How You Live and Die in Equestria

The pony at his desk checked his watch again, wondering not for the first time why he’d bothered listening to that lavender mare who’d come into his office to talk of all the wonders dimensional gates offered. He’d invested, of course, because that was the sort of venture that either paid dividends, or flopped so hard you could take whatever you needed from the competition after the fallout was over. Still, even knowing that, he was growing annoyed.

She’d promised him that human from another world would be in his office promptly at noon, and he’d felt it wise to trust her, after all, she was a Princess, but it was getting close to one now, and still no sign of this hairless monkey. Tapping a finger on his desk, he looked over his project folders, opening one idly with a flick of his wrist and thumbing through it. The reports were mostly just general stuff you’d expect to see, with one or two marked notes on how the medical division was doing with the chemicals being imported through the gates, with Flithy Rich mumbling figures as he looked over the lists.

Below, though how far depended on one’s perspective, you stood. Looking upwards, you shouted again, figuring that with him talking, you might as well add you own voice to the cacophony. It did little good, and in fact, when he sighed out, you were forced to grab onto the ground beneath your feet, your nails digging into the little imperfections to keep from behind blown away as the hot, humid gale blew over you, whipping at your own sweat covered suit, and ripping the breath from your lungs.

When it was over, you flopped to the ground, exhausted, tired, and ready to just curl up and possibly die. Around you was a broad, flat plain, colored brown, with tall spires every few miles that reached up into the heavens, taller than anything really could be in your world. But then, you weren’t in your world anymore. No, you’d stepped into the machine, and supposedly to the opportunities on the other side of it, only to appear here, in a terrible position.

The spires were miles tall, long enough that a state could have probably been crossed in the time it took to climb them. At their base, they were smaller, of course, only the size of a large city, their coloring brown as the ground, if a shade or two lighter, with a surface that seemed to be made of layers, giving plenty of space for handholds, but you had no desire to climb them, as above the spires you could see a world beyond, and it was beyond the scope of your mind to truly understand it.

Above you was a man, or at least, something with the shape of a man, thought with a horse like face in place of the normal one. He wore a business suit, blue in color, and had deep blue eyes counterpointed by a light brown coat and a dark brown mane. In a word, he looked like a handsome man of business, and you’d seen his picture before, mostly in the ads that had brought you here to get a job with him. Now he towered above you, a huge figure lost in a distant sky like some kind of planet circling yours.

The image of him would move wildly sometimes, turning and juking around enough to nearly make you motion sick, especially since, despite watching the sky move, you felt none of the motion yourself. Even when he spoke, the words didn’t reach your ears, instead you felt them, like a reverberation in your chest, so overpowering, and yet so far beyond you. This had been your existence for at least an hour, with no signal to your phone, or anything else.

Rising at that thought, you tried again, getting the buzz from the thing that told you it was out of range, and swearing once more. Then you started off, refusing to be defeated as you made your way forward, away from the visage in the sky. You knew where you were after all. The movements made that clear, especially when a huge obelisk filled the sky around you, gleam gold and blue metal in a design you found familiar. A pen.

You were on his arm, more specifically, his hand, and that meant if you could just get to a finger, maybe you could get him to take you somewhere close to his eye or something of the sort. So thinking, you trudged forward, making fantastic time, as your every step seemed to catapult you forward, passing another spire, a hair on his hand, and then another, over the next half hour, before finally reaching something odd, a plain that seemed harder and colder than the skin.

A tap told you what it was, a fingernail, right at the end of one of his digits, and with an effort, you looked at the world beyond, and your eyes and heart leapt for joy. Just within you vision was another construct, another thing built by hands large enough to cradle the moon, and just your luck, you were moving towards it. It took a running leap, your legs somehow giving you more than enough lift to propel yourself skyward, arcing down at just the right angle, but then, you’d always had a head for numbers.

You landed hard on the construct, the tink of glass filling your ears even as you rolled, letting the impact force spread itself out, rather than smashing you into paste. When you finally stopped, you rubbed yourself on your sore spots, trying to get the pain to go away, and then smirked at where you were. Above, you saw a massive glass lens, huge enough to fit a small state, and beyond that was Filthy Rich himself, adjusting some knobs on the side of his microscope, which you were no beneath.

You waved your arms, hoping for him to see you easily, but he wasn’t looking right at you, and so missed your small form as he messed with the knobs a bit, then turned away. When he came back, you realized just what a dangerous idea this was, as his hand, the monolithic thing you had been on before, now held a eye dropper, one glowing with an internal light, and as the hole in the bottom of it came closer, you could see a glow of molten gold inside, head radiating out towards you.

Screaming happened then, and you raced around, wildly waving your hands, before you were right beneath the lens, the eye reflected in it blurry as more knob turning happened. Then the dropper moved closer, pressure from behind it pushing out a small dome of liquid metal that steamed and hissed in the cooler air, bubble in it popping, and making you finally turn, ducking down with your hands over your head as if that would help in some way.

When hot metal death did not come, and the air began to grow cooler, you cautiously opened your eyes, and looked up towards the sky to find Rich staring at you, rubbing his eyes once, then looking through the lens again, before rushing from the room. A week later, and many times larger, you were working in his office, doing filing and organization for him, at the proper size, only about ankle high to a pony, but still far larger than you had been.