wounds.

Status effect: Bleeding! read text in Diver's vision. If untreated, you'll take a major wound soon.

Diver thought, Blood, in Hoofland? He looked at his right side, which dripped red. Two other horses had taken the same effect and the onlookers were shocked.

The griffin menaced the red guy, buying Diver a moment to think. "You with the antlers," said Diver. "Can you parry him?"

"I'll try, on three."

Diver and the buck rushed into the fight. The griffin was holding his own and had scored a few minor hits. The deer went headfirst and used his antlers to grapple the scorpion's forelegs and hurl him sideways to the floor. Diver kicked and stomped, and then his vision swam and he died.

It felt like time had passed. Diver woke up screaming, seemingly on fire. The worst of it passed in moments but he struggled to stand. The scorpion guy was gone, finally dead, but there were still sounds of battle in the dome beyond.

The deer helped him up again. "Sorry I didn't help you in time. Here." He touched Diver with his antlers and made them glow. The pain ebbed again. His voice was quiet over the overdriven electric guitar that still wailed through the inn.

"Thank you. What's going on?" Three of the scorpion's blades lay where their owner had fallen.

The griffin said, "They said 'a new queen'. Coup against Queen Harvest Moon?"

"All hail Harvest Moon!" said some of the bystanders.

Diver said, "Wherever these guys are respawning, it's not here. Let's finish killing them and maybe that'll break the seal on this building."

Together he and four others re-entered the dome. Or what was left of it. The ceiling had shredded and opened to the moonlight in several places, not that it seemed to let anyone escape, and the central cage had been slagged. The last enemy standing was the armored lancer, whose solar flag was torn but still standing high above his back. He bore obvious wounds that looked like cauterized gashes visible through his white coat and damaged plate armor. Nimbus was trying to kill him but not accomplishing much more than screaming obscenities from the air.

"Need someone else to fight?" Diver called out, and flew. The griffin joined him in the air with much greater speed and power, and the deer summoned another storm of arrows. Their enemy ran under the three of them, barely dodged Diver's attempt to drop on him, swung a sword in his mouth, and struck the deer along both left legs. The buck toppled to the stands and crashed into the ruined cage.

Diver and the griffin double-teamed the warrior, coming at him from every direction. It was the griffin who got in the important hit. The enemy flashed, and Diver feared there'd be some kind of wicked last-second counter, but all the guy accomplished was to teleport a few feet away. A pendant around his neck sparked and broke. The escape didn't save him; the griffin was on him again and grappling him by the neck. "Any last dramatic words?"

"Considerate of you," the stallion choked out. "Sure. In the name of Queen Sunward Ho of the East, check out your palace."

The griffin swiped him across the muzzle and he died, vanishing. The sun banner toppled to the floor along with a pile of items. A spell visibly popped around the ruined battle dome.

Diver checked on the deer, then flew warily out through the broken cloud-ceiling. "Guys, the palace is burning!" He tore down a section of the wall to make an exit there and give everyone a clear view. Noctis Castle's roofs were on fire, burning a bright purple even as pegasi pushed clouds into place and kicked rain out of them.

A furious Nimbus flapped over to Diver. "The bastards broke my arena! Magic-proof solid nopium I had to mine in a lava cave and now it's ruined!" She laid eyes on the castle, and screeched loud enough to hurt Diver's ears. "Duty calls. Coming?"

"Sure, but there's the inn to tend to."

"Didn't you see my faction flag? Come on!" She called out to the deer and griffin. "We could use you too."

When Nimbus had shown Diver her stats (apparently a bigger commitment for her than sex), Diver hadn't paid much attention to the line that said, "Faction Flag: Night Guard".

Diver followed as quickly as his hooves and wings allowed. Flames lit the town eerily from below. He and the gladiators passed a market where pegasi brought rainclouds, unicorns put up barriers and flung jets of water, and earthbound charged in wearing heavy coats. The only purple flames were on the castle, where the moat reflected their dance along the roofs and parapets. Even the stone was burning.

Nimbus had already gotten close. She turned back to look down at the others. "Witch-fire. If the queen's not putting it out, she's busy. Diver, give us a waterspout; that'll help anyway."

"How?"

Nimbus cursed. "Right. No full powers yet. How about you hurry to the throne room and help fend off whatever disaster's going on in there?"

One wall of the castle shattered and collapsed, and a beam of moonlight shot out, hurling a lion the size of a monster truck. It skidded fifty feet along the road but started to get up.

"Again?" said Nimbus.

Diver snapped out of his shock. He charged ahead and beat his hooves on the lion's flank while the deer and griffin sprang to attack it too. They were only doing minor damage, as far as Diver could tell, when it roared and body-slammed Diver face-first into the ground with two major wounds plus stunning.

It was the closest he'd come to actually dying, since he couldn't even think for a while. He lay there uselessly on the grass, feeling broken all over. Queen Harvest Moon, the pumpkin-orange mare with the tiara, now hovered on her feather-shedding phantom wings and shot a massive beam from a ghostly horn, up into the sky.

The lion looked up with a puzzled expression.

Harvest Moon said, "Apollo mirrors." Then the beam bounced down from the moon and shattered the lion into coils of purple smoke.

Diver stammered but couldn't get up. The deer told him, "Sorry. I'm out of power."

The queen glanced his way and flew down to touch him with her horn. It felt like an icicle brushing against his forehead. Cold washed through him and a notice said one of his wounds had cleared. Then Harvest Moon said, "We have to null out the castle. Carry these and build a tetrahedron." She began casting four spells at once, juggling them as each cluster of hovering sparks slowly became a silver orb. She wore elaborate dark armor that bore dents and was set with flickering gems.

Nimbus said, "A null zone? But that'll wreck your artifacts."

"Good point. Get the box behind my throne; that's all we have time for. Password 'eclipse eclair'." She returned her focus to the spells. The castle burned behind her despite the efforts of the castle guards and other townsfolk.

Nimbus saluted and flew off. When the first orb solidified like a tiny moon, the queen passed it to Diver. "Put this by the statue." She pointed to a magnificent stone zebra on the far side of the castle's gate.

Diver took it and hurried. The orb weighed like a bowling ball between his awkwardly cupped forehooves. He hopped along with his wings only useful for speed, not height.

In the distance, the queen dispatched the griffin and deer to other areas, then carried the fourth ball into the air above her keep. "Clear the area!" She blasted it with magical force and the other orbs reacted, forming a glowing three-sided pyramid that instantly shut all the flames down.

Diver had stopped noticing the fast-paced music, but now it ended with a trumpet blast like a long sigh. He rejoined Nimbus and the others by the scorched grass marking the lion's death.

The queen started to speak, coughed into one hoof, then composed herself and began again. "What, pray tell, just happened?"

Nimbus said, "Your majesty, assassins claiming to represent some 'new queen of the east' called Sunward Ho just attacked my inn. They killed people repeatedly, robbed us, wrecked the arena, and trapped me until we slew them all. I came as soon as I could. Others are handling the other fires in town."

The queen cast a spell that made runes dance around her. She expertly flipped and touched several while chanting syllables, then turned the rune-field into a diagram. "Sir griffin, if I could trouble you to check on that forest fire to the north? But first, do you know this 'Sunward Ho'? I assume she's too young to understand her unfortunate use of old slang."

"No. I serve True Sky, the real queen of the eastern Hooflands. If a usurper is causing trouble here, she might be trying to seize control of your nodes."

Nimbus spoke sidelong to Diver. "The Nobles control big mana spots to get their powers."

"Judging from my map," the queen said, "all my bases are not under attack, yet. I need to check in with my guards and ambassadors."

Nimbus said, "Of course, your highness."

"I'll be going," the griffin said, and flew off to the remaining fire.

The queen spread her wings, then paused. "Agent-Captain Nimbus, you may deputize them if you think it appropriate. You all may borrow anything in the box. We'll work out the details later." She flew off.

Nimbus's wings stood straight out. "What? I... Thanks, your majesty!"

"Promotion?" the stag asked.

She nodded. "So... Night Guard. We protect the queen and the country. It's fun. Sometimes we fight giant lions. Wanna join?"

The deer took two skittish steps back. "I'm a little busy with a quest of my own. Sorry. I live in the Hart Forest anyway."

Diver said, "I want to know more before I sign up formally, but if you need temporary help, you can deputize me all night long."

Nimbus grinned fangily and planted a kiss on Diver's nose. "I'll take you up on that. For now, we need to quit flapping around and get you your real powers. You might need them if those jerks come back."

"You might make a good buck," the deer said. "That requires a trip to my home though. I'd lead you there but it'd take too long, and I have work tomorrow afternoon."

"What are Hoofland deer like?" asked Diver.

"What are humans like, in one sentence?"

Nimbus whispered to Diver, "Deer equals coat-rack elf!"

"I heard that."

Diver smiled. "Thanks, but it sounds like I don't have time to switch paths right now if I'm going to be useful. Maybe next century."

The deer winced. "Immortals. Right. I... hope I can join you in Talespace someday."

Diver asked Nimbus, "How do I do that friend-request spell as a pegasus?"

Nimbus walked him through a few menus, so that he generated a few business cards that let him mark the deer (Kingsfoil) for future reference.

"All right," said Diver, looking at the ornate silver-and-stone chest that Nimbus had rescued from the throne room. "I take it that this box is full of magic items that would've lost their powers from that anti-magic thing the queen did? Yes? Good. My other question is, how do deer and bat-pegasi --"

"Noctrals," said Nimbus.

"Danglers, figure into this 'one of each race' rule for Mount Improbable?"

Kingsfoil the deer said, "We're roughly equivalent to your earthbound equines."

"I would've guessed unicorn, what with the forehead and the telekinesis."

"It's specialized. Perytons match up with pegasi, and our unicorn equivalents are like caribou."

Nimbus said, "We count as pegasi."

Diver thought the situation over. "If you're up for it, Kingsfoil, I'd like to do another quest right now. I'll try to grab Major Key for a unicorn, otherwise the nearest pokey bit of Noctis that I can find."

The deer said, "All right, if it doesn't take too long."

Nimbus said, "What, you want to go right now?"

Diver stamped the ground with one hoof, and grinned. "In an hour or so. We are going to heal up, drink too much coffee, figure out how to abuse that box of trinkets, and then speed-run Mount Improbable."

Kingsfoil blinked. "A racial powers quest? Those are supposed to be journeys of discovery for you uploaders, aren't they? I've read about you people getting mad when a human treats them like a video game level."

True. The Labyrinth of Night had seemed designed to teach Key what a unicorn could do, and a certain way of looking at the world. There was probably a similar lesson built into the pegasus quest. The most obvious teaching was the powers: cloud-walking, cloud-sculpting, weather control, flight. The standard arcane magic like fireballs and teleporting was mostly beyond his kind, and earthbound seemed to do most of the healing and geomancy stuff, but pegasi had magical talents too. So there'd be puzzles and fighting that encouraged him to fly up to the heavens, call down lightning, and wield mist and wind.

Around Diver, the damaged town of Noctis had gone quiet. The residents were busy cleaning up and patrolling for more danger. The castle swarmed with near-identical guards reacting to the damage. This patch of scorched lawn was just a momentary node within the story of the Hooflands, a place where he was free to fly anywhere, do anything. Being a pegasus so far had meant being swept along by events, but not helplessly. There'd been a strong wind but he'd chosen to ride it, while seeing other directions he could go. He'd been looking around at his wingmates, judging how to treat them right. His tendency was to charge headlong into battle but that was only one wind, and he was free to peel off from it and discover different ways to fly. There was adventure anywhere he cared to seek it. If that way of thinking colored his thoughts and wasn't the only reasonable way to think, so be it. He was bound only by the rules of the world and his own choices. This is what it means to have wings.

Sky Diver realized he'd shut his eyes. He opened them and smiled. "Spiritual revelation: check. Let's go abuse the dungeon and set a record for it."
> Heart Transplant
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Diver, Nimbus, Kingsfoil and a sleepy Key sat around a coffeeshop table with a map scroll. Diver grumbled about losing his journal; it'd been part of the stuff wrecked or stolen by the Sunward Ho gang. "Based on that description of the mountain, here's what we'll need from the box." He tapped some notes.

-Retinari's Net: Drop it to trap enemies.
-Spellbook of the Black Lotus: Gives a unicorn unlimited mana for 30 sec, once/day.
-Wingblades of the Red Spot: Wind/lightning damage.
-Thrice-High Ribbon: Triple jump.
-Stonecutter's Hatchet: Cuts through terrain.

"Are we set?" he asked.

Key was idle again. He'd been grumpy about being woken up. Back on Earth he was fixing breakfast and occasionally checking on his computer. When the human got back his equine body yawned. "Let's go. I'll walk on autopilot and eat."

They all drank their coffee of +10% energy, stuffed their cheap replacement saddlebags with a carefully chosen selection of food and whatever potions were available on short notice in the recently burned town, and walked outside. Diver called out to the sky, "Hey, world, take note! We hereby boast that we're going to set a record for speed on Mount Improbable!"

His HUD announced: Quest progress is now being tracked.

"Should we start running?" said Kingsfoil, shouldering his share of the magic gear.

Noctis was following them for now. "Nah. We're not at the actual entrance yet. Let's get this over quickly though."

An angry fire spirit summoned by the recent battle flew at them with a roar like sirens. Key fended it off with his telekinesis. Diver used the chance to practice with the red-copper razors he flicked out from the front edges of his wings, like switchblades. He hopped into the air, flew past the fire spirit, and brushed next to it. A highly localized gale of shredding wind pierced the monster and tore it in half with a single blow. Diver landed in a crouch, feeling cool. "I like these. Do they come in other elements?"

Noctis said, "Yeah, but most aren't that powerful."

Three bears jumped them on the northern outskirts of town. Nimbus pinned two with the unbreakable net, and the adventurers beat the tar out of them all. Then there was the canoe-riding sequence, where they managed to hit a rock at just the right angle to fling them over much of the river's course.

Soon they reached the foot of a mountain with a winding trail and many ledges. An ornamental gate and a save crystal marked the official entrance. Diver looked back at his party.

Noctis waved goodbye. "Good luck!"

Diver hugged her. "See you." To the others he said, "Activate crystal!"

They all pinged it to mark their progress.

"Deploy snack!"

They scarfed down mugs of coffee, donuts for another 10% energy boost, pineapple muffins (wound resistance, in honor of the spiky fruit) and forbidden bacon sandwiches (attack power, from the implied un-equine aggression). Diver felt stuffed but powerful.

"Forward march!"

Music began, and a tiny clock was now visible in the corner of Diver's vision whenever he focused on it. The first stage of the mountain was just a steep trail until a rock golem blocked the way. It stopped blocking the way when Diver chopped it up with two passes of his wingblades. There were endless rolling boulders, but Kingsfoil hacked a ledge out of the solid rock to make the rocks fall harmlessly out of their way. Then he dug a trail upward around a complicated lock.

Diver tapped his hoof; this part was slow going. "I guess it's much faster than solving the puzzle."

Kingsfoil talked around the hatchet in his mouth. "Yeah. The lock is meant for the unicorns, mostly. Takes telekinesis."

"Want me to take a turn with that hatchet?"

"Nah. I can't get tired." Key kept casting a minor spell on him to restore his stamina, and he couldn't really feel anything.

In a few minutes they'd cut through the lock and hurried up the mountain trail ahead. There was a cliff of ledges. Diver studied it, conferred with the others, then tied that triple-jump ribbon around his tail. The piece of cloth was the first reminder he'd had in a while that his tail existed, and it was startling to feel it at the base of his spine after so long taking it for granted. With that on, he jumped, jumped twice more in midair, then started flying. At maximum altitude he landed on a ledge, then anchored a rope to it and tied the ribbon on the end so the others could use it. The others bounced and climbed up in fewer stages than should've been possible, even using the hatchet to make a few extra hoof-holds.

At the top there were pillars with cracks that could only be seen from above. Diver figured that one out right away and they raced through the puzzle to create a new path. A mountain-goat minotaur blocked their way and they bull-rushed him right off the cliff and hurried on.

Finally they came to a winding trail with a suspiciously safe ledge, a checkpoint crystal, and a path to a deep round crater. "Ready?" said Diver.

The others caught up. Key said, "Timer's running out on the food bonuses."

They stuffed themselves with the last of their snacks, tied the triple-jump ribbon onto Kingsfoil, prepped the spell tome for Key, and charged into the crater.

A dragon slowly descended from the heavens, its scales crackling with lightning. Diver tapped one hoof; Noctis had briefed him. As soon as it roared dramatically and battle music began, everyone sprang into action.

Diver ran around the crater arena to distract it, slashing here and there with his blades. Key hacked a few bits out of a wall to create a tiny stepping-stone. Kingsfoil hopped onto it, snagged the hatchet, triple-jumped to get higher, and carved a similar hoof-hold. He nimbly hopped down to the floor, where Diver dodged the dragon's lightning breath and tossed the net to the deer. Kingsfoil took off again, much higher than a non-pegasus should be able to get. He waited for the right moment and pitched the net, which crashed down hard on the mighty boss dragon. The beast now seemed magnetized to the floor but it was struggling to get up.

"Key, go!" said Diver.

Diver activated the spellbook, giving him unlimited mana. He began blasting the monster with endless streams of his best spell so far, a little energy blast from his horn with the force of a punch. With each hit the dragon took little damage, but was stunned for a fraction of a second.

That was Diver's cue. He jumped and flew along a staircase of clouds, rising above the crater's rim. From here he sensed massive electric potential, power in the air. He raised his forehooves, jumped and shouted to call down the lightning. A huge bolt crashed down through him but washed through with little damage, on its way to the boss. Diver landed feeling singed and wobbly. The dragon roared, crackling with electricity, and crumbled into glowing dust.

A crystal heart containing an icon of wings descended from the heavens. An angelic choir sang a single "Ah!" Diver decided the prize was taking too long to reach the floor, and jumped up to snag it in midair.

You have earned the Heart of the Pegasus! said a message that hung in the air, apparently visible to all. The letters appeared slowly as though being typed. If you accept this item, you will receive the full powers of a pegasus!

WARNING, it went on. This item will alter your mind! Consequences include --

"What are you waiting for?" said Key. "We might still be on a timer."

Diver landed, clutching the crystal in his forehooves. "I doubt it."

Consequences include a new air-related sense, an intuitive interface adjustment, motor control/sensation adapted to this body, possible mild claustrophobia, and reduction of any acrophobia. Mental changes may not be fully reversible. Rejection will still grant you partial rewards for this quest. Please say 'Accept', 'Question', or 'Reject'.

Diver faltered. He'd already decided to commit to this new species. In fact, he already was a new sort of creature by being an uploader. He'd already gone through mental changes by virtue of getting his brain shredded on an operating table. It was just that last time, the procedure was meant to copy him exactly, not to make him different.

He took a deep breath. This is about more than being a silly fantasy creature. I'm jumping into things, but I'm doing that with open eyes. These changes seem good, and there seems to be a way to undo some of them if they go wrong. Let's try this. "Accept," he said.

The world went mad. The air was squishy, green, and the ground felt made of splinters and the scent of booze. Key said something and the words tasted tangy. Diver twitched. "I don't know how to process this!"

Kingsfoil looked up. "Something else is coming."

Colorless green ideas slept furiously in Diver's vision. He blinked and shook his head, tripped, crashed face-first, and threw his hooves over a plaid cloud to gag. The cloud was... voltless? There were sparks inside it that mixed like red and blue, sweet and sour; he didn't have words for them. The air overhead felt thin like a tunnel.

"Look out!" said Key, and tried to shove him out of the way.

It didn't work. The falling treasure chest was guided by a localized low-pressure zone so it crashed straight along that. Of course. Diver saw that just in time to get beaned by it. He plowed face-first into a mass of cloud --

Major wound. Humid. Flight power charging. High up.

Diver groaned and turned over onto his back. He blinked. The sparks were everywhere. He twitched his wings and felt the energy separate a little, drawing from his own mana pool to create voltage. There were no numbers and yammering notes in his vision now. He hurt, he was atop a mountain in still air, and his still-glitching mind knew how to stir wind and lightning by magic.

"You all right, there?" said Kingsfoil. "Sorry I didn't react faster."

Diver climbed to his feet and looked around. "I think so. You said the power-up was 'a little confusing'. Yeah. A bit. Got any healing power left?"

The deer leaned down and touched him, creating a rune-field that took him a minute to solve.

Diver's head wound faded and he didn't need any notation to tell him so. "Thank you both. What's in the box?"

Key solved a puzzle-lock and pried it open. "Cheese?"

There were three one-pound wedges of Swiss cheese in there, each labeled with a ribbon bearing an elegant "M". There were also three cloth badges with a stopwatch icon and a trophy, and three more with a cheese-bearing dragon.

Key said, "I think this is a booby-prize recognition of a successful speed-run record, and an incredibly cheesy victory."

"Fair enough," said the deer. "Are we done here?"

The unicorn nodded. "I need to log out and get to bed. Where are you, Foil?"

"Catalonia."

"Oh, wow. Are you close to the fighting?"

"The war's farther south. They mostly just have Grenada again."

The two non-uploaders chattered while Diver tried to make sense of his vision, his more intuitive link to the game world's interface, and the feel of air around his feathers. Things were happening in the real world -- the Outer Realm, or as one native had put it, the Dark World where death had teeth. That world needed adventurers too.

I promised Noctis not to run off, thought Diver, and folded his wings along his sides. To the others he said, "Thanks again. Let's divide the loot and get back to town, or at least somewhere that you... your bodies can rest without being harassed."

#

He left them "sleeping" in a safe-looking hollow tree that had its own save point. Their bodies faded out without dropping their gear. Diver nodded to himself, tapped the crystal, and tried out flying on his own.

He whooped. No artificial flight ceiling, and even with his overloaded saddlebags and wing-blades he could fly twice as long as before. He pushed as high as he could and felt the warmth of the rising sun along his hide. He didn't simply run out of flight power; he felt the subtle strain of his wing muscles and knew to transition to gliding. Wind rushed along him as he played with different ways to hold his hooves, dangling or horizontal. Something tickled behind him and he glanced back to find he had a tuft of tail-feathers along his hairy tail. The tilt of his head made him yaw right but he wiggled his tail to compensate like an airplane, changing his move into a gentle roll. He was on his back in the sky, gliding above a forest where the sun was only starting to show him the brightening world.

Diver rolled level again and slipped down to a mostly dignified landing. He bounced up again and again on his way south to practice the moments of takeoff and landing, which seemed to be the hardest parts.

When he made it back (after overpowering a giant wolf with his unfairly good weaponry), he spotted Meteor the pegasus first. He was working with some other equines to rebuild a guard tower. "Hey, Meteor, I got it. Any news?"

A unicorn cast some sort of scanning spell. "Whoa, where'd you get those wingblades?"

"They're loaners from the queen."

Several ponies called out "All hail Harvest Moon!"

"Backgrounders," muttered Meteor. "That was a cheap victory, if you were using her gear."

Diver's wings drooped. "But I told you, and you giggled at the speed-run idea. Or... Golden Scale did, anyway."

"From my perspective it's disrespectful. This isn't one of your theme parks."

Diver left him, abandoning the idea of having him go inform the rest of Noctis of his cheesy victory. Instead he found Nimbus' ruined arena and the tent that the batty innkeeper had pitched there, with a storm-cloud logo on its canvas.

He peeked into the tent. Nimbus was inside, surrounded by a pale glow as she cupped something between her wings and forehooves. Electric current flowed between them and swirled around a sphere of cloudstuff. Nimbus said, "Hang on," and took another minute to complete her spell. The orb slowly shifted into a fluffy hexagonal tile made of slate-grey vapor. She set it down next to three others, then stretched. "Powered up yet?"

"Yup! I've got --" Diver extended one wing, which made the wingblade flick out like a switchblade and slash half the tent. The whole thing collapsed on them. Buried under canvas, Diver finished, "Yes. Yes I did."

Nimbus grumbled and threw the tent off of them. "You're flagged. Take those things off before I lose my head."

Diver carefully leaned his muzzle over one wing, then the other, to undo the buckles with his teeth and one hoof. They clattered to the dirt. "Sorry. Anyway, it went well. Here's the rest of the equipment we borrowed, plus... cheese?"

Nimbus took the blades, the spellbook and the other things borrowed from the queen's stash. "That's maximum cheese. Seen that before; don't ask. Fills your mana at the cost of you having to scarf down an entire pound of cheese in mid-battle. As for those patches, it looks like you got an achievement from our sarcastic AI overlord."

"Do they do anything?"

"No. Now that you're stronger, you're worth bringing to the war conference. The queen's scheduled one to figure out how to respond to this uprising in the east."

Diver chuckled bitterly, thinking of the real war that Key and Kingsfoil had mentioned. Before uploading, Diver hadn't paid it much attention, since it was on the far side of the world. Now, well, he didn't know offhand what continent held the computers where his mind was stored. All the troubles of the world might well be thousands of miles away.

Or, dangerously close yet invisible from here.

There's only so much I can do. Diver ruffled his wings and tail-feathers, feeling lighter but still weighed down by coins and other trinkets from the quest. "How's the town? I'd like to do some shopping, but not if there's urgent need for repairs."

"The invaders mostly just got the castle and some isolated spots like my dome. Bastards. Not everything is open since it's morning now, but you should be able to get whatever you need from shadow-run shops. Try the Busty Dragon Inn or the Pointy Emporium, depending on what you need. Some armor, maybe? Meet me in the castle at sunset."

The little cloud-tiles caught his attention. "Rebuilding the dome? Can I help?"

Nimbus sighed. "It'll take forever to get a proper cage up, but the basement is partly intact" -- she pointed a wing toward the cratered trenches that the underground rooms had become -- "and I can rebuild the rest better than before. So I'm doing tiles instead of concrete. If you want, I'll teach you the basics of cloudsmithing when you get back."

"I'd like that."

#

He spent a few happy hours wandering around and shopping. There was no way to afford equipment nearly so good as what he'd borrowed, but he got what he thought was a good price on some light leather armor. The breastplate fastened around his back, chest and torso ("barrel" was apparently the term) like a jacket and had clasps he could work with his teeth and hooves. It seemed silly to get a weapon for his mouth so he could pretend to be a human swinging a sword around. Instead he invested in some basic wingblades, which were little more than daggers carefully strapped to his wingtips. He figured his loadout wouldn't weigh him down much; heavy armor and giant weapons weren't suited to pegasi. The rest of his money went into a tiny sapphire focus gem, worn around his neck. It was supposed to help him get started with magic. The equipment was less powerful than what he'd borrowed, but it was his.

He made it back to Nimbus, who looked him over and nodded approvingly. "Ready for that lesson?"

Diver looked at the ruined tent, and covered his muzzle with one wing. "Sorry. I forgot to buy a replacement."

She shrugged.

"Oh! Check this out." He flicked one wingblade into position, making an audible shing! noise. He grinned, put it away, and did it again.

"You're easily amused."

Now that he could sense something of how Hoofland represented voltage, current, and magic, the innkeeper gave him a lesson. It was possible to charge bits of cloud, and common magic crystals, to create something like circuitry. "So what's this do if I hook it up?" Nimbus asked, pointing to a diagram.

"Just a battery hooked up to a wire. No resistance. So... the energy flows all at once?"

"Yeah. Basic zap spell. If you can 'draw' that in combat while generating voltage with your wings, then you're a living Tesla coil. Bzzzt!"

"We just do elemental lightning, then?"

"Pegasi can do wind and frost, too. For those you need to tap into the ambient magic field..."

They forgot about making cloudstuff bricks and practiced making little bursts of ice and slashing wind. Nimbus reached the limit of her magic knowledge, decided he was a good student, pulled her ruined tent's canvas over the exposed basement of her inn, and dragged him by the tail into the newly-made room.

"Hey!" said Diver, as she started to tear his armor off. "We're exposed."

Nimbus glanced at the open view of the street level, then at the blank space between the stallion's hindlegs, and sighed. "I guess someone could wander past or hear us. Later, then. Look forward to it." She kissed him and the canvas collapsed on them both, again.

#

At sunset, after a nap and a chat with a wizard who insisted that Nimbus was doing magic all wrong, Diver headed for the castle. Not surprisingly, the elaborate stone walls were still badly damaged. Here and there they'd been patched with clouds as though someone had stuffed cotton into a wound. The drawbridge was closed but a door had been set into the broken wall that'd taken a giant lion impact.

He walked into the throne room, where Queen Harvest Moon had a map table and a gathering of four horses sitting on cushions. She waved and said, "Help yourself to dinner." A buffet table lined the back wall.

Diver practiced using his wings like a pair of tongs, to help him fetch things. His range of motion was impressive. He piled a plate full of apples, oats, and some kind of bacon-like bark, then joined the royal table.

Harvest Moon said, "Please welcome Sky Diver, who has already assisted the Night Guard. Whenever Nimbus gets here --"

"I'm coming, I'm coming. Your majesty." The bat-pony groused as she trotted in with the queen's box of magic stuff.

"Ah, good. Food's over there. As I was saying, I'd like to formally induct our new pegasus into the Guard as a provisional member. Will you accept, Diver?"

Diver whinneyed, then covered his muzzle, startled both by the offer and by his own reaction. As a human he would've said something like "huh?"

The Night Guard members looked amused. "I remember my reaction to the 'heart of the earthborn' quest," one of them said. "Nearly made me quit Hoofland for building starships in Diamond Space."

Blushing, Diver asked, "What exactly are you offering, your majesty?"

The orange mare said, "Pledge loyalty to my reign as a Noble, to be on call for tasks that will defend my honor and interests, for one year or until we both agree to end the relationship. In return, I will give you money, a patch of land, access to certain special resources, and a promise to make your life... interesting." She smiled.

Nimbus flapped over to sit beside Diver, biting into a mango. "Normally that means general policing of Noctis and the power-nodes the queen holds, and occasional raids or diplomatic missions. Right now, though, who knows?"

A guild! Diver had just been invited to an old-timey gaming guild. He snorted. Nobody else was laughing, though. "Do you have only five members working for you?" he said, counting Nimbus and the other guests.

Harvest Moon shifted uncomfortably on her cushion. "Thirty, and parts of Noctis. Everyone here has something in common."

"Uploaders?"

"I'm a native," said a zebra dressed as some kind of mechanic.

He wasn't sure how the sensation mapped between brain and body, but it felt like his mane stood on end, prickling down his neck and shoulders. "Why does your strategy meeting involve only the people who live here?"

The queen said, "Reasons that I'll explain, if you promise that they won't leave this room." She leaned over the table to stare with those big green eyes. "This is serious, Sky Diver. Cross me by stealing my property or damaging my castle, and we'll have fun with it. Overthrow me and I'll say 'good game' and buy you a drink. Lie to me and I'll really become angry."

The weight of everyone's gaze was on him. Though the stares were cartoonishly large, the minds behind them were real. Diver leaned his neck back and said, "All right. I won't share whatever secrets you tell me here, without your permission."

The queen relaxed and sat back down. She took a drink from a sort of bowl made for hooves, which struck Diver as a nice touch compared to using human tools and fudging the physics. "Hoofland has only existed for a few years, less than that in subjective time. It began as a few isolated environments for players of Thousand Tales who asked for fantasy adventure. Why ponies? There'd been a cartoon about horse adventurers that became surprisingly popular, and had a revival in the 2030s. These islands of horseplay were welded into a single world with some attempt at a consistent style and rules. Then, uploading happened and it became more than a game. There; that's the history of the world."

Harvest Moon smiled and went on. "Yesterday, there was a coup in the eastern Hooflands that overthrew Regent True Sky. The king was gone because, well..."

One of the Night Guards said, "He died. On Earth."

Diver winced. It didn't matter what narratives appeared in Hoofland, if you were an Earthside player, because an ending could hit you like a bus.

The queen said, "There was a free-for-all against True Sky. The new queen seized enough power to become a Noble. Diver, you've seen what I can do in combat, but there's more to it than that. This new 'Sunward Ho' immediately decided that provoking a war would be a fun thing to do, so she sent several blackguards and knaves to wreak havoc in my lands. I hear that even the Hart Forest was hit in a crude attempt to pin the blame on me."

Diver's wings fluttered as he took it all in. He looked at the map spread across the table, and the zebra pulled his plate aside to give him a better view. Hoofland had a vague border between Harvest Moon's night-themed western queendom, the former True Sky land in the east, the deer kingdom to the north, and some kind of zebra/dragon confederation in the south. The references to the Coast of Blades, Flying City Aeolus, and the Griffin Keep Academy made him yearn to explore everywhere and see all the wonders that people had made of this world. He said, "If there's a war, you don't mind that, do you?"

"Not war itself. I send minions to try capturing foreign power nodes and other resources, and we have the occasional assassination attempt, robbery, kidnapping and so on. All in good fun. What we saw the other day is, I fear, the start of something different. The enemy went out of their way to kill residents repeatedly, including immigrants who feel more and more pain as that happens. And including a child who was tagged as such to anyone who bothered to look. To make matters worse, Sunward Ho issued a statement that she plans to conquer all Hoofland using the aid of Earthside players throughout Talespace, and the Forces of Evil."

"The what, now?"

One of the guards said, "The Forces of Evil don't come here much. They're a gang throughout Talespace that believes in villainy for the sake of making sure that the world has 'bad guys'. Or they're a carefully designed outlet for uploaders who're sadists, to channel them into something semi-useful. Or they're a conspiracy aiming to rule the virtual world so they can dominate its culture even as it grows in uploader population. Or some mix of all three."

For as long as there'd been large-scale online games, there'd been "griefers" who had fun spoiling other people's. The difference here was that people lived in this game, and if it continued to grow, there would be genuine wealth and political power for whoever ruled it. "But we have an AI watching all this. Won't she step in if these jerks get too powerful?"

The queen said, "She's been maddeningly evasive about that. Some of the Forces of Evil boast that she won't intervene, because she so values our freedom to make our own mistakes."

Diver pictured a horde of Earthside players signing up for the game because someone had exhorted them on some Internet forum. It would be something awful. They'd use their accounts to make pony characters and swarm in as a griefer army, just to see what trouble they could cause. After all, fantasy horses were stupid and childish and didn't matter to anyone real, right? "Wasn't there an old game where the developers built a realistic ecosystem, put it online, then realized that human players were a bunch of immortal, insatiable top predators?"

"Yes," said Harvest Moon.

"A war, then. You want some way of stopping this outside influence and keeping the fighting to some kind of polite standard?"

"Not exactly." The mare cleared her throat and stood to address the group formally. "The enemy has tried to turn our world into just another playground for humans wanting to pretend to hurt each other, while inflicting real pain on real people. Is that the sort of world we came for?"

"No!" said her Night Guards.

"We can be better than this petty gamer nonsense. We can, in fact, become better people. Stallions and mares, I propose that now is the time to implement the Ascension Code."
> Ascension Code
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Seriously?" said Nimbus, laying her pointy ears back. "Your majesty, that's like getting drunk on communion wine. Profaning something that's supposed to be sacred, and really isn't all that pleasant."

The other Night Guards all talked at once. Diver waited until they'd shut each other up, then asked, "What's that?"

Harvest Moon raised her drink. "What is a mind? A collection of desires and memories, from instinct to the highest intellectual and moral levels. For all of human history, we've been bound by our ancestry to think and feel a certain way. We cured diseases and built spaceships, yet we never outgrew our weaknesses. Look at us! We're potentially immortal, and we could have our every physical need satisfied if we asked for a self-contained world of plenty, yet we're pretending to fight over this fantasy realm as though we were medieval dukes on a tiny continent."

Nimbus said, "If fighting for your home is a bad thing, then why don't you quit Hoofland and ask our AI for a perfect no-humans zone?"

The queen glared at her subject, then softened. "Because contact with the Outer Realm matters. If we cut ourselves off from any real conflict with Earth, then we will be oblivious to its problems. We should have our comforts here without becoming irrelevant to others."

The zebra stared down into his food. "The Toymaker's Dilemma, again. 'I create beautiful things, but should I save my steel and gears for railroads and engines that directly help people live? Why do I -- do my skills exist, if they use scarce resources that statistics say might save a life?'"

Diver drew in a breath, understanding at once. He's a native AI, created to entertain some early multimillionaire customer of the game. He is one of the toys, using electricity and processing power that could go into running an extra uploaded human mind.

The native's soulful blue eyes met Diver's. "I found my answer some time ago. Do you see it?"

Confronted, Diver said what first came to mind. "Joy. If you think only in terms of statistical survival ability, then you'll create a dystopian factory world where people exist to generate enough food to survive, have exactly enough sex to maintain the population, and go comatose in between work shifts because there's nothing else to do. That's horrible and pointless even before you consider that fun is useful."

"You understand," the zebra said, and busied himself with eating.

"Then, if we want to make good use of ourselves, we should be engaged with the world and use our skills to improve it. But I still don't understand what this plan of yours is, your majesty."

Harvest Moon laid her forehooves on the table. "In plain terms, then. We have a so-far-unused software upgrade for a human or native mind, that changes human nature. It reduces the instinct for dominance, aggression, and tribalism. It likely raises certain kinds of intelligence, with 'ports' of a sort for further mental upgrades like your weather-sense. It makes people better."

"It makes them wimps," said Nimbus.

One of the guards chimed in. He wore spectacles and a vest with a pocketwatch. "We thought of that. Will we drift apart because we care less about circling the wagons against the Other? Will we surrender like Frenchmen because we're too nice to fight?"

The zebra looked confused, but said, "Then those problems have been addressed?"

"We have the Artificer on our side. His clique is very interested in becoming more than human." To Diver he said, "I'm speaking of the greatest hacker in all the worlds."

Diver said, "This plan sounds... ambitious, but people have tried to change human nature before. It never goes well."

The queen shrugged. "They used drugs and needles and scriptures, and their goal was meek submission to evil. Not conquering it."

The history-minded guard said, "I'd say no if it meant becoming a bunch of commies or Muslims or whatnot. But we won't."

Diver swore under his breath. "This is an extreme reaction to some trolls breaking into Hoofland, your majesty. We could just raise an army and fight them the usual way. Usual for magical horses, I guess."

She said, "Look at the bigger picture, everyone. The humans out there won't change their nature. Today the problem is some griefers. But you know there are larger threats out there. The other grand AIs, and the governments behind them, and the influx we'll face if there's some horrible plague or other disaster. If we only care about our world and not the Outer Realm, then we might as well experiment with self-improvement because we won't do any harm to the people we left behind. If we do care about the Outer Realm, a bunch of silly gamer ponies won't be able to protect the hardware that runs Hoofland, nor to help humanity get through this difficult age. We can't help them or ourselves." She looked up from her hooves, eyes wide and fierce. "But a new and better species might."

Nimbus shook her head sadly. "If you want my judgment, your majesty, it's a bad idea."

The zebra said, "We have a right to become whatever we can achieve. This plan isn't just a chance to win some ultimately meaningless control over virtual land. It's practice for fixing a problem that's never been solved before."

"Exactly!" said the one with the spectacles. "We can run simulations, even. Find out whether ponies with our changes could have won the World Wars, and so on."

The other two Night Guards disagreed. One of them said, "We came here to be human, not to rewrite ourselves into something else." The other chimed in with, "It's a recipe for insanity."

The queen sounded bemused as she said, "I don't believe I called for a vote, but with myself in favor my council stands at three Yea, three Neigh."

Everyone looked at Sky Diver.

He shied away. "I'm not even a member of your group yet."

Nimbus' wing brushed against him, making him shiver. "We'd still like to hear your take on this. You haven't been here long, and you've already seen how things can get out of control sometimes."

Diver sighed, thinking of all he'd seen in this world. "There are people living in different ways here, and it's only one part of the larger virtual world. Sorry, Nimbus, but I agree with the queen here. Maybe this new way of thinking will turn out to be a bad idea, but what if it's good? We shouldn't hold back from trying to grow."

"What about you? Would you put your own soul on the line and risk going nuts because of a software patch? You're already nice and brave and cute. Why do you need a machine to make you a better person?"

He hadn't volunteered himself for this experiment. "I already had my brain edited to make full use of these things." He spread his wings. "Didn't you do the same? Have you got a sonar sense from whatever you did to turn batty?"

Nimbus scraped at the floor with one hoof. "I did, but... This is bigger. What if people change and they don't know they're screwed up, so they don't know they should undo it?"

Diver turned to the queen, saying, "She's got a point. The disclaimer on the pegasus thing said it might not be fully reversible. What does that mean, exactly? How does that apply to this new code you're pushing?"

Harvest Moon brought out another box from the corner of her throne room, and unrolled a scroll on the table, pushing plates aside. This one showed a diagram too complex for Diver to follow. Moon said, "I don't fully grasp it myself, but this is our basic "Tier-III" mind structure. Same these days for uploaders as for natives, which is pretty earthshaking in its own right. The pegasus upgrade tacks certain things onto a mind like rearranging your body sense to make being a winged quadruped seem natural. A fair number of uploaders try switching sexes, and that does similar things plus a gradual hormone flip. Or sudden, if you're into that. Rigel." One of the naysayer guards blushed and laughed nervously.

She continued, "But just because we redraw the map of what brain parts expect input from what body parts, doesn't mean you're comfortable with the new body on all levels. Diver, think about hooves versus fingers. What feels natural right now?"

Diver tried to look at his forehooves, lifted them both off the floor, and fell over.

"See?" said the queen. "In time, you'll likely find fingers becoming an alien concept. You might have trouble using a robot with hands, if you work Earthside. Now, what if you officially undo your pegasus changes, go elsewhere in Talespace, and use a human body? You'll still have had recent memories of hooves and nudity and wings, that will color everything you do, at least for a while. The mind is more stubborn than we might like."

Nimbus said, "Thank God for that! Otherwise people's attempts to hack individuality or competition out of humanity might've actually worked, and we'd be a bunch of damn ants."

Diver tried to make sense of the brain diagram but saw only motor control, language, vision processing. Hopes and dreams were harder to pinpoint, to target... and yes, thank God for that. "Inertia. You can turn off my wings but I'll still subconsciously expect to have them. All right, then; does that mean any moral changes will linger as memories and expectations?"

The orange mare nodded. "It may help to have a 'designated driver' who abstains, with authority to yank the volunteers back from the abyss if they really have gone terribly wrong. Nimbus, Rigel, and Vance, will you do that for me?"

"Yes, your majesty," said Nimbus, and the others echoed her. She said, "If you insist. But this is dangerous ground."

"Then a queen should go first upon it, if she presumes to lead."

Diver said, "I'll volunteer too -- and join your Night Guards. I'll keep a journal and let Nimbus read it, to see if I've gone crazy. I'm already on a path of exploration; I might as well see where it leads."

#

Some of the palace bedrooms were intact. Nimbus commandeered one and pulled Diver onto its big cushion, starting right away to pull his body into fully detailed mode.

Diver grunted, wrapping his wings around her. "Nimbus, we'll be fine. We have you to reel us back in if the changes don't work."

"You've only been here for a few days and" -- she squeaked cutely atop him -- "and you're so eager to help us, to be part of this place."

He leaned up and kissed her on the muzzle, then her neck. "Why shouldn't I love Hoofland? It has people in it like you, who care about making sure it's more than a game, more than a social experiment."

#

He sat in a stark white room that was technically within Hoofland but normally inaccessible, having software test his mental reactions to dozens of poems, songs, jokes, swear words, paintings and textures and more. There'd been a traditional intelligence test followed by a vivid one involving an hour in a maze full of puzzles. He felt as abraded by the data-gathering as by a medical exam, which he supposed this was. "Will there be a battle to earn this upgrade?" he asked the empty test chamber.

A disembodied, vaguely Slavic voice said, "Unnecessary. Please say 'Accept' to install the experimental changes you've been discussing, codename Ascension."

"Accept." He waited. "Well?"

"Done. Were you expecting special effects? Here." A triumphant fanfare played and confetti rained down.

Diver felt he should find that a little rude, but he let it pass. He looked around the featureless room. "Thank you. How do I get back where I was?"

A plain door appeared. The voice said, "You tend to lose sight of the way back, after a while. I'm glad you have an Ariadne to guide you through this labyrinth."

#

Sky Diver
PRIVATE INFO
Account type: Uploader
Mind: Tier-III*
Body: Pegasus
Main Skills: Flight, Brawling, Dodge, Wingblade, Magic
Save Point: Noctis Castle
Magic: Aeromancy (Novice)
PUBLIC INFO
Note: -
Class: None

"Tier Three-Star?" said Diver, in Harvest Moon's throne room. "I'm different enough to not fit neatly into the usual category for humans?"

Nimbus stood there as though she'd never moved. "Quick: thoughts on hooves versus fingers?"

He raised one to look at it, then imagined the fine dark C of his hoof splintering into five wriggling tips. He shivered, then tried to imagine solving a Rubik's Cube with them. It took effort to visualize holding parts of the thing and turning them at the same time. "These are part of me. The idea of having hands instead is, uh..."

Nimbus was looking at his right wing, which he'd unconsciously been twirling in an uncertain gesture. "I guess some of your attention has drifted to your new limbs."

He reared up on his hindlegs and practiced waggling each limb, naturally including his tail. He twisted his neck back to look at it, flopped back onto all fours, and nickered softly. "Seems so."

The queen and her two other test subjects, zebra Danio and the bespectacled Theo, returned soon after. Nimbus and the other dissenters quizzed them as a basic sanity check. She sighed, saying, "You pass for now. I hope you know what you're doing. Want to review the war situation?"

They checked a map that Nimbus had updated while they were getting their brains scrambled. The others filled Diver in. To have the power of a Noble meant maintaining at least fifty points worth of magic nodes, "natural" fountains of energy strewn about the flat world map. Ten level-five nodes, or five fives and twenty-five ones, and so on. To control a node meant being the last person to do an hour-long ritual there and not be interrupted. So, Harvest Moon's power rested on having volunteers (including some weak NPCs) ready to kill anyone who started stealing one of her power sources. Right now her power was at seventy-one, well above the minimum and the fifty-one now held by the upstart Sunward Ho.

"Are the nodes there for your exclusive use?" asked Diver, studying the colorful dots. He poked one and to his surprise it changed color; the map was interactive.

The queen shook her head. "Think of them as public fountains where I have first priority, but others can drink harmlessly. As you can see, there are a total of 200 points available on the world map, but various pattern bonuses bring that up to potentially 240."

"256," said Danio the zebra.

"What?"

He tapped several nodes to show a hypothetical pattern, a mandala of interlocking multicolored ley-lines. "In theory, five Nobles could share this world instead of four, if they cooperated to mix territory this way."

The queen's other Ascended supporter said, "How did I miss that?"

They all fell quiet. Harvest Moon said, "It feels different to see it all laid out this way." She took off her tiara and looked it over. "Do I really need this? Maybe we should have zero Nobles."

"Your majesty?" said Nimbus. "If you've seriously lost all desire for power so soon, do you mind if I take over?"

The queen seemed to be seriously considering it. "I... I enjoy being a Noble, but could certainly have fun without it. Would you be willing to handle the responsibility of defending the nodes, arranging quests for our people, and so on?"

A cold sliver worked its way down Diver's mane and spine. Has this change made me passive? Apathetic? I don't think I especially wanted power even before this. Now, it seems like more trouble than it's worth.

Nimbus stepped back and her wings stood straight out as though she were ready to spring -- up and backwards, obviously, from the angle and posture given the still air and ceiling height. She said, "I don't want you to hoof this job over to me because you've suddenly stopped caring. Moon, you've cared about this land ever since you talked me into playing this silly video game you'd just discovered. I've always liked that playful 'bwahaha, take over the world' streak in you, but now it's gone all of the sudden."

Harvest Moon went over to the neglected buffet table and poured herself a drink, though her hooves shook. "There's still a threat to our peaceful enjoyment of Hoofland. I suppose I would enjoy defeating the trolls before their disruption gets worse."

Nimbus gently prodded her with one wing. "To see your enemies driven before you --"

The queen smiled uncertainly. "And hear the lamentation of the mares. Yes, by all means let's defeat the enemy and try to help everyone have fun doing it. But... This world doesn't need to be a zero-sum game, nor a world of stasis where the same people rule forever. I have a few ideas."

"Your majesty," said Nimbus, with a bow.

#

To give him some experience, Diver led one of the raiding parties. He flew and hiked eastward with six NPC flunkies plus two of the queen's Earthside players and Noctis. Meanwhile, Noctis stayed behind to guard the castle, and other parties were making defensive and offensive expeditions with Noctis along. To keep things straight in his head, Diver focused on the fact that it was Golden Scale, specifically, at his side.

Spies put Sunward Ho's power level at fifty-six and rising as her friends seized control of a few more nodes on the map. The good news that the gain hadn't come at Harvest Moon's expense, yet. The deer of the north and the less organized lands of the south had both requested aid against their newly aggressive dawnward neighbor.

The land itself didn't change much as the party traveled. The landscape was procedurally generated, meaning that a random number generator had been seeded with a single word of power, which could be used to calculate an endless array of hills and streams and little adventures without direct human or AI design. Atop that a number of designers had worked with love and dedication to make each square mile of virtual terrain into something unique, with a mix of seamless blending and surprises. Here a canyon roared with a magma river and a honeycomb of caves, and non-fliers needed to cross a rickety rope bridge guarded by an Australian-accented sphinx. Or the other rickety rope bridge guarded by a black knight; there was too much traffic on the sphinx road.

Diver picked a third option. "Rope?" Someone tossed him one. He flew across the burning updraft of the jagged canyon, staked one end on that side, then got his wingless allies to ride a pulley across. One of the world's ever-present special effects AIs cued some Indiana Jones music. Diver smiled, which he supposed was how it got paid or rated.

After another long walk they were in the flat world's middle. In the distance eastward was a Greek-style temple with a beam of golden light reaching high into the sky.

"It's going to get tricky from here on," said Golden Scale.

"Know any save points nearby?"

One of the Earthside players said, "There's a goblin lair just south, I think."

The party detoured to reach the Skulllick Tribe's territory in a supposedly ancient quarry. They had to kill a few of the nasty knife-wielding greenskins but the checkpoint crystal hovered on the area's fringes, making it possible to mark everyone's progress without having to do the endlessly repeating quest to wipe the tribe out. Diver asked, "Their function is to get slaughtered every day to entertain passing adventurers?"

Scale said, "Pretty much. The Forces of Evil run it as a farm, as in, something that generates minor loot for heroes and some kind of evil currency for themselves. No real minds at this one."

"FoE? I thought they didn't usually get involved in Hoofland."

"They don't, much. This place doesn't matter. Let's get on with the magic-node raid."

Diver looked down with suspicion into the quarry, where the remaining goblins milled around obliviously between filthy tents and a cave. "The latest trolls aren't playing by the usual rules, right? What if there's more to this place than it looks like?"

One of the shadow players said, "You're reading too much into it, Diver. We've saved; let's go."

He nodded and headed out. From there the group went quiet, sticking to the tall grass as they approached the temple.

Their self-proclaimed "ninja unicorn" cast a far-seeing spell to make a lens in midair. "Lightly guarded. I see four identical earthbound grunts, a pegasus who thinks he's cleverly hidden by the roof, and a unicorn who's obviously AFK."

"Hmm?" said Golden Scale.

"I mean not paying attention. He's doing standard idle animations. We can take 'em, but the trouble is they'll respawn nearby -- maybe at the quarry -- within minutes, and who knows how many reinforcements they'll bring."

They'd need an hour to steal the control point, doing the ritual in Harvest Moon's name. Standard practice was to have offensive reinforcements including defense turrets of some kind, and a teleport route from a headquarters to the battle line. In this case the queen's resources were reduced by the griefers' strike and stretched thin by other missions, so Diver and company didn't have much backup coming for hours. "I don't see any backup defenses on their side either," said Diver. It was a level-one point on the frontier, a low priority.

Scale frowned. "Kill 'em, and hope they've got good stuff to steal. Then one of us takes the point while the rest defend."

They all nodded, and whispered out the rest of a plan. Then they scarfed down pizza and coffee, an important tactical move for the stat bonuses.

The ninja crept through the grass and laid a snare for whenever the idle unicorn paid attention, then backstabbed an NPC before he could cry out. Diver worried that the faint tense music would give them away, but it was only a sort of compensation for Earthside players who could never have full sense awareness and effectively had a tiny field of vision.

He'd circled around to the direction the hiding pegasus was watching the least, and managed to ambush him atop the temple roof with a slash of one wingblade, scoring a major wound. Diver lost sight of what the others were doing as he and the other flier rolled across the roof, shouting and thrashing hooves while drums boomed in time with their blows. Then he kicked the villain off the three-story roof, and got reminded that they both had wings.

The pegasus flapped for altitude and let loose a string of racial slurs in a weird robotic monotone. Diver chased him and went for a stunning blow rather than a wound by suddenly flipping to strike with his hindhooves instead of his blades. The trick worked, and the foe crashed onto the temple steps. Diver followed with a diving punch that stunned him again, and another slash that killed him. The pegasus' body flickered and vanished, leaving behind a pile of potions.

Diver looked around. Scale and the shadow players had taken out the other NPCs, keeping their own NPCs in reserve, and they were now looking at the enemy unicorn who just stood there. Occasionally that guy leaned his head down, pretending to graze, always with the same animation.

"Doesn't seem sporting," said Diver. "His player is probably asleep or something."

The ninja grinned and began stealing his armor and equipment piece by piece, stripping him nude. "Free experience!"

Scale said, "He's got a point. Diver, this is a good time to try out magic attacks. Altar Beast, get started."

Their cleric (the other shadow) hustled into the temple with their NPCs to start the ritual. That left Scale, Diver and the ninja with the oblivious unicorn and no other opposition in sight.

Diver didn't want to hurt this guy, but there was no mind directly attached to this enemy's body, and he'd be a threat if he paid attention. Reluctantly, Diver reared up and channeled energy into voltage on his wings, charging his blades with electricity. "Sorry, but we're not letting some griefer spoil our fun." He slashed the defenseless unicorn first with lightning, then with a double-strike charged with ice. The enemy toppled and died, still blank-faced.

"Eerie," said Diver, stepping away from the pile of loot. "I guess humans will always be at a disadvantage here."

The ninja turned back from watching to the east. "You're not a real human anymore, just because you uploaded?"

"I don't think I am, completely. Not that being human is bad." There was no blood on his weapons, when he checked. "Jury's still out on whether being a true Hooflander pegasus is better."

Scale said, "Come on; let's get inside and recharge before we're counterattacked."
> Reset
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was an easy takeover. The team guarded their ritual expert for an hour while he danced and chanted around a pillar of golden fire; he said he was on autopilot while eating some pasta and they should shout if anyone tried to kill them.

At the end, the ray of mystic energy flared broadly enough to threaten the party, died, and came back in Harvest Moon's orange coat color, shot through with silver streaks. Diver tried warming his hooves by it, becoming aware of something he'd been missing: temperature. The day was warm and the fire just hot enough to draw human hands or Hooflander hooves close in primal curiosity.

The queen's voice echoed from the flames. "Good work, my loyal subjects. Sunward Ho's power has decreased by a point. If we can knock the enemy beneath fifty, opposing her will get much easier."

"What is she at now?" asked Diver.

"Fifty-two, due to other conquests back and forth. Unfortunately, that means the Noble must act."

Scale said, "Status?" toward the doorway.

Their ninja reported back, "No contact yet. Maybe the enemy has pulled back rather than fight over a single point."

Diver scuffed a nearby column with one hoof. "We're thinking in terms of a conventional war. These are mostly Earthside people here to make trouble, though. They already raided Noctis and did some damage even though it didn't accomplish more than to tick us off.

We may be in for an unconventional attack of some kind."

The queen said, "I have supporters from around Earth, but mainly active when it's evening in North America and Europe. Our strength will temporarily ebb starting about now, leaving us vulnerable until the moon rises again over those lands."

Scale watched the empty distance, then turned back toward Harvest Moon's voice. "Want us to press on, your majesty?"

"You might as well. Try to seize the two-point node to your north; I will have another force converge there soon after you arrive."

Diver tapped his breast with one hoof and lowered his head. "Your majesty."

#

The party abandoned the point on the theory that the queen would detect an attempt to seize it and the enemy's mainly Earthside forces would be going to bed about now, too. The sun set in Hoofland, leaving Diver's party in surprising darkness. In Noctis itself the moon was always visible, by some power of the night-minded Noble. Their ninja lit the way with a dim horn-light.

Diver asked, "Are you shadows up for another fight?"

The ninja nodded. The cleric said, "This place is gonna be my home. I might as well."

"Really? You're going to upload?"

"I'm sixty-eight. Do you know how awful 'assisted living' homes are? It's one or the other. Or spend my savings on a new lung, and probably die a few years later anyway." The silly cartoon horse trotted along quietly for a while. "Diver, do you believe in God?"

The question would have bothered Diver a year ago, before his own similar decision to leave the ordinary world behind. He looked into the darkness beyond their sharp-edges little circle. "No. I haven't in a long time."

"I'm sorry, mister Rondel. We didn't get to her in time."

"You tried. That's... that's just the way the world is."

Diver spoke and flapped his wings once, sending a crackle of electricity along them and into the ground. "If there's to be any justice in the world, we have to be the ones to create it."

"That's about where I am at this point. Why take the chance that all the priests are wrong, when there's a real sort of immortality for sale?"

The ninja stopped, and the motion of his head spun shadows around them. "Must be nice to be so damn rich."

Diver raised his wings defensively. "I got in after the big price drop."

"To only six figures. Right. People like me only get to hope there's a real heaven, 'cause we can't afford your version."

Scale came to his defense. "Your world's not fair. There's only so much we can do about that. We ponies are trying to help."

"Really? By fighting over this game map? If you take over from the griefers, how does that do a damn thing for us 'shadows'? In fact, even your slang says you think you're not human."

Diver felt spotlighted by the unicorn's spell-light, but there was no warmth in it. "You're right. It doesn't help you. We should be doing more."

Scale nudged him, saying, "This place is your home now. Plenty of other people get here and bounce right back out."

The many-bodied Noctis wasn't among the circle who knew about the Ascension program. Diver had committed more than Noctis knew to Hoofland, but the change meant taking some responsibility for the world beyond it. "Making uploading practical for everyone should be our goal. But I'm no scientist or economic planner. What I can do here and now" -- he stamped the ground -- "is fight this war, in a way that doesn't just win but that makes people Earthside think of our world in a different light."

The unicorn said, "Sure looks like you're playing it exactly like it really matters. Capture the control point, move on to the next, beat the boss."

That was true, which stung him. "Then what would you suggest?"

"They're trolls. They're playing to screw around, not because they care. Help them screw around. I don't know; build some obscenely shaped castle as tribute?"

Scale said, "This is our world, shadow. Not a toy."

The shadow laughed at her. "Have fun with that. You're the toy. Thanks for the perspective; I should go outside and do something real. Take my stuff; I don't care." He flopped onto the ground and "slept", abandoned by the human controlling him from the outside world.

The mare sniffled. Diver draped a wing over her, and the cleric hesitantly did the same with one hoof. Somewhere else in the world, did the rest of Noctis feel the same way?

"He's right," said Noctis. "We tell ourselves we're a vital part of Hoofland, but background characters are all we'll be to humans. Why are they so mean?"

"The real -- the Outer Realm is hard for us."

"Not 'us'! You're not one of them anymore."

That was more true than she knew. Diver said, "You've brought happiness to a lot of people. That's more than a lot of humans can say. What can we do to make this world better with our own skills and perspective?"

"Lock the shadows out! Kick their accounts and leave us alone." A faint red light shined in the distance, probably dawn.

Their cleric said, "Now, now, miss Scale. We shadows aren't all bad, right? If you push for Hoofland to disengage from human players, or block accounts just like any other game, then that's how people will think of it."

She sighed. "I suppose. Get here as soon as you can, will you?"

Diver's eyes widened and he took to the air. The red light wasn't to the east, but to the north, and it was coming from the ground. "Guys? About face and start running."

In a spreading wave from the direction of the next magic node, the ground was lava.

Scale looted the unicorn's body, barked a command to the brainless guards who'd been following them, and ran. The cleric hurried after. The game added a breathless note to his voice, but he was otherwise casual as he said, "What's wrong?"

"Wave of lava!" said Diver, landing long enough to rest his wings. He felt the pull of air through his lungs and the beat of his hooves on dirt. "Anyone seen this before?"

Scale glanced backward as they ran. "No. How much of it?"

"As far as I could see." There was no horizon in this flat world, but fog blurred everything beyond a few miles out.

"Humans!" she hissed. "That does it. I'm cheating a bit." She shut her eyes for a moment, still galloping south away from the red wave. "Meteor knows his squad's suddenly been cut off from a supply line he had going. Perfect Timing -- you haven't met him -- just got killed. Grassy Gnoll sees something odd in the distance as he works Mount Improbable with some newcomers. Diver, this isn't just one node that's going haywire."

Diver flew again and risked veering away from his southward course to get a better view. "It's everywhere!" He turned back to catch up, and saw he was right: another wave was spreading from somewhere to the east. He told them, turned his herd southwest, and said, "What could cause this?"

"I don't know. Some of my mage friends might."

The cleric said, "Don't ask me. I don't know the inner workings. A glitch with elemental magic? Warn the queen as long as you're talking to your other selves."

"Done."

The hellish light was closer now and showed no sign of stopping. "Get across the canyon?" said Diver.

"No time for ziplining."

Diver ran and soared just above the ground. "Then you two will die. Sorry. If only there was -- aha! Give me your stuff." He pointed to the scattered clouds in the sky."

"Cloud backup storage!" said the cleric. He reached his neck into his saddlebags and tossed Diver a pouch. "I'll get this back, right?"

Diver said, "It'll be your cloud bank. I'll try to, uh, paddle the cloud somewhere safe or wait until the lava's gone. Scale, any valuables?"

"Good thinking." She stopped and fished with her hooves for the coins and potion bottles they'd looted off the goons they'd killed. Diver landed and filled his saddlebags until he wasn't sure he could fly. "Sorry, you two." The wall of lava was in plain sight now, about to sweep over them.

The cleric said, "It's only death. Doesn't seem to be a big problem anymore."

Diver hugged Scale, then took off and landed on the nearest cloud. His wings ached and he took a moment to catch his breath after such a sharp takeoff. Below him the whole world was becoming a sea of lava. He didn't look down at where his friends were dying.

He carefully leaned over the cloud's edge; it was only the size of a car. He tried beating the air with his wings to push it along, but at this rate he couldn't get anywhere useful. Still he had to try. It was all he could do.

Bits of the air crackled. The red light flickered and seemed to change direction, and moments passed when it seemed like time had jumped forward. The sky... the sky was a mass of cubes. Nothing was real. There was a taste of cough syrup in his mouth and he couldn't feel his body. Then all sound ceased, and then so did the world itself.

#

The letters appeared slowly with clicking, as though typed. System notice: Hoofland was destroyed. If you live there, don't worry: we'll have something up and running shortly. In the meantime please wait in this backup environment. If you were one of the ones that caused it: you get an achievement award for that. Now never do it again.

There was nothing else. Then some semblance of reality returned: a crude world of blocks, forming a wooden hut on a grassy field.

Diver looked around, then found he had no body. He could move by willing it, and open the hut's door the same way. Inside was a generic data tablet with large buttons offering to let him read various books or a Talespace news feed.

He had no breath, no ability even to shudder. Diver called out but there was no sound either. The visual environment was here to help him stay sane, but it did nothing for his mood. His friends were hopefully either standing up Earthside while their computers blinked the error message at them, or relaxing in copies of this same vanilla world.

He willed himself vaguely at the tablet's buttons to check the news. US President Floats Anglo Union: "Never Should Have Left". Pro-Caliphate Rally In Barcelona Turns Violent. Reactor Design Passes Key Test. Challenger Launch Faces Threats, Delays. Nothing about his home.

He stood, bodiless, and read a guide to Hoofland's gameplay. It was helpful to have more background information on how the various powers worked. Or did work. At least this disaster was due to the griefers rather than something even worse befalling the Outer Realm.

#

Later, he appeared in a small indoor stadium, seating a few thousand people. The field in the middle was nothing but grass. He looked around at equally confused ponies, deer, griffins and other Hoofland races, then spotted Nimbus and waved. He spotted his own hoof and smiled at it. He didn't have full sensation yet, but he was at least back to normal.

A griffin flapped into view from a hazy light above, and landed in the center. She stood taller than any similar creature, and her feathers shined in blue as though lit by rippling water. "Greetings, citizens of Hoofland," she said. "I apologize for the apocalypse."

The crowd murmured. Ludo! Diver hadn't seen the AI overlord since he'd left the virtual world's starting area. She didn't often appear in Hoofland, at least openly.

She said, "As some of you saw, the recent invaders from Earth found a glitch in Hoofland's physics that rapidly created an infinite amount of lava. It was pretty clever, actually. Unfortunately it had the side effect of destroying everything on the ground and lagging the world so hard it risked interfering with vital systems. I had to shut it down. Each of you is here because you're either an uploader, a native, or representing a collective-intelligence native."

Golden Scale was in the stands, but not shadow players like Major Key.

"The last usable backup of Hoofland is from five days ago."

People groaned. Diver joined in; four days meant everything he'd experienced would be wiped out as though it'd never happened! At least, his treasures. He supposed his brain wouldn't be reset.

Ludo raised one wing. "I know. That's why I have another option to run by you, before we consult the Earthside players. It would be possible to restore from backup and effectively turn time back. That's option one. Option two is to create a new, exclusive copy of Hoofland, only for those who live here. You need never fear attacks by outsiders again, and we need not bother trying to limit griefers who have no stake in this world. What do you think?"

"I have friends out there," said Diver. A lot of other residents were saying much the same thing.

Someone called out, "We can't cut ourselves off!"

"Show of hooves for that?" asked the central griffin. Not many. "That's not surprising. Here's another idea. In the early days of Hoofland it was built without a great deal of continuity." Her beak curled in a frown. "It's also rather small, isn't it? A few hours' walk will take you much of the way across the map."

A few people murmured assent. Diver chuckled as he realized: She's an artist looking at this disaster as a chance to revise something that didn't quite please her. He said, "Out with it. What are you trying to replace my world with?"

The AI turned suddenly to him with a touch of guilt visible in the set of her wings. "Hoofland version two. A world built with full knowledge that uploading is possible, designed to welcome newcomers and Earthside players and to be a true home rather than a game that happens to have people living in it. Certain physics code ought to be revised, that I'd never had the chance to. It nettles me."

Scale said, "What about all the things we've built? There is no town of Noctis right now."

"What I propose is to start again, with the minds we have, in a new world. If the invaders want to control places of power, they can, but becoming a Noble should be a boon only for those willing to live here. I would reset all of the control points on this new map, meaning no Nobles will exist until a new generation of them earns that right."

Harvest Moon stood, plainly visible by her bearing even amid the other brightly colored equines. "You risk having us not care. Do you want this new work of art of yours to gain leaders chosen only from the most aggressive? We didn't come here to play the old games of dominance, and some of us... as you know, some of us have been seeking a new perspective."

The griffin nodded, tapping her beak with her talons. "Many of you have discussed this line of thinking with me. You want to stay engaged with the world outside, but you also resent being a 'secondary world' that exists mainly to amuse the outsiders. So, what if the race for Noble status also carries certain obligations to both realms? Those who have the title can lord over Hoofland, but will also be expected to actually help manage it and to coordinate the residents' Earthside efforts. That should discourage players from taking over just because for the challenge."

Voices clamored, until someone made himself heard: "What's going on right now? Are humans sitting at screens and getting an error message?"

"The message says we'll be back soon, and 'good game' to the griefers. I'd like to get things up and running again, but I shouldn't be standing here in the middle of things and telling you what you should have. Why don't you all take a few hours to talk it over and get back to me? Consider it an experiment in democracy."

#

The stadium exits opened onto a warren of streets lined entirely with identical taverns. The interiors were full of tables, bars and faint but lively violin music. Diver's senses were still mostly dead, and there was no food or drink, nor thirst or hunger. He would've preferred having the needs and the ways to solve them. Judging from the taverns' copy-pasted layout and the simple simulation, he sensed that having everyone together like this was straining Talespace's computers. The virtual world seemed designed more for wide open spaces than for a gathering of many minds, each of which took more processing power than many square miles of scenery.

Harvest Moon tapped him on the flank with one hoof, making him turn. "There you are," she said. "We're electing a dozen or so representatives to settle this business and remake the world."

"You have my vote, then."

"I'd actually like to request your vote for Nimbus."

The bat-winged pony looked startled. "Me?"

The queen said, "You're more trustworthy than either of us right now."

Diver resented that; he'd killed a few people since the change, but he'd established that that sort of fighting didn't count as wrong. No one had accused him of having gone violently mad.

"Then what do you think I should say to the other representatives?" Nimbus asked, looking around at the queen, Diver, and the others who'd gravitated toward Harvest Moon.

Diver said, "Hoofland should be a place for the people with a stake in it, first. If people want to play from Earthside, fine, but this is our world and they're our guests."

One of the others groused, "Damn free-to-play accounts. Have you seen some of their names? 'Bullet Hell', 'Panzer Tank'. Wannabe heroes in ludicrous lime and purple. They don't take this place seriously."

Danio the zebra found their group at one of the big round tables. "For me it's a normal thing to be the Other, so it's interesting to see this attitude toward humans. We call them shadows, but we are their shadows, imitating their battles, their politics and even their furniture. Consider these chairs. These are chairs for humans." They had high seats and upright backs, lifted from a generic fantasy graphics set.

Diver thought of the fancy equipment he'd borrowed, the nerdy talk of game statistics and how skills linked to numbers -- and how those things stacked up against the reality of Earthside players whose real hackers and weapons could knock Talespace down like a sandcastle. "What survived the apocalypse is the people, and our friendships and minds. Those are our real resources, not how many magic crystal toothbrushes we make."

"Culture," the queen said. "We may be imitating the outward form of Earth royalty, but we can do more with it than play at conquering each other's land."

Nimbus looked around at the huge gathering. "But that's exactly what we'll tend to do. We're still human. Unless..." She shut her eyes and her wings quivered. "This is going to sound ridiculous."

Diver reached out with one wing, though he couldn't feel the touch. "Go ahead."

She said, "We've given up on the life we had on Earth, but we kept what was important to us. 'Better to lose an eye than burn intact', right? We lost our world today to get the chance at a better one. If we're really going to keep splitting our attention between Hoofland and the outside, then we need to get serious about that. This world has cleric characters. What it doesn't have is a specific belief system. I say we start one."

Harvest Moon asked, "An actual religion?"

"Yeah. Focused on protecting our world and using it for good. It can bring people together whether they're natives, uploaders or outsiders, against the jerks who only see it as a toy."

Danio nodded. "It was coming to this. There was a religious vacuum. But now someone must fill it."

"Not 'someone'. We don't need specific gods."

"Leaders, at least. Nobles who can direct people's efforts." Danio looked to his queen.

The queen looked at Nimbus. "I expect a free-for-all once the world is rebuilt. There will be room for more Nobles. Besides, you currently have no arena to get back to. Maybe you should be more than my underling."
> Clerics and Diplomats
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Resetting the world seemed to take little time. In reality it took days, between the representatives' talk, the hiring of other Talespace residents to throw some surprises into the new design, and the mundane task of shuffling data around. There was talk about putting Hoofland on its own cluster of servers for some reason, though it had no obvious effect on anyone there. For all Diver knew, his mind might be stored anywhere on Earth.

Adventuring parties gathered in clusters on a vast, featureless floor. Everyone was naked, lacking their weapons and armor from the last several objective years' work. It'd taken some negotation to make people willing to give up their stuff, and their world would probably lose some Earthside players who felt cheated. But it was their world, not the humans', and any losses were just bits for the people outside.

Diver looked up and saw a hazy set of arena bleachers crowded with spectators, ready to watch the equines' first adventures in a new world. He waved. "We who are about to fly, salute you."

The entire many-bodied Noctis stood together, chattering to themselves. Diver looked to Harvest Moon. "Are you ready, your majesty?"

"Don't 'majesty' me yet. There's a lot of work to do, first."

He'd thought about trying to become a Noble himself, but why? He had the power to run his own life already, and it was the only one he was responsible for.

A countdown flashed in the sky above the queen's Night Guard party. Staggered timers showed that other groups and solo adventurers were going to enter the new Hoofland at slightly different times to keep the servers from bursting. (They were being stuffed full of horses, after all.) One by one the first few groups vanished, and the queen counted down to a new world.

"Giddyup!" said a narrator's voice, and the world faded out, then in.

#

Sky Diver appeared in midair over a forest. His wings wobbled. He rolled to the left and whooped, trying to get used to a subtle difference in how the air flowed. It was as though he'd escaped from a stuffy room into a warm breeze, but better yet, the current streamed through layers of feathers on wings he still found too new to take for granted. He jabbered and veered up into a stall, a graceful spin, and a swift level flight in search of adventure.

He found the swamp before any of his herdmates. He circled around it until his flight power ran out and he had to touch down nearby. A buzzing in his spine made him feel that something magical was here, possibly a power node, but there was no blatant sky-beam like the shrine he'd raided. He pushed into the air again and roamed in spreading circles until he found the others exploring the forest and a hill. "Found something," he said as he led a few strays toward where Harvest Moon and the other equines had converged. "What are you doing?"

The queen and one of the guards kicked down entire pine trees with their hindhooves, sending a snap like thunder through the woods. "Gathering resources. See any axe-worthy rocks?"

"Here, majesty," said a unicorn, and floated one over to her.

"Start chopping these up, please."

Diver watched the earthbound viciously fell more trees while the unicorns sliced them into blocks and planks. "What, you're going to build a castle right here?"

Nimbus fluttered into view, more comfortable in the narrow spaces between trees than Diver had been. "There you are."

Harvest Moon said, "Greetings. Diver, we're without tools. We're just crafting some basics. You should do more scouting."

Diver related what he'd sensed in the swamp. The queen said, "Good catch. You're at a disadvantage when it comes to finding control points that aren't already claimed. We earthbound can sense them more easily." She stamped the ground, shut her eyes, and made faint lines of energy sweep out from her like cracks along the ground. When they faded she smiled. "Right. I'll need to get closer to perform the ritual, but that's the sort of site we need. Shall we begin?"

It looked like everyone here had kept their starting racial powers along with the full powers granted by Mount Improbable and its equivalent quests. Diver escorted the queen to the swamp, and only then realized that it was several miles wide. He skirted the fringe, looking for a relatively pleasant place to land. "I don't like the look of those giant Venus flytraps."

The queen made a face as her hooves squished into the muck. "Fetch Rigel, would you?"

Rigel the guard left his woodcutting duties and came over to attack the swamp with fire magic, drying patches of ground and killing a few suspicious plants. Diver slammed a huge mosquito into a shallow grave, then struggled to pull himself out of the sticky mud. Harvest Moon seemed to have no trouble beyond discomfort.

The queen stopped and stamped the earth, sending up a shower of dark sparks. "Here we are. I'll need an uninterrupted hour. Are you ready? If trouble comes, I want Rigel guarding me while Diver fetches the others."

The ritual began. Harvest Moon's version of it involved a drumming of hooves on the soggy ground, carrying her around in circles and posing with her head upturned, her mane swirling in a breeze that only affected her. Diver kept watch from the air as much as possible, occasionally fending off a shambling fish-monster with the fire-mage's help. "How many points is this one worth?" said Diver.

"Three," Rigel said.

"Even without a temple or something?"

"Two without, three once we build one. It doesn't need to be fancy to count, though; once we get some basic carpentry going we can make a wooden shrine-fort."

Diver fidgeted, feeling useless. He took to the sky again and kept watch. Soon enough, the orange flare of Harvest Moon's colors streamed into the sky from the middle of the swamp, like a flag. Finally he could focus on helping the carpenters or move on to find the next point.

In the distance a party of twelve appeared. Diver smiled at having such good eyesight, but the newcomers were heading closer. The new beam was hard to miss. He landed and told the queen, "Company."

"Make contact. Find out their intentions." There'd been some politicking, horse-trading and jockeying for position in the waiting area, but it wasn't clear that the new array of Nobles would turn out the same as the old.

Diver saluted and flew off again. When he reached the approaching dozen, who were all naked and unequipped like himself, he called out, "Hello, travelers! What do you want?"

They were all pinkish or brownish with similar mane colors. It was kind of unsettling, like looking at nude misshapen humans on all fours. All earthbound too. The herd leader said, "We're looking to do some crafting in that forest. Have you got tools yet? We can save time if we work together."

That sounded good. Diver landed to rest his wings. "Sounds good. Meet here, then send out a few ponies so you don't outnumber us." He winced inwardly; he'd already given info away while trying to play cautious.

"Don't worry!" said someone in the oncoming herd. "We're looking for the queen. Seen her?"

"Excuse me." Diver flew off to the woods but waggled his wings in a particular way to warn anyone in the swamp who was paying attention. In the forest he called, "Strangers. I don't trust them."

Nimbus was just about to leave the carpenter party for another scouting mission, but turned back to laugh at Diver. "Shouldn't you be all loving and trusting now?"

"If goodness means gullibility, the world's in more trouble than I thought. How big is our herd?"

"Eight counting you and the three at the swamp."

"Then let's gather here. I'll fetch the queen's group."

Diver hurried over to Harvest Moon and her two companions, working on the swamp shrine. It was just an incomplete wood-block platform so far. The queen looked at the strangers, who now turned toward the sky-beam she'd created. "Indeed. Withdraw to the woods. If the strangers try to capture the focus point, we can harass them from the air."

On their way to the forest, though, Diver and the queen's three (none of them fliers) got intercepted. The pinkish herd had steered to cut them off, all still looking friendly. A strange feeling came over the pegasus; a fight seemed inevitable and yet no one had done anything openly hostile. He had the choice of how to act, but the right answer was obvious. The ones he cared about were in danger. He flew to within a few paces of the strangers and punched the ground as he landed, kicking up dust and flaring his wings wide. "Whoa there!"

The smilers' leader said, "What's wrong? We just want --"

"Horseapples. Stop and talk or we'll treat you as hostile."

They kept coming, saying, "Are you threatening us?"

Throwing the first punch wasn't a bright moral line, against people who liked to get you good and surrounded before politely asking you to kneel. Diver darted forward and invoked ice onto his forehooves as he smacked the grin off the leader's muzzle. The stallion staggered, frostbitten, but kept to his hooves. Darn earthbound toughness. Diver swerved up out of retaliation range a moment before someone tried leaping after him.

Harvest Moon and the others charged now, too. Diver glimpsed only parts of the fight as he swerved, dived, hindleg-bucked and rose again to pummel the newcomers. He kept his advantage only for seconds, though. Someone yanked him down and stomped him, and by the red flare of pain Diver figured he'd taken a major wound. Shouts came from somewhere off to the side; the forest party was running in with improvised spears!

It still went badly. The queen's herd was outnumbered, and with almost no equipment on either side, the earthbound had the advantage of strength and endurance. The enemies ganged up on him and stomped him flat. The last thing he saw was the underside of a grey hoof.

#

Words appeared, white on black. "DEATH. Sky Diver experienced too much emergent gameplay." Below that was another note: "'In the name of the Dictatorship of Dong!'"

Diver floated in void, then felt gravity reassert itself as the world faded back in. He was in that slapped-together tavern where he'd been before the new world started. Of course; he'd found no save points there yet. Diver shook out his wings and confirmed he was intact, then trotted around until he found a horseshoe-shaped portal with a vague view of the new Hoofland beyond it.

His ears flicked back as more horses respawned nearby. "So we all lost?" The rest of the party appeared a few seconds later.

The queen groaned as she climbed to her hooves. "The what?" she said.

Nimbus said, "You saw the killing-quote too? I thought they were going to rebuild the Sunward Ho queendom."

A large TV on the tavern wall listed similar death taunts for each person who'd been revived here. Diver said, "I'm guessing the former Sunward Ho gang reorganized to overpower any rivals as soon as we began the new world. Seems like an all-earthbound party is good for getting a quick start, since they've got the highest raw stats plus that node-finding power."

Nimbus flapped twice and hovered. "Wait a minute. The world hasn't been reopened to Earthside players yet, has it? I thought we were keeping them out for the first few hours."

Dread washed through Diver, making his mane and tail prickle. "Then this trolling nonsense isn't just Earthside players messing with our world as a game. The locals are in on it."

Everyone griped at once. Harvest Moon stomped the floor. "We must adapt. If we've really improved ourselves, we should be able to defeat a few troublemakers."

Nimbus said, "Including all the Earthside players who made throwaway accounts just to see how badly they could break Hoofland?"

The rest of the queen's guards argued. One of them said, "Lose-lose. If we play the game their way, we're fighting a war against creatures from beyond the universe. If we insist on keeping the shadows out --"

Diver interjected, "We just established it's not just the Earthside players doing this."

"Even so, the shadows are behind it! If we keep them out, then people will say, 'this world isn't serious and doesn't really matter, because they reset it whenever something bad happens'."

"So this is natives' introduction to democracy," Diver said with a rueful grin. "We set up a system for the most effective thugs to take over."

Harvest Moon said, "Control over the land and its magic is about more than fighting ability. It evolves out of consensus and patient effort."

Diver flopped down on his haunches. "Yet berserker pony herds work pretty well in the first stage of civilization. Sounds historically accurate. I imagine if we reset Earth, we'd get the same kind of rush from some other group. How long before the shadows arrive?"

"A few hours subjective."

He grunted. The moment humans logged in, the residents would be back to second-fiddle status, having their time rates constantly adjusted to meet outside needs. "Okay. Your majesty, let's jump back in and try to re-establish contact with your other subjects. Then we can set about conquering more of the focus points."

#

Back in the new Hoofland, the queen's party landed on a vast, cold steppe where a yeti stomped randomly around. Moon said, "Spread out. Sky, scout."

Diver saluted and took to the air. No one was around for miles. No obvious resources, either, unless you could dig with your hooves. Just sun and tasty-looking grass. He landed to report. "What now?"

"Nimbus and Sky, fly east and west and return in an hour or so. The rest of us will search northward."

He looked around the nearly featureless plain. He could run forever on it, and it wouldn't matter too much who technically ruled the place so long as nobody re-invented the Mongol Empire. "Ideal horse terrain, isn't it?"

The queen looked wistful. "Yes, but we have responsibilities."

He flew west over gentle hills, seeing nothing that resembled the part of Hoofland he'd explored before. Of course there were no maps or compasses available... Aha! There was a cluster of ponies banging rocks together, around a faint beam of light that rippled white and black like smoke caught in a spotlight. The ponies here were varied and he soon spotted Danio the zebra. "Hello, the camp!" he called down.

They let him land. Danio said, "Where is the queen?"

"East. Did you get ambushed by the Dictatorship too?"

The zebra and the dozen ponies with him grimaced. "You mean Sunward Ho? Yes, a few of us have died twice already. We've gained some stragglers and lost others who've reappeared somewhere else in the world."

Diver pointed a wing toward the sky-beam. "Are you willing to turn that over to Harvest Moon?"

"Of course. It's a two-pointer."

Diver kept scouting and eventually found a stream with willows growing along it. Danio's team hurried to cut wood and start crafting some tools with that and their rock supply. With that done, Diver returned to find the queen and bring the good news.

Harvest Moon at that point had reached a canyon similar to the one Diver had seen when the world was destroyed. "I detect a powerful node down there," she said, nodding toward the bottom of the magnificent red-striped cliff walls.

"Need a lift?"

He and Nimbus shuttled several of the party down. It was tough work; coordinating with another flier meant learning not to bang his wings into hers, and they lacked the stamina to drop safely the whole way, needing to stop on ledges partway down.

Once that was done, he kept watch and explored the canyon floor. This narrow section left him feeling vulnerable; he was supposed to be above any danger. The queen busied herself with the node ritual.

"Streaks in the rock over here," he called out. "Ore?"

"Oh, good," said an earthbound scout he'd had to lug down here. They were heavy!

By the time Harvest Moon took control of the node and its beam of light shot into the sky, the scout had kicked, cussed and cracked some chunks of copper ore out of the canyon wall. Diver looked skeptically at them. "It'll still be a while before we've got anything like the manufacturing we'd need for weapons and armor."

"Haul this up," the miner said, pointing to the small pile of ore. "We can get going faster than we could Earthside, since we're not exactly doing an accurate model of the periodic table."

Diver grumbled and started lifting rocks out of the canyon. Even with how crafting worked in this world, there still wouldn't be time to --

The party up at the surface shouted a warning. Diver repeated it in the queen's direction before even getting a good look for himself: another gang of eight or so flesh-pink ponies!

"This... is... Hoofland!" one of them yelled, and shoved one of the queen's mares off the cliff.

Diver caught her but went spiraling out of control, barely reaching one of the canyon's ledges. They crashed into a cactus and took a wound each. Shouts of battle sounded above. Diver looked up there, then back down. There was no time to ferry more ponies up there to help. "Be right back," he told the mare, and flew up and into the fray.

The goons were unarmed like the last bunch, all earthbound, but the queen's party was putting up a better fight this time. One of the foes tumbled over the cliff, laughing. Diver shuddered and yanked another one over the edge by the tail.

Then one of them smacked his wing so hard he lost control and fell screaming to his death. The last thing he saw was Nimbus trying to ferry someone up, and looking agonized at being unable to help him.

#

"DEATH. Sky Diver played Coyote to SuperNinja98's Road Runner. 'In the name of the Dictatorship of Dong!"

He rolled over, groaning. His wings and tail hurt the worst. He was back in the generic tavern, still without a proper save point.

Given the name of his killer, and a decades-old pop culture reference a native AI probably wouldn't get, the outsiders had started showing up. Diver kicked a barstool, part of the furniture designed for humans in this standard fantasy set. He wasn't a human anymore, yet he was caught up in stupid human ideas of power and conquest.

Three more ponies, including Nimbus, appeared in quick succession around him. "Welcome back. I guess they can't get to the queen, at least."

Nimbus materialized, cursing, fluttering her wings. "Which means she's stranded. And respawning could take us God-knows-where again, so even that doesn't help us rescue her."

Harvest Moon appeared with a groan several feet above a table, and crashed onto it.

"How?" said Sky. "You were below the fight."

"I had my other subjects kill me." Moon extricated herself from the furniture and hopped up onto another table. "We're getting nowhere this way. The invaders will be able to get down there eventually and steal the node I just claimed, and probably the one Danio earned."

"Can we get a map?" asked Diver.

Nimbus flew over to the big TV and poked it with one hoof. It didn't give them a world map, but it did show standings: Danio 2, Harvest Moon 3, Southron 1, Deplorable Basket 1, Major Key 1, Sunward Ho 7, Dictator Dong 8.

Diver said, "Major Key! He logged in and grabbed a point already?"

A few more dead ponies appeared, revived, in the mirror-funhouse distance of the vast tavern. Diver grimaced at the list again. "I need an outside perspective on what's going on. Can we make contact?"

The queen stared into space and waved one hoof, poking at a hidden interface. "I have access to my friends list, but I can't just ask where they are until we set up a proper map of the new world."

There was an objectively right coordinate system for Hoofland, since the software had to track where everyone and everything was, but the ponies didn't automatically have access to it. Hiding information had been part of how AI got developed in the first place, forcing early models to learn about their environment instead of just knowing.

Diver said, "Even hearing 'I'm by a big mountain' would help. But right now I'm more concerned with seeing the big picture. How do you open the new interface?"

Once the queen showed him, Diver called up his friends list and made the "screen" visible to the group. Major Key the unicorn popped up as a blue hologram. Diver said, "Congratulations on grabbing a node so quickly. Do you have ordinary Net access where you are?"

"You don't?" Key chuckled. "Oh, right. It's easy to forget you're trapped in the machine."

"Thanks, I think. We have to go through some rigamarole, probably involving crystals, before we can get a computer equivalent. Can you tell us what's going on with this Sunward Ho/Dong thing?"

Key rolled his eyes. "It's all over the Thousand Tales forums. A bunch of goons decided to take over and have a war now that they blew up the world. Both factions are the same basic group, not really enemies. Do you know how many man-hours of work went into crafting magic swords and other stuff that's now erased because someone thought it'd be fun to flood the world with lava?"

Harvest Moon said, "That's about what we know already. What's their goal besides taking over?"

"Goal? I don't think there is one. What's the goal of a kid banging his toys together and saying wham, pow?"

Nimbus bared her little fruit-eating fangs. "We are not toys!"

"To them we are," said Diver. "As for looking like toys, we very much did ask for this." He wished the artist who'd drawn the basis for Hoofland's characters were around today to see what she'd wrought. She'd had a statue in the old Hoofland.

Key's words shook Diver out of his melancholy. "You'd better get going if you're going to compete with the goon factions. I'll ally with you guys if you want, but no promises on actually handing over my nodes. Assuming we can even find each other."

Diver said, "Why not turn them over? What do you gain from ruling a place you can't really live in?"

Key blinked. "It's for fun, of course. Even if I took over I'd only be a half-assed tyrant at worst, since I've got a life out here."

The queen said, "If we're going to meet up, then give us map data. There must be a sketch on your world's forums, at least."

Key turned to someone outside the hologram display, speaking orders. Then: "I'm sorry there's not more I can do. It must be frustrating for you to have all us outsiders intruding."

A crude map with many blank areas filled the display. The ponies scrambled for something to copy it with, then realized they had not even a bar napkin or a pencil.

Diver sighed. "We can keep going like this, trying to win a war against jerks from beyond the universe, but we're at a big disadvantage. Our bodies are what we actually want to live in; theirs are whatever they picked for a short-term rush and they can probably make new accounts later."

"If they care," said Nimbus, stamping the floor. "Probably most will get bored once they make a mess of our world again, and stop playing. Then we can take over again but we'll all know it's only because the humans lost interest."

Diver shut his eyes and took a few deep breaths while the others argued. It didn't really matter who ruled, right? There was no need to push for power and dominance, so why not do exactly what Nimbus predicted? Some wounded pride about always being weaker than humans didn't matter.

The outside world still did matter, though. Diver wandered off from the group to see what other ponies had appeared in the tavern. "Is anypony here part of Noctis?" Nopony here was, or they'd re-entered the world already. He checked his own friends list and saw that Golden Scale was listed as 'online', as though she could ever not be.

She appeared as another image hovering in front of him. "How are you doing?" she asked. Diver explained, and she grimaced. "Yeah, we're all having the same problem. Now that the shadows are here we keep getting raided before we can do more than tie a rock to a stick. Want to meet up so we have enough of an army to control a larger area? We can't fully share information, though, until all of me can physically meet up."

"Let me run something by you. Can you get enough Earthside contact info to find out where the goons' leaders are?"

"Sunward Ho was last seen taking over a river we haven't named yet, and --"

"I mean finding where they are on Earth."

The mare blinked and rubbed one ear. "Maybe? It's not our specialty to know things like that, but we know people. Why?"

Sky Diver really didn't. His scanty friend list reminded him that Hoofland was only one part of the larger Talespace world, and that he'd left behind the far larger "real world" with hardly a glance back.

"I want to pay the leaders a visit," he said.

Expressions flickered across Golden Scale's muzzle. "You... You said you were going to live here, in Hoofland. That you wouldn't run off for at least a month."

Diver stepped forward and hugged her image, but passed right through. Only the rules of this game world made it impossible for her to teleport to him, or him to her. Only his promise prevented him from ditching Hoofland entirely. "You're right. If I can get the queen's permission, though, what if I visit Earth as a diplomat? That doesn't mean leaving you behind or treating this world like it doesn't matter. Just the opposite, really."

She sighed and mimed returning the hug. "All right. But besides this visit of yours, I'm still holding you to your promise!"

The questions now were whether Key and Noctis could gather the right physical location from the forums, and whether anypony in this land of magic actually had any Earthside money.

#

News drones flew down a suburban street, tracking a bizarre procession. Six quadruped robots were pulling a cart. They were dressed up in horse-like manes and tails, and their cargo was hidden under an old-fashioned wagon top, giving the group the look of a nineteenth-century pioneer group. A lone human rode in front, holding an unnecessary set of reins and grinning like a fool.

The horses (such as they were) turned a corner onto a street of battered apartments, and took up a chant:

"Tribute ponies on the road
Carrying a heavy load
Well-hung monarch's in our space?
Pay him off or buck his face!"

Sky Diver's mind inhabited the left rear robot, turning him into a metal beast of burden with a view of little but the other circuitry Clydesdales. He set his body to keep up the chant, but meanwhile wrote a message in his mind to the Westwind Corporation employee who was their driver. "Any problems?"

The young man had volunteered when the horse-souls rented his company's robots, and had even brought a cowboy hat. He said aloud, "We're trending on the news feeds. Must be a slow day. My boss let the police know we're out here for a prank, so that's taken care of."

Diver sent back, "It's not a prank. It's deadly serious. =)"

At last the wagon reached apartment 942, and the human hopped down to ring the doorbell. Some people had come out of their own homes to see what was going on.

A fat man in a comic-book t-shirt answered the door even before the human reached it. Someone must've tipped him off. "What the hell?" he said, staring past the human employee to the cart.

The other horses tapped Diver with their necks and legs, urging him on. Diver disengaged his reins and trotted over, awkwardly. This body wasn't built to a true horse shape; it felt like he was trying to walk on his whole foot-bones instead of the tips like a normal person.

Diver said, "Hear ye! We have determined that this castle is the home of the dread Dictator Dong, ferociously potent warlord of the magical pony land of Hoofland!" He made sure the other horses' speakers relayed his words loud enough for all the onlookers to hear.

The man stammered and blushed. "Okay, what? How did you --"

"Because of your penetrating might and vigor, we representatives of Queen Harvest Moon" -- a chorus of "All hail!" from the others -- "have come to declare our offering of tribute. Behold!"

Their human hustled back to the wagon and whipped off the cover to reveal a keg of beer.

"We recognize the awful might of your empire and the overwhelming girth of your army. In return for this gift, we ponies of the Night Queen's domain seek peace with the Dong forces and recognition of our rule over our ancestral lands."

The human who was using his weekend to lead a horde of goons in harassing Hoofland's people, looked incredulous. They'd tracked him down to where he lived, in the real world. "Hey, man, we're just having fun."

Diver's muzzle couldn't vary much from its stern expression, and he stamped the ground with one titanium foot. "Indeed, it is the royal perogative of the virile Dong to amuse himself as he pleases in our magical pony land. We seek only peace to prevent the annihilation or conquest of our land, which would force us to seek redress in some other way." The other horsebots stomped in unison. The driver waved to a news drone.

The dictator stood in the doorway, arms crossed and leaning back. "I'm not even in charge of this. It was another guy's idea, the one playing Queen Sunward Ho."

"Another team of tribute ponies will be dispatched immediately to make peace with the mighty Ho of the ferocious Dong, provided you tell us where Ho lives."

"I don't think he'd want me to... uh."

"But how else can we deliver tribute? Perhaps you can accept this tribute on behalf of our nation, and do what you can to use your deep and piercing might on your Ho to bring about peace between all our people."

Dong was sweating now, faced with this "royal treatment", the attention of his neighbors snickering at him, and the prospect of angry robots. "Look, uh, Hoofland people. The invasion is a thing we're doing for fun. But we were never trying to win, exactly."

"Indeed?" Sky Diver had guessed it. Key's attitude was the same: the point of fighting in Hoofland was to have fun, not to win, and that was doubly true for humans who had better things to do in their own world.

"Yeah. So." Dong glanced over at the wagon and the vaguely menacing horse guards. "A whole keg of beer, huh? What kind?"

#

Nimbus hung upside-down from a rafter, laughing as the diplomat group returned to the off-world tavern. "That nonsense actually worked?"

Diver grinned up at her, then spotted Golden Scale and hugged her for real this time.

Scale said, "Our human agent says the stunt is all over the forums. Ours and the goons'. The invaders are already working with it like it was their own idea for a plot twist. Instead of them griefing us, they're re-organizing as mercenaries, or going off to do other things, or making legitimate accounts to play without wrecking things."

Diver said, "How often do the characters of a game find out where you live and show up in person to make fun of you?"

The bat-pony flipped and landed on a table. "Okay, but now we're supposedly their vassals or something."

"So what, if it costs a keg of beer and it turns trolls into friends?"

"It's the principle. What if they try to extort more favors out of us? We came here to be free."

Harvest Moon stepped closer to put one hoof on Nimbus' wing. "Let any humiliation fall on the Nobles for arranging a deal. As for further demands from the outsiders, I think Diver's theory is right: we'll get more benefit than cost. Think of the bribe as an investment in good relations with some tech-savvy humans."

Nimbus still looked skeptical as she turned back to Diver. "How did you come up with the plan, anyway?"

Sky Diver said, "From Major Key. For someone playing Earthside, competing for power here is just a game, and they don't win anything. The invaders didn't care about taking over so much as messing with us, and if we were willing to be a little ridiculous and do something that was fun for them instead of only thinking of ourselves, we could convince them to change their narrative."

Nimbus whistled. "Maybe it's because you two messed with your heads, that you could come up with a stunt like that."

"Could be," said Diver. It was hard to tell how much of his thought process was artificial. He preened gently at one of his wings, which calmed him a little.

"What now?" asked Nimbus.

Harvest Moon leaped onto a table and stood tall. "My loyal subjects, we still have a land to conquer!"