Chapters Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 1: In Which the Game Begins
At first, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. The being that shall remain nameless decided it wasn't very interesting and, with but a thought, he set about to creating the world that would serve as his amusement. After a little while, all the trees were planted, all the liquids settled, all the chests hidden, and all the crimson placed.
The being looked at this large world and at all the creatures roaming it mindlessly, some of which inadvertently killing others, and thought this might be enough. But something's missing, it finally decided. What could I add to make this world complete?
After a long while of deliberation, and after a thousand bunnies had been brutally murdered by bouncing slimes, the being had an idea. It reached out, not knowing where, but hoping it might find something to bring to this world.
A little beyond the fabric of space-time...
A purple unicorn/pegasus hybrid thing trotted peacefully through the quaint houses of a small town called Ponyville, aptly named for its population of ponies. This unicorn/pegasus hybrid thing, known to many as "Twilight Sparkle," or just Twilight, had headed into town to meet with her various friends at a quaint resturant, where they would eat food, talk about whatever ponies talked about in resturants, and generally have a good time.
It was at this moment, while the hybrid thing thought about what she could talk about with her friends, that a rift in the fabric of space-time suddenly appeared in front of her, causing her to jump in fright. Before anyone in the nearby vicinity knew what was happening, a strange smokey appendage reached out, groping almost blindly for a few seconds until it found something. Of course, that something was our protagonist, Twilight. With Twilight in its grasp, and the hybrid thing too startled to do anything, the appendage pulled her through the rift, closing it behind them so as to be somewhat polite to the victim universe.
Back to the newly-created universe...
Twilight wasn't sure how long she was out, but as soon she opened her eyes she was assaulted by the bright light of the sun right above her. Hastily shielding her eyes with her leg, she slowly attempted to get up from her resting place, which she noted in the back of her mind was a somewhat flat grassy plain.
"H-hello?" Twilight called out, unsure of what might hear her. However, it seemed there was nothing but silence to answer her.
Twilight decided she should get acquainted with wherever she found herself, and decided to look around. She could see a lot of trees behind her, although it seemed on closer inspection that they were kind of flat. She could see some bunnies in the distance, and some green blobs bouncing even further back.
Twilight turned around and was greeted to the sight of what looked like a hairless ape staring back at her, which made her jump in surprise. They now both stared at each other, one fearfully and the other blankly. After a few seconds of them staring at each other, Twilight decided to risk communicating with it. "Um, hi?"
"Greetings, Twilight Sparkle. Is there something I can help you with?"
Twilight relaxed slightly, thinking the creature might not want to eat her, or whatever these creatures do. "Um, actually, yeah. Could you tell me where I am, please? I don't think I'm in Ponyville anymore."
"You can use your pickaxe to dig through dirt, and your axe to chop down trees. Just place your cursor over the tile and click!"
Twilight wasn't expecting that kind of response from the creature, and stood confused for a few seconds before responding, looking around as she did so. "Pickaxe? Axe? I don't think I have any-"
What Twilight was about to say died in her throat as she noticed a few copper tools beside her, consisting of a shortsword, pickaxe, and axe. As soon as she noticed they were there, they leaped up at her with pronounced popping sounds, startling her for the third time today. When she recovered a few seconds later, she discovered she was holding the sword in her hoof, although the other two tools were nowhere to be seen.
"Why am I holding a sword?" Twilight looked at the creature. "Hello? Would you mind telling me why I have a sword? And where did the other tools go?"
"If you want to survive," the creature replied, "you will need to create weapons and shelter. Start by chopping down trees and gathering wood.
"But how?! What's a cursor? Where's my axe? What do I do?"
"Press ESC to access your crafting menu. When you have enough wood, create a workbench. This will allow you to create more complicated things, as long as you're standing close to it."
Twilight was starting to get really annoyed at this creature. Why couldn't it give her the answers she wanted? Remembering Cadence's calming method, Twilight used it before she did anything rash. Instead of getting angry at the creature, she decided to see if her magic still worked.
Noticing a small rock nearby, Twilight attempted to levitate it towards her. But not even a magical signature surrounded the rock and it stayed exactly put. Putting her hoof to her head revealed an absence of a horn, at which Twilight started to panic. Glancing behind her, she discovered her wings were missing as well. This wasn't very pleasant news for the now hornless and wingless pony, and she started to hyperventilate.
Suddenly, Twilight felt something land on her, sapping some of her strength and startling her out of her panicked state. Twilight immediately jumped away and turned around to see what had attacked her. She was confused to see a simple green blob thing. She attempted to communicate with it as she had with the guide, but it ignored her and jumped at her again.
Twilight attempted to speak again. "What's going on? Why are you attacking me?" In response, the slime jiggled a little before bouncing high into the air and landing on Twilight again, sapping a little more of her strength. She noticed she didn't have any wounds on her, but she felt injured somehow.
Twilight spun around to try and run away and came face-to-face with the unhelpful ape again. Panicked, Twilight called out to it. "Hello? Um, ape creature? I'm being attacked by this blob! What do I do?"
"You can build a shelter by placing wood or other blocks in the-"
"THAT DOESN'T HELP ME!" Twilight interrupted, still being attacked by the blob. "Help me!"
"-world. Don't forget to build and place walls."
Twilight attempted to yell something else, but the slime jumped on her one more time, causing her vision to suddenly go red and the phrase "You were slain..." to appear. Twilight also noticed a message in the bottom left corner of her vision, which read "Twilight Sparkle was turned into a pile of flesh by green slime." A few seconds later, Twilight's vision cleared and she realized she was back where she died. She also immediately felt something land on her, hurting her yet again. Still in shock from apparently dieing, Twilight was barely able to start to run away from the slime before she got killed again, only this time it said her "flailing about was finally stopped." As soon as she came back again, she came for the slime in a murderous rage, trying to swipe at it with the shortsword that was still in her hooves. Unfortunately for her, the slime seemed to easily be able to dodge the measly weapon and eventually crushed Twilight's skull.
Thankfully, when Twilight next awoke, there was no slime present. She was about to breathe a sigh of relief until she realized she was still in this world. Her brain then made the logical deduction that there might exist more blobs, and all of them might want to kill her. Her brain then also made the leap of logic that more than just blobs could be out to kill her.
I don't need to think about that right now. Twilight banished thoughts of even more terrible creatures from her mind, and instead set about to making the most of her current situation. And that means I'll probably have to get this creature to help me. She turned towards the creature, which seemed to be lazily walking back and forth. I don't want to keep calling it a creature. I'm not sure what to call it, though. I... guess it looks like a male, and he does seem to want to guide me... I think I'll call him "Guide."
"Excuse me?" Twilight called out. "Guide? I need as much information as I can get! Please?" She looked up at Guide pleadingly.
And so Guide taught Twilight a few things. It wasn't that much, to Twilight's chagrin, but he seemed to just start repeating things when questioned for long enough. Twilight still didn't understand what a "cursor" or an "ESC" were, but she was able to figure out how to open her inventory and swap her tools after a little trial-and-error. She also figured out she should probably make a house before nightfall, or she might have to deal with more terrible foes. Shuddering slightly, she went out to collect some trees.
One nightfall later...
Twilight was running as fast as she could away from the terrible groans of the (dare she think it?) zombies chasing after her. She was pretty sure before these current events that zombies didn't exist, but she was quickly proven wrong when one tried to chomp her head off. Although she definitely wasn't aware of the flying eyes, which quickly proved themselves to be just as dangerous as the zombies. Twilight was at least glad she was able to make a shelter, albeit a small one.
She did manage to build a work bench, and it wasn't too hard to use it. She also noticed that Guide had settled into the shelter just fine, and was glad he liked it.
All thoughts of successful house building aside, Twilight raced into the shelter as if her life depended on it, making sure to close the door behind her so the zombies and flying eyes couldn't get in. Leaning against the thumping door, Twilight allowed herself to relax. She could tell she'd need a lot of getting used to this world, unless she wanted to end up dead a lot. Something she'd need to really get used to was the fact she couldn't die, or at least not permenantly.
Twilight's musings were inturrupted when she heard a door open. Her head immediately shot up to see that Guide had opened the door for no reason, which then allowed the monsters to get inside and kill them both. Thinking quickly, she raced over to the door to try and close it, but the monsters had already gotten in. Once again in despairation, Twilight switched to her sword as fast as possible and started swinging while simultaneously expecting the worst.
...which never occurred. Slowly opening her eyes, Twilight was greeted to the marvelous image of a few zombies bouncing off of a sword. Just as one of the zombies was killed from the barrage of swings, Twilight allowed herself to think things might finally be turning around.
At least, until the eye snuck behind her and knocked her into the horde of zombies, causing her to panic and try to keep up with the two-pronged assault. Of course, she was still using a measly shortsword which is even worse than an axe at being a weapon. Twilight stood no chance as she watched her innards become outards.
One sunrise later...
Twilight did it. The monsters were running away, the birds were chirping, and she could have sworn she could see slimes murdering bunnies in the distance. But none of that mattered to Twilight. What mattered to her was that she had made it through the night. Which she knew would only be the first of many more. Sighing in resignation, Twilight decided it would be a good idea to do some mining and gather some ores.
Author's Note
And the first day has ended! Some details about this world if you need or want them:
Also wanted to point out that I accidently disliked my own story, was unable to undislike it, and knew that liking my own story would be considered amaturish. So, yeah. Hope you enjoy the story!
Edit: made a little more accurate for you all.
Edit 2: I can undislike my own story without needing to like it! Hooray!!!
Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 2: In Which We Go a Little Deeper
Twilight wasn't sure how to start mining. Pretty much everything she knew about it came from Guide, and all he said was that you can find ores underground and that you had to kill some slimes to make torches. She was sure there would be a cave somewhere around here so she didn't have to go to the trouble of digging a mineshaft, but she knew she'd need torches in order to see anything, and she still had to kill something in order to get some.
That led her to the internal debate of whether she should kill slimes, even if they did want to kill her. It wouldn't be very easy for her, as she despised the thought of killing. Sure, she had killed that one zombie, but that didn't really count since it was already dead and obviously evil. But the slimes might be alive, unlike the zombies, although they too wanted to kill her. And there might be other slimes out there, and they might all want to kill her. Despite this dilemma, Twilight allowed herself to have a tiny bit of hope. Maybe it was just that one slime and the others are nicer. Or maybe it was just a misunderstanding.
At that moment, Twilight looked up to see a cute bunny looking at her with its beady little eyes. Twilight was pretty sure Fluttershy would love to see what an alien bunny looked like. As she trotted over to the bunny, she realized that she still had to find some way to get home.
Maybe this bunny can help me, Twilight thought. Probably not with anything important, but maybe just by being cute? As she pet the bunny, Twilight wondered if it might help her reconcile her thoughts.
At that moment, Twilight heard the schlorping of a slime. Twilight looked up just in time to see the slime do a mighty bounce onto the bunny, causing it to explode into bloody bits of flesh which slowly faded out of existence. That settled it in Twilight's mind. All slimes were evil. All slimes must die. Taking out her sword, Twilight charged at the slime.
The last time Twilight fought a slime, she was in a rage and didn't do very well at defeating the slime. Now, however, she tried to see a pattern in the slime's attacks, which was actually very easy to spot. Twilight timed her swings so that the slime would hit her sword in the middle of a bounce, knocking it away. After a few suspenseful seconds of this tactic, the slime exploded into a shower of slime and, strangely enough, a few coins. She had done it. She had killed something.
Ironically enough, the bunny did help reconcile her thoughts. But that only happened after the slime killed it. Twilight decided she didn't want to try mining today. Instead, she turned back around and went into the shelter she made. Once inside, she collapsed into a ball of fur and tears.
Back in Ponyville...
The whole town was abuzz with the news that Twilight had been pulled into an evil dimensional portal thing. When the Princesses had been notified, they said they would do everything in their power to get Twilight back from wherever she was taken too. With that said, the local populace waited, hoping this would be over soon, like pretty much every other strange thing that happened in Ponyville.
And then the zombie fell from the sky and immediately tried to eat the pony closest to it. Unfortunately for it, the mare it tried to eat was none other than the pony known as Applejack. When the zombie eventually slammed rather harshly into the side of a wall, it dissolved and dropped a few coins which some passerby eagerly picked up.
A few minutes later, a slime fell from the sky and engulfed the head of a different pony. It was immediately slurped up into the mouth of the pony we know as Pinkie Pie.
"Mmm! Tasty!" Pinkie said, licking her lips. She then spit out a few coins and a few bits of gel. "But those aren't... Oh well!" She continued her trip to wherever she was going, not noticing when some more passerby picked up the coins, but mostly ignored the gel.
Back in the other universe...
Today, Twilight thought, would be the day she finally attempted mining. She wasn't too confident in her abilities, but was also certain she would gain confidence through practice. So Twilight set out to find a cave and do some spelunking. Any slimes she met along the way were killed immediately, and their gel turned into torches.
Ponyville
A few more slimes fell from the sky. All of which fell into a conveniently placed tarp which bounced them away from where they should have landed and into the chimney of a nearby house, where they promptly burnt up.
Other 'Verse
Eventually, after a minute of walking and trying to jump over mountains, Twilight came across a sizeable hole in the ground. Seeing that the hole seemed to go straight down, Twilight decided this would be a very good time to experiment with these wood platforms she could craft.
...until the slime snuck up behind her and knocked her into the hole. Twilight quickly got a torch out to see if any monsters would sneak up on her from the multiple paths. Seeing none, Twilight put down the torch and prepared to go into the cave.
...until the slime from before landed on her, decapitating her and making her drop some of the coins she picked up. Twilight was, understandably, getting really tired of slimes constantly getting her killed. She also briefly wondered how a slime could possibly decapitate her, but decided to file that question into the "just doesn't make sense" folder.
So Twilight made her way back to the cave entrance. Making sure no slimes were around to kill her, Twilight decided the best course of action would be to jump down onto the various ledges. Once at a ledge, she would jump and try to put the platforms off to the side at the peak of her jump. Twilight noticed a while ago that she could jump almost three times her hight, which would be helpful when jumping over mountains or through caves.
Finally at the bottom where she placed her torch, Twilight looked around at the different paths she could choose. Finally, she decided to follow the right wall so she didn't get lost.
After a few seconds, Twilight came across her first ore. Spotting the greyish color, Twilight went over to it wondered how she would mine it. On a hunch, Twilight just started smacking it with her pickaxe. As she picked it up, she determined it was tin and continued her adventure.
A few bats flew at twilight which she tried to bat away. There isn't much you can do with a copper shortsword, however, and Twilight payed for its uselessness with her life. She attempted to run away from them, but they were easily faster and caught up to her, where they cut her down the middle.
Twilight decided she needed a better weapon. Looking over at Guide, Twilight decided he might have some good information for her. Unfortunately, he seemed to still be repeating everything he said earlier, although he did say a little about making a furnace to smelt the ores into ingots. Going over to Guide's crafting tips, she started putting random objects into his "information slot." Whatever that means. Eventually it was revealed to her that she needed stone. Twilight decided she didn't really need to go all the way to the cave to find stone; she could just dig a hole in the ground. So, with stone in mind, Twilight went out, found a nice spot to dig in, and started digging.
It was at that moment Twilight discovered she had dug too far down, and was unable to just jump out. Luckily for Twilight, she still had some platforms on her, and she put them above her to jump onto. Then she realized that, in such a small space, she would have to jump through the platforms, which she knew was physically impossible since two objects couldn't possibly take up the same space.
It then occurred to her that this world is different from hers in quite a few ways. Perhaps she could just jump through the platforms. The skeptical part of Twilight was currently berating her for thinking she could jump through something, but Twilight payed it no mind and jumped. And ended up jumping right through the platform. As soon as she witnessed herself going through it one way, she wondered if she could go back through it the other way Unsure of how to proceed, Twilight looked down as she thought of how to get through. She then felt herself falling and found herself below the platform again. That pretty much silenced Skeptical Twilight, and allowed Twilight to jump back through the platform and out of her hole.
Now back at the shelter, Twilight used her stone to create a furnace. She then used the furnace to turn her ores into ingots, which she tried to craft into something. When she wasn't able to, she went back to Guide and asked him about it. That is when she realized she needed an anvil to do anything with tin. Which meant she had to go mining again. Ultimately, Twilight decided it would be safer to use her mineshaft then try to use the cave entrance, at least until she could get better equipment.
She contemplated just making wooden equipment, but decided against it since the wood probably wouldn't help her much, if at all. She could still use wood for platforms, though, and she would gladly do so. As of now, Twilight was using wood platforms and her pickaxe to make a simple 3 block wide mineshaft, mining any ores she came across. She was able to get some more tin, as well as some iron for her anvil and maybe better equipment then what she planned to make with the tin. She also found a strange glowing red ore, but was unable to mine it no matter how much she smacked it. She decided she would just leave it be for now and continue her mineshaft.
Eventually, after a while of mining straight down, Twilight fell into a small cavern. She lit up the surrounding area real quickly and also made sure she could jump back out before deciding to explore this cave system. She then remembered she couldn't fight back against the bats at all, and decided to instead return to the shelter.
Once again at the shelter, Twilight smelted her gathered ores into ingots and made an anvil out of the iron. And then, using those ingots at the anvil, Twilight was finally able to make herself an iron broadsword which wouldn't get her killed nearly as much as the copper shortsword. She also made herself some iron armor just to be safe, and a chest to store her inventory, which was quickly filling up. With Twilight being a lot more confident then she was earlier, she made her way back into her cave, where she took her first actual step into it.
And heard a clicking sound upon stepping. Twilight looked down upon hearing it and saw a cleverly hidden pressure plate. She then looked up and was greeted with the boulder that ruptured her vital organs. Upon waking up in the shelter, Twilight sighed. This was going to be a long mining trip.
Author's Note
Twilight discovers the joys of being a newbie in a cave system. Enemies, traps, and deaths, oh my!
If any of you reading this story feel something Twilight or anypony else in this story says or does is contrary to how they'd actually act, feel free to leave a suggestion and I will make it so.
Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 3: In Which a Wild Player Appears
Twilight's exploration of the cave system was going pretty well. Aside from the constant monsters and fatal traps, Twilight was able to get a lot of ores, including a new ore called tungsten. She also managed to find a crystalline heart, which she used somehow when she put raised it up to look at it. Apparently, with the hearts, Twilight would now have more "HP." Twilight wasn't sure what HP was, but decided it was useful because it didn't seem to kill her.
Twilight was also able to find some sort of building jutting out from a wall. Inside, she found a lot of cobwebs and broken pieces of furniture. What immediately drew her attention was the golden chest in the center of the building. Twilight almost didn't look in the chest for fear of angering the owners. A quick look at the cobwebs convinced her the owners were long gone and to at least take a peek. Inside the chest, Twilight could see a number of bottles and some coins, as well as a strange hoofheld mirror. Twilight took everything in the chest and started investigating the mirror.
Maybe holding it up will do something? It seemed to work for some other things. With that in mind, Twilight held up the mirror. Instantly, she could hear magical sparkly sounds and was teleported back to her shelter.
Twilight really wanted to see how the mirror worked, but she was interrupted by Guide appearing in front of her. Then she took a second to realize that wasn't guide. She noticed a message in her eyes which apparently confirmed her suspicions, stating that, "Fodder 1 has joined the game."
"Alrighty, then!" the creature exclaimed." Now to find the Brain of Cthulhu and totally whup it's ass! Now which way-" The being turned around and stopped speaking when it saw Twilight.
They both stared at each other, neither of them moving, for quite a while before Twilight dared speaking to it. "Um, hi?"
"Greetings, alien space-horse!" The being made an exaggerated bow as it spoke. "My name's Fodder 1, of Super NOOB World! And you are?"
Twilight took a moment to respond. She never heard of "fodder" or "noob" before, but she decided staying silent wouldn't help her. "Uh, I'm Twilight. Of... Equestria?"
"Ah, well, fancy meeting you here! I hope we might be able to get along quite well for the few days I'm going to be here. Hmm..." The being stepped toward Twilight. "You look like a newbie. I assume you died a whole bunch of times to slimes as you tried to figure your way out of sucking badly?"
Twilight stared blankly at the creature, a male named "Fodder 1." He was wearing sunglasses for some reason, and had brown clothing with red pants. He also had what looked like a black shield with a skull on it which unnerved Twilight slightly. His boots looked bright yellow and had miniature wings. But what drew her attention the most were the giant icy wings folded over his back.
Twilight realized she was staring when she realized he asked her a question. "I'm sorry, what was your question?"
"Ah, nevermind that. You look like you've never seen a player before. I also assume you've never heard of a noob?"
"No, I can't say that I have." A part of Twilight was really eager to hear everything this "player" wanted to say. But she realized he might not be willing to share anything if she was too eager.
"Well, a noob is someone who totally sucks at doing stuff." The being smiled slightly before continuing in a slightly deeper voice. "I used to be a noob like you; then I took awesomeness to the knee."
Twilight didn't like Fodder's use of "who" in an incorrect manner, and also didn't understand what it meant to "take awesomeness to the knee." He actually reminded her somewhat of Pinkie, just because he seemed to not make that much sense.
"Anyway," Fodder said, not allowing Twilight to respond, "I need to go do some stuff involving giant floating monster brains that teleport behind you. Wanna watch?"
Twilight wasn't sure if Fodder would stay a while, so she decided following him would be the best way to learn more from him. "Sure, I guess."
"Wonderful! Well, follow me, young player." They exited the shelter and Fodder looked back at it. "Now, to start your training, I'm going to tell you that you need more houses."
And so Fodder led Twilight through the land, teaching her about various things. She finally knew what HP was, and decided it really would be useful. She also learned she needed to collect stars which fell from the sky to increase her magic potential. And, in order to get wings like Fodder's, she would need to kill some wyverns up in space. She was partially against the idea of seeking out monsters just to kill them, but Fodder assured her that they wanted to kill her and couldn't be convinced otherwise, so it was perfectly fine to do the same to them. Twilight didn't really agree with this logic.
At one point, Fodder led her through some snowy hills, and then immediately into a desert that was somehow nearby. It didn't make sense that a desert would be right next to snow, but it also didn't make sense that you could go through certain platforms or hold things up to activate them.
As soon as they entered the jungle, Fodder stopped. "Well, this isn't where we want to go. Twilight, do you have some sort of mirror?"
"You mean this?" Twilight took out the mirror and was immediately teleported back to the shelter. A few seconds later, Fodder appeared right next to her.
"Okay, so we know the Crimson isn't that way. That means it must be this way!" The creature pointed towards the opposite direction.
"But how do we know it could only be in one of two places? We could go over there." Twilight pointed towards the mountains in the distance.
"That's silly. The world of Terraria is only semi-two-dimensional. Those mountains are just to decorate the background.
That didn't make a lot of sense, either. Twilight noticed a lot of things didn't make sense in this world. She knew of the concept of two dimensions, but wasn't sure how that could have a modifier. "What does "semi" mean? In this context, at least."
Just as they entered another snow biome, Fodder responded. When I say semi, I mean it isn't perfectly two-dimensional. You have the foreground, the thing we're standing on. There's also the background, where we put walls. Some objects, like torches, don't really take up any space in any layer, but still need something real to anchor to. Some monsters also exist on layers other than the two described, and can use that to their advantage. And, of course, there's the actual background with the decorative scenes. Oh, I would also like to point out that we have arrived."
And they did, indeed, arrive. To where, Twilight wasn't sure. Every level of this place just felt absolutely wrong to her. From the area itself, which seemed to be coated with blood, while the trees seemed to be dripping flesh. To the overwhelming smell of rotting flesh which would have made Twilight vomit if she had eaten something earlier. To the ground beneath her, which was writhing and pulsating strangely. She could also barely feel it trying to spread up her hooves, so she started trotting in place to stop it from doing so. She decided she didn't want to stay here for much longer, and turned towards Fodder. "This place is really unnerving me. Do we have to stay here?"
Fodder smiled. "Why, of course! We haven't even seen the Brain of Cthulhu yet!
"Who's Cthulhu?" Twilight asked.
"Some eldritch god of the sea or whatever. He doesn't actually exist in this world, although there do exist some things based off of him, like the Brain. Excuse me."
Blood curdling screams were heard, prompting Twilight to look at where they were coming from. Coming towards them both was a strange, apelike monster with a giant face and gaping maw. Surrounding them were flying critters of various sizes with large spike-filled mouths. Twilight was pretty sure they would be very dangerous.
...until Fodder pulled out a giant green sword and swung it at all of them, shooting glowing sword projectiles at all of them, killing them instantly.
"They may seem easy right now," he told her, "but that's because I've done a lot of adventuring and got a lot of cool stuff. You, on the other hand, might want to watch out for them." With that said, they continued on, towards a large, red, stoney hill.
"But of course, they aren't the main attraction of this world. Inside this hill is a tunnel that leads to a large chamber, wherein resides strange, beating hearts that, when broken, summon the Brain of Cthulhu. Pretty cool, right?"
"But why would you want to seek out these monsters? They sound really dangerous."
Fodder chuckled. "Why, loot, of course! You don't think I got this awesome gear from hiding in a cave all day, do you?"
With that said, Fodder jumped down into the cave, with Twilight following suit.
It seemed even the stone in this place wasn't safe from... whatever this stuff is.
They traveled down a winding tunnel full of the monsters from before as well as strange spider things. All of which stood no chance against what Fodder called the Terra Blade. Eventually, they reached an enormous cavity, where Twilight could see more tunnels down below.
"Okay, how about you stay here." Fodder's wings unfurled, and Fodder got out a golden machine of some sort, which started spinning rapidly. "I'll be back in a few." And he leaped off the platform, shouting "Leroy Jenkins" for some reason.
Nothing really happened for a few seconds, but then Twilight got a sudden chill in her spine. She also noticed a message saying "A chill goes down your spine." Twilight thanked the message for stating the obvious. Suddenly, She heard screams echo around her, with the appropriate message. Twilight was starting to get second thoughts about following Fodder this far, but stayed out of sheer curiosity.
Twilight spotted Fodder racing out of the hole, monstrous roars filling her ears. Another message appeared, stating that the Brain of Cthulhu had awoken. A few seconds later, a giant floating brain appeared in the center of the cavity, giant eyes whirling around it. The brain didn't seem to notice Twilight, as it was completely focused on Fodder. A few of the eyes noticed Twilight and flew towards her, but were beaten back when she smacked them.
Fodder didn't seem afraid of it at all, and was, in fact, shouting with joy as he twirled around the giant brain, shooting it and its eyes with what looked like a shark with a metal thing sticking out of it. She also could have sworn she saw him hitting it with a yo-yo and, at one point, actual stars.
Halfway through the battle, a gap opened in the brain revealing a heart with an eye on it. Twilight was glad she hadn't eaten anything. It occurred to her she didn't feel hungry at all, even after all that time.
Twilight heard Fodder shout at her. "Hey! This thing's almost dead! Want to do the honors?" He wasn't attacking it anymore and was dodging it whenever it teleported behind him.
Twilight didn't like the idea at all, and was about to say so when Fodder interrupted, saying "Too late!" He started flying toward Twilight, the brain following him. At that point, the brain seemed to notice Twilight, and screeched at her. With the sudden responsibility of killing a giant floating brain, Twilight panicked slightly. She started to back away as fast as she could, swinging her sword at it. She was prepared to die at this point.
But she was still alive.That was when she realized she had managed to land the killing blow on the brain, and it exploded into giant chunks of brain goop, some of the red ore she saw earlier, and a lot of coins and red potions.
Fodder was next to her in an instant, congratulating her. "Well done, young player!" He said as he patted her on the back. "You have taken your first steps into awesomeness! How does it feel to have beaten your first boss?"
Twilight didn't respond, instead looking at the remains of the giant brain. She had defeated her first boss. She didn't know it what a boss was, but was able to deduce that a boss was a particularly large monster. Fodder saw that she wasn't going to respond, so he instead continued talking. "Of course, you only had the killing blow, so it wasn't as satisfying as being the one to fight it the whole way through, but you ARE new to this, so maybe this will allow you to gain some confidence at being awesome in this world? I don't know."
Fodder looked at his arm and at a non-existent watch. "Well, I'm done here. Good luck on your own!" And with that, Fodder disappeared with the appropriate message greeting Twilight. It was at that moment Twilight realized he had left, and she was alone again. Seeing the items hadn't been picked up, Twilight wondered if maybe he forgot them or just didn't need them. She went over to pick them up and started to get her mirror out to return home.
Of course something had to knock her into the chasm. Fortunately for Twilight, however, she was able to teleport back to the shelter before dying and didn't experience any effects of still falling.
Remembering Fodder's insistence to make more houses, Twilight decided it would be a good idea. Putting her items in a chest, Twilight set out to get some more wood.
Ponyville
The inhabitants of Ponyville were out and about, doing whatever they set out to do. A few of them were interested about why the slimes and zombie had appeared above where Twilight disappeared, but most just shrugged it off.
Suddenly, a blood-curdling scream was heard. Looking up at where it originated from, the inhabitants were shocked to see a giant floating brain with large eyes floating around it. Seeing all the potential targets, the eyes rushed in, causing chaos in the streets as the ponies attempted to run away. The brain itself seemed content to float around, teleporting occasionally as it let its eyes do all the work.
Today was a change from the usual peace in the town. Today was when the onslaught of terror began.
Author's Note
Shameless self-insert! Also, cliffhanger! Yay!
Edit: improved description of bloody area.
Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 4: In Which Crazy Stuff Happens
Twilight stepped back to admire her newest creation. It may not have been the prettiest of things, but she hoped it might serve its purpose as "NPC" housing. She had added two other rooms on top of the original house, and put some platforms on the side to be able to jump up. She figured NPC's would be able to jump just as high as she could, so she wouldn't have to worry about making nice stairs.
Halfway through building, Twilight was notified that a merchant had arrived, which she confirmed when she looked back and saw him wandering around. She decided to take a break from building to talk to him. Just as she feared, he didn't say much, and unfortunately didn't have much to sell. Twilight didn't think she would be able to buy anything anyway, as she just didn't have enough money for the interesting-looking items. Which was kind of surprising, considering the Brain of Cthulhu dropped a lot of coins. Now that she thought about it, though, she remembered seeing an overwhelming amount of just copper.
But that wasn't too important compared to what Twilight had done. Now that Twilight looked upon the completed project, at least for now, Twilight was notified of the nurse's arrival. Looking back, she saw the merchant and nurse were chatting. Although the chatting just seemed to be images appearing above their heads.
Twilight looked up and saw that night was approaching, decided she would spend the time underground. From her previous experiences, she knew there were a lot of traps that would kill her if she wasn't careful. She also knew she needed more of those heart crystals, and maybe some more ores.
So Twilight went over to her mineshaft, jumped down, and went back to exploring. This time, she would go in a different direction then she did last time. Twilight hoped she might find something interesting there.
As she walked down the path, placing platforms and removing traps when needed, she had to fight off a few bats. They were relatively easy to deal with when one didn't have a sword that was barely a few meters long. It occurred to twilight that it was strangely easy to swing it, even though it appeared quite massive.
Finally, Twilight came across something that was very interesting, which came in the form of an ice cave. Twilight added the fact that snow and ice were forming into her "Strange" folder, in the subfolder right next to "Pinkie Pie."
In the distance, Twilight could see a new type of slime coming towards her. This slime looked to be made of ice, and had some spikes jutting out of it. As she watched, the slime started shooting more ice spikes right at her, prompting her to dodge. Unfortunately, she dodged right into a dart trap, poisoning her and knocking her into the ice slime. Suddenly, Twilight felt really cold and had stopped moving with the speed she had before. Realizing she wouldn't be able to run away, Twilight steeled herself to fight the icy slime.
Ponyville
The brain caused a lot of destruction before the ponies responded. The few ponies trying to fight back were shocked to realize nothing they did affected the brain at all. They were then surrounded by the really hard to hit eyes which slammed into them, and sometimes right through them, which disoriented them at best. The ponies' attempts to hit the eyes failed spectacularly, as they moved way too fast to even follow them. Except for one pegasus.
"Ha! Take that, you large eye thing! And that!" The only pony really capable of fighting back was the pegasus known as Rainbow Dash. With her mighty efforts, she was able to chase down and destroy a few of the eyes. The rest of the ponies noticed this and started to cheer her on, even while escaping the eyes.
The brain seemed to notice this as well, as it pulled all of twenty-something eyes to rush at Rainbow from every direction. Unable to focus on more then a hooffull at a time, she was quickly brought down to earth.
A few moments later, she attempted to get up, mumbling insults while she did. "It's gonna take more than an oversized pile of mush to-"
She was inturrupted when she felt something really cold hit her in the back. She tried to turn around, but was suddenly very slow. She could feel numbness spreading through her body. Just as she was able to see her attacker, an icy blob thing, it shot an ice bolt at her, freezing her entirely. Seeing its prey immobilized, it decided it wanted to rest on her head. As it bounced along to its goal, it was suddenly caught by a lasso thrown by another pony known as Applejack.
"Ha! Get lassoed, ya varmint!" Applejack was one of the ponies that tried to fight the brain and it's eye things. However, after a lucky hit from Applejack, the eyes started to stay away from the ground so they only had to deal with the pegasi. Her only option then was to use her lasso to try and stop them. To her dismay, her lasso just fell right through them.
And, as the slime looked at the lasso holding it, it realized it was a slime and could just melt right through. It doing so caused Applejack to become really frustrated that her lasso just didn't work. She got the bright idea to buck it, but was unable to do so as the slime froze her like it did with Rainbow.
The slime, now being free of pesky ponies, continued its journey towards its first victim, where it did a mighty bounce onto her head. Now all it had to do was constantly shoot both ponies with ice spikes, and it could keep itself entertained for days!
And then a few bats came along. Recognizing the bats as the ones that appeared as the slime was fighting the Player, the slime welcomed the bats with open spikes, and, together, they had fun with their captives.
Meanwhile, the brain had finally gotten tired of terrorizing the unsatisfyingly small town. A while back, it had noticed an interesting castle on the side of a mountain. With its destination in mind, the brain called back all of its eyes and set forth, hoping there might be more inhabitants there to terrorize.
Terraria
Twilight stood victorious over the remains of the slime and the ice bats which appeared halfway through. Somehow, through overwhelming odds, Twilight had managed to come out victorious, albeit almost dead. She wondered if that would be a recurring theme during her time here in Terraria, as Fodder had called it.
Making her way through the cave system, Twilight came across another abandoned building. Inside, she could see a chest made of ice. Opening the chest, Twilight was able to see a number of potions and coins, as well as an ice boomerang. Twilight wondered what purpose a boomerang could serve in this world.
Well, I saw Fodder using a yo-yo against that Brain. Twilight looked at the edges of the boomerang, and noticed they looked quite sharp. Maybe there might be even more ridiculous things in this world.
Twilight heard the schlorping of another slime nearby. She decided that would be the perfect opportunity to test her theory. Looking at the ice slime, which didn't have any spikes in it this time, she threw the boomerang, watching it hit the slime and knock it back. A few more throws, and the slime was dead. Twilight noted it didn't take nearly as long as with the sword, and decided she would use the boomerang from now on.
Twilight was then alerted to the rise of a blood moon. Curious to see what a blood moon looked like, Twilight teleported back home. She was currently occupying the guide's house, since she didn't have any house of her own yet. She realized she had never talked to the nurse, so she decided that would be the perfect opportunity to do so.
Stepping outside, she was able to take in the reddish tint of the moon, and of the surrounding area. She could see zombies and the flying eyes outside, but she could also see red zombie-like creatures and floating sacks of eyes, both of which were dripping blood.
Twilight didn't want to spend any time outside at night. But she also realized she had to go out at night to get fallen stars to increase her magic potential. She didn't know how she would access that potential, however, as she didn't have her horn anymore. Maybe she didn't need a horn to access it.
She noticed one of the bloody eye monsters coming towards her. A few hits from her boomerang caused it to explode like everything else had. Shrugging, twilight jumped up to the nurse's house.
"Hello? Nurse?" Twilight didn't want to barge in, so she just stood outside the door.
"I don't think I like your tone," the nurse responded, rather rudely.
"Um, I'm sorry?"
"WHAT?!"
Twilight almost jumped off the edge of the platform due to the surprising hostility of the nurse. "I said I'm sorry!"
"Why are you even here? If you aren't bleeding, you don't need to be here. Get out."
"I just wanted to talk! I don't need your stupid healing!" As soon as Twilight said that, she covered her mouth in surprise. She didn't realize she had become so angry all of a sudden. "Look, I really am sorry."
"Why are you even here? If you aren't bleeding, you don't need to be here. Get out."
"Um, you just said that."
"Why are you even here? If you aren't bleeding, you don't need to be here. Get out."
"Stop repeating yourself!" There was that unexplained anger again. Maybe it had something to do with this blood moon.
"Why are you even here? If you aren't bleeding, you don't need to be here. Get out."
Unbeknownst to Twilight, a few of the flying eyes snuck up on her. Acting quickly, Twilight threw the boomerang at them, but unfortunately missed. Now half dead, and seeing the boomerang required careful aiming to work, Twilight switched back to the sword. At least the sword didn't need aiming.
"Well?" Twilight called out. "I'm bleeding now!"
As soon as she said that, she felt a whole lot better. She also noticed her money supply had diminished slightly.
"That didn't hurt too bad, now did it?"
"Yeah, yeah," Twilight said. She decided dealing with the nurse wouldn't be worth the trouble, and dropped down from the platform. It was then that she noticed the guide's door was open, and it looked like something from outside opened it. Fearing for the worst, Twilight raced inside just in time to see a blood zombie kill the guide, resulting in a message saying Maxwell was slain. When the strange zombie turned towards Twilight, she lunged at it and killed it as quickly as possible. She then looked at where the guide was before he died. Nothing remained at all.
Twilight exited the building, closing the door behind her. She looked out at the sea of monsters shambling around and decided they didn't belong here. She realized that would be the perfect opportunity to practice with her boomerang. Pulling it out, Twilight descended into the mass of monsters and began her hunt. They would all die for what they did, and for what they stood for.
Author's Note
A whole bunch of stuff happens!
Just something I'd like to mention real quick: Just as Twilight was changed when she entered Terraria, so too do the monsters entering Equestria change. By that, I mean they pretty much become more intelligent and individualistic. Yep. Poor ponies.
Edit: A whole bunch of bug fixes/typo corrections.
Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 5: In Which Epic Battles Occur
In hindsight, Twilight probably should have realized it was a bad idea to charge right into the mob of monsters. Of course, one does not simply act logically after seeing someone die right in front of you. Although Twilight truly didn't expecting one of the zombies to be able to open a door, since they never did that before. Perhaps that was another effect of the blood moon which allowed zombies to open doors.
Although Twilight's true problem right now was the fact that her boomerang just kept missing the enemies, especially the small flying ones. And if she did miss, the boomerang took a few seconds to return instead of returning immediately, which was precious to Twilight since she was unable to defend herself while the boomerang was flying away. Although Twilight did find it interesting that the boomerang was always able to return to her after flying away, even through the environment occasionally. As soon as Twilight was able to get home, or at least was experienced enough in this world, she would have to do some research into the various objects and events so she didn't have to just dump them all in a "doesn't make sense" folder.
Still, Twilight would have to make do with what she could get, especially considering she was still quite prone to dying from pretty much everything. As a matter of fact, her effective plead for death was finally answered by the blood zombie she didn't see sneak up behind her. As she reappeared back in the guide's house, she spotted the monsters making a beeline for her housing complex, which prompted Twilight to shut the door, before remembering they could open doors now. It came to Twilight that they might not be able to open doors if she blocked them off with something. Quickly rooting through her chest, she found a little bit of dirt which she then placed down in front of the doors on either side of the house. She did it just in time, too, as the various monsters were now unable to get through to her.
But now that the monsters were stuck on the outside of the house, Twilight wouldn't be able to get out and do anything without fighting through them first. She also realized at that point that the merchant and nurse weren't safe at all, since their doors hadn't been blocked off. Sighing, Twilight slumped down, trying to figure out how she would handle this problem. A quick glance outside told her the moon was still rising, which wasn't very convenient for her.
She didn't see any of the monsters jumping up to kill the others, though. It seemed as if they were all banging on her door only. While it was relieving that the others wouldn't die, it also meant Twilight had to deal with a lot more monsters than she first thought. She contemplated opening the door so she could whack at them, but doing so might allow them to crawl through. Although it was true that the penalties of dying weren't that great. If she did die, all she would lose was some of her money and a few seconds of being unable to do anything. Because of that fact, Twilight went ahead and opened the door.
All the zombies stepped forward, and immediately got stuck on the lone dirt block. A few seconds later, they walked away, only to turn back around and get stuck again. Twilight actually found it kind of funny that they didn't think to climb over the block.
But then one of the bloody eye monsters came through the gap. Apparently, they were smaller than the zombies and, thus, were able to fit through just fine. Unfortunately for it, Twilight was easily able to hit it as it was pretty close to her.
Twilight decided to open the door on the other side as well. And now that both sides were open to her, she got out her boomerang again and started throwing it at all the zombies, and the occasional eye things. Still, Twilight would be doing that for a while, and she might have to find something else to do in the meantime. With nothing else to do, Twilight began counting the monsters.
Canterlot
It was really difficult to avoid the presence of the giant floating brain thing. Most of the nobles didn't even notice it at first, considering they were all walking around with their snouts up and their eyes pretty much closed. The only reason they did notice it was because a more observant noble noticed it and immediately began screaming for his life. Then, all the nobles were greeted with the unholy roars of the monster brain itself, which began shooting giant eyes at it. This, understandably, freaked everyone out, and they started running around in a panic.
Inside the throne room, Celestia was sitting on her throne, with a long line of ponies in front of her. Every single one of them would walk up to her and suggest something, and then Celestia had to think of some way to tell them their idea was stupid while making them feel like they still had some semblance of power.
So when a monstrous roar was heard somewhere from outside, the nobles understandably freaked out, and they started running around in a panic. The only ones not running around in a panic were the Royal Guards, which were running around to take up defensive positions, and Celestia herself, which stood completely unfazed. She was mentally preparing to go outside and peacefully start negotiating with whatever monster decided it wanted to visit Canterlot.
Although she certainly wasn't expecting a giant brain monster. No matter. All she had to do was get close to it, try to start a conversation, and maybe eventually steer the conversation towards the manner of creature this thing was.
At that moment, one of the flying eye things noticed Celestia, and began flying toward her. Putting on her best diplomatic smile, she called out to it, hoping it might be able to give her some information. But, as it got closer, Celestia was able to see that it wasn't interested in diplomatic solutions at all. In fact, all she could see and feel from this thing was pure, undiluted rage, apparently being controlled by the brain.
The brain also noticed something. Through one of its eyes, it could see a pony that wasn't screaming terror. This confused it. Shouldn't they all be running in fear? It decided to follow that eye to whomever that pony was, so that it might be able to really teach it who the real boss was. The brain did know there were higher tier bosses out there, and it would gladly step aside to allow it to claim ruling position. Until then, it would be the ruler by default.
Celestia didn't want to fight. She had to admit that she had little experience fighting ever since her ponies weren't constantly in danger of being eaten by other races. And seeing this thing, she knew all it wanted to do was fight. Still, Celestia hoped she might be able to settle things peacefully, or at least convince it somehow to not terrorize everyone else.
As the brain thing just appeared right in front Celestia, they were able to see each other, and see that they saw each other. The brain seemed to have an army of the flying eye things behind it, and they all seemed to hate everything. The brain itself looked at her with hate as well, but it also seemed to be a lot more intelligent then the eyes, as it also showed curiosity.
"Hello?" Celestia said. She was dearly hoping for a response, and for this all to resolve itself peacefully.
In response, the eyes all shot at her at terrifying speeds. It was clear they intended to ram into her. At this point, Celestia wasn't sure she had any other choice in the matter. She wasn't going to fight it at her full strength, as she might also accidentally hurt her little ponies. She got into a fighting stance and started preparing whatever offensive spells she could remember, intending to just wound it.
The brain definitely didn't have any qualms about keeping the fight clean. It faded out of sight as all of its eyes swirled around her, closing in quickly. She fired a spell at one of them, and saw it bounce back a little before rejoining all the others. She fired a larger spell this time, which ended up exploding one of them while the others stayed circling.
Suddenly, they all rushed in, going right through her, which disoriented her quite a bit. Unable to keep her spells from damaging the surrounding area, she instead settled for physical combat. Then she heard a roar above her, which ended up being the brain itself. Seeing she didn't have to control her blasts as much into the air, she fired a larger spell at it. By her calculations, it was slightly more powerful then when she was fighting the Changeling Queen.
The brain didn't even bounce back from the spell. It had absolutely no scratches or burn marks anywhere on it, and screamed at her in such a way that almost conveyed laughter. Then it dropped down and engulfed her in some sort of strange spiked maw.
It certainly wasn't the best of Celestia's experiences. Being trapped in a giant brain that had spikes inside it for some reason was about as pleasant as you would expect. As she was inside it, however, she noticed something very strange. It appeared to be a giant heart which took up a majority of the brain's inside. As she looked at it, an eye opened right in front of her, gazing at her. She could feel the spikes jabbing at her from all directions, trying to weaken her, or maybe even kill her. Celestia decided then that this creature belonged in Tartarus. Gathering as much energy as she could, considering she was being squashed rather uncomfortably, she blasted a powerful spell at the eye. The eye closed, not expecting such an attack, before exploding into bits of flesh and blood which stuck in her fur. Then the brain exploded around her, and she dropped out of the sky. She realized the brain had floated up and was above some other area of Canterlot. She tried to slow her fall, but found the bits of flesh in her wings really hindered her flying ability, which meant she simply fell.
The other ponies gathered around her, concerned for their ruler. Or perhaps they were disgusted by the remains of the monster, and were just too interested to back away. This wouldn't be able to kill her, though. She had survived much more harrowing experiences, especially against Discord. But now that the creature was dead, Celestia had a lot of questions about it. What was it? Where did it come from? Why was it here?
She was pretty sure she knew the answer to one of those questions. She turned to her assistant, whom had followed her and the brain through the city. "Get a research team to Ponyville right now, with a large division of Royal Guards. I think that thing came from beyond that portal."
"Right away!" She turned and ran back to the castle to do what Celestia told her. Celestia herself stood up from where she fell, trying to look as regal and commanding as possible, even though she was covered in red. She decided she didn't really like being covered in the stuff and set out to the royal bathtub. There was a lot she needed to do.
Ponyville
Zombies and flying eye monsters were everywhere. A lot of them were prowling the streets in search of brains and whatever flying eye monsters ate, while more were falling from the sky in a steady stream of confused groans. Most of the time, they were able to chase after some of the ponies, but they weren't able to get to two quite colorful ones being guarded by some ice monsters. It was pretty much total chaos.
So when the flying chariots arrived to presumably end the monsters' partying, they were, understandably, annoyed. So they decided to gang up on the chariots and their occupants. The occupants were, understandably, annoyed, and fought back. Being in flying chariots, the zombies were unable to do anything. The flying creatures, however, were able to fly, which meant they were the largest threat to the occupants. They were really small, too, which meant they were really difficult to hit using both arrows and spells. And, while the ponies were trained in nonviolent methods of combat, the monsters had no qualms about killing. While they mostly smacked against the walls harmlessly, one lucky eye was able to go unnoticed into the formation of pegasi, knocking one of them into the other, which caused a whole chain reaction of pegasi knocking others out of the sky until they all meet the ground, where all the hungry zombies awaited them.
Forced into a fight situation, the ponies prepared themselves for the battle to come. But while the ponies had a limited number, the monsters seemed to keep falling out of the sky.
In the center of the fallen chariots were a few researchers whom, seeing their predicament, tried as fast as they could to get the communication equipment up and running. A few of the more observant eyes noticed this and decided they didn't want any backup coming in. So, going around the group, they managed to convince some more of them to collectively pick up a zombie and drop it in the group. Of course the zombies were unable to do anything except groan "Brains," so the eyes just picked up a random zombie. The zombie didn't seem to notice, and continued to groan at the ponies as it was lifted up and over the group of researchers. Then the eyes dropped the zombie, and together watched as bit all of the nearest ponies. A few seconds later, the whole entire group of researchers were dead, and starting to turn into zombies themselves. The rest of the group stood no chance as they were taken by surprise from within. Collectively, the eyes decided carrying a zombie was a real challenge for them, and decided to head off to a new bar. Apparently one of the bartenders took to the monster invasion quite well, and began serving her new monster customers.
Terraria
The blood moon was finally over. By Twilight's calculations, she had killed at least fifty of each of the regular monsters, and around twenty of the bloody ones. For some reason, Twilight got some banners for both zombies and demon eyes after killing fifty of each, which was rather interesting. Twilight hung them up after she got them, and wondered if they might do anything besides look nice.
At that moment, Twilight realized she had a message. Looking at it, she was overjoyed to have gotten the guide back. Although he wasn't the same guide, which Twilight was sad about, it was still a guide, which she determined she wouldn't let die. Approaching him carefully, she called out to him. "Hello?"
"They say there is a person who will tell you how to survive in this land... oh wait. That's me."
Twilight realized something really strange then, which she couldn't resist pointing out. "You look and sound like the last guide."
"You can use your pickaxe to dig through Dirt, and your axe to chop down trees. Just place your cursor over the tile and click!"
Understandably, Twilight was annoyed. In fact, she was just annoyed enough to facehoof.
Author's Note
My attempt at a recurring theme. Hopefully you didn't find it too annoying. Don't worry, I won't do it again.
Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 6: In Which Things Get Extra Bossy
I had been a few days since Twilight experienced her first blood moon. Feeling a little more comfortable outside at night now, Twilight went out as much as she could to get as many stars as she could. Twilight really didn't like being unable to use magic, since she had spent most of her life using magic in some way. Already, she had managed to get enough stars to give her a quarter of her magic potential back. Unfortunately, she was still unable to use even basic magic, despite her having magic now.
Twilight had also went mining a few more times. She was a little more experienced at defending herself from the various monsters, and was able to get quite the collection of ores and gems. She also found a few more abandoned buildings, which yielded her some ice skates and an ice mirror. The mirror ended up doing the exact same thing her magic mirror did, so she decided it was pretty useless. Although the ice skates were actually useful to Twilight by allowing easier movement on ice. She was able to get a few more of those heart crystals, putting her health all the way up to 200. Twilight thought it certainly would be useful to not die as soon by being attacked.
Seeing a particularly full inventory, Twilight decided it was time to exit the caves. So she teleported back and went over to her chests. There weren't very many of them, which Twilight was quickly finding out wouldn't satisfy her requirement for a convenient method of storage. So Twilight decided now would be as good a time as any to begin work on a storeroom, which would preferably have all the items sorted into alphabetical order and in sections of types of objects. This would be oh so very fun for Twilight.
As Twilight finished sorting all her items into her various chests, and refining the ores she got, she went outside just in time to see the sun rise. That would be very convenient for Twilight, although she wasn't able to collect any stars for upgrading her magic. Oh well.
Suddenly, Twilight was notified of a slime rain. Twilight looked up just in time to see the slime land on her upturned face, damaging and startling her a little. Twilight backed away, allowing the slime to slip off, before pummeling it with her sword. Up ahead, more slimes were replacing the one she killed, and they were all bouncing towards her.
Twilight didn't think it would be terribly difficult to fight all the slimes. After all, they were just slimes, which couldn't do much except bounce towards you. But Twilight had to remember they were going to come at her from both sides, so she would have to constantly watch her back. Twilight was pretty sure she had a lot of experience doing just that.
But as she fought off all the slimes, she saw a new, very pink and very small slime fall from the sky. It kind of reminded her of Pinkie, just from the overwhelming amount of pink, even from such a small creature. As she mused, the pink slime bounced toward Twilight rather quickly, which prompted Twilight to try to hit it. Unfortunately, it seemed to be really difficult to hit with much accuracy. Switching tactics, Twilight got out her sword and waited for the slime to come close to her. Twilight was expecting the slime to die in a few swings.
Twilight was unpleasantly surprised at that moment to find that the slime was still alive. Twilight ran back to the house and backed against a wall so that other slimes wouldn't be able to sneak up behind her. Then, bringing her full attention to the pink slime, she started swinging. Still, the slime kept bouncing, which was very confusing for Twilight. How could something so small take so much damage?
Finally, Twilight was able to kill it, as well as the few slimes that got caught up in her swinging. It just dropped a whole bunch of pink jel, however, which she couldn't seem to put with the rest of the gel. Shrugging, she went back out to mercilessly slaughter all the slimes.
It really was just as easy as Twilight expected. Other than that one pink slime, the others all were destroyed pretty quickly, and Twilight even got a few banners out of it. As she defeated her 149th slime, Twilight decided slime rains weren't that bad.
As soon as she killed her 150th slime, however, things took a dramatic turn. She could suddenly hear the shlorping of a really massive slime, and she also received a message stating that "King Slime has awoken!" She couldn't see any large slimes anywhere, though. She decided to look on the other side of the housing complex, wherein she was treated to a truly magnificent sight. That sight being a giant blue slime wearing a golden crown. Twilight could have sworn she could see a person inside the slime, but decided that wasn't really important right now. A part of her was freaking out at the size of the slime, but she shushed that part up quickly so as to be able to fight the giant slime.
Twilight decided she didn't want to see what the slime was capable of, and decided to just stay inside the Guide's house as she fought it. Twilight allowed herself a small bit of hope, as the King Slime uselessly jumped at the wall, and the small slimes it summoned were easily dealt with.
Then it all changed. Twilight saw the slime quickly shrink into itself somehow. Twilight waited a few tense seconds to see if it might return. She was just about to relax before the slime reappeared right on top of her, surprising her and causing her to run out of the house as quickly as possible. At that point, Twilight realized she had run into the mass of slimes that had spawned, and she also realized the Guide was inside that house. As Twilight tried to fend off all the slimes awaiting her, she could hear the pained grunts of the guide inside.
Twilight ran as far as she could away. If the King Slime could teleport, maybe it would leave the Guide alone and try to keep up with Twilight. She really didn't want to get Guide killed again.
And it worked. Twilight didn't get any notifications of slain Guides. But now she had to deal with a house-sized slime and its baby slimes. Twilight probably should have thought that through a little more. Although her strategy of running away while still being close enough to hit the slimes with her boomerang seemed to be working.
...until the slime fell out of the sky right behind her, knocking her into the mass of slimes and King Slime, where she was unable to escape in time and got her meat ripped off the bone. When Twilight came to again, she decided she was just about done with slimes at the moment, so she stayed inside the house, entertaining herself with various methods of sorting her items.
Finally, after a little while, the slime rain finally stopped. Twilight was glad she didn't have to deal with any more King Slimes, at least for the moment, and exited the building. Hopefully, she would be able to just collect some stars in peace.
Twilight's wish was denied. Twilight suddenly had the feeling that something was watching her. That was confirmed when she saw the message about an evil presence. Twilight hoped whatever it was would be kind enough to just leave her be, as she really wasn't in the mood to fight whatever it was.
After about a minute of just walking around collecting stars, she heard a monstrous roar originating from above her. When she looked up, she was greeted by the very scary sight of a giant eye looking down at her, which she realized was the Eye of Cthulhu thanks to the super helpful message that appeared. As she started to back away from the eye, it started to shoot smaller eyes from its pupil, which seemed really creepy to Twilight. She was easily able to beat them back, though they prevented her from hitting the Eye itself.
Without warning, the Eye charged at her, almost hitting Twilight before she barely dodged. She saw the eye go through the ground, and realized it might try to rush at her. She tried to run away from where the eye would come out, but was frustratingly still unable to go past a certain speed. The eye managed to hit her coming out of the ground, which disoriented her and damaged her quite a bit. Then the eye came at her a third time, which Twilight was able to dodge. It then rose back up above Twilight slowly and started shooting eyes again.
Despite being such a scary boss at first, it seemed like the pattern was easy to follow. All Twilight had to do was run back and forth while throwing her boomerang up at it. Once again, Twilight allowed herself a small bit of hope. Of course, that changed when the eye started spinning rapidly, shedding its pupil in favor of a giant mouth. That freaked Twilight out a little more, and she started to panic slightly.
But the eye still seemed easy to dodge. It was rushing at her three times, before hovering over her for a few seconds to rush at her again. All Twilight had to do was keep dodging as she was doing before. As she continued hitting the eye, it started to get faster and faster, with less time between its rush attacks, until it was constantly rushing at her. Twilight was pretty sure she was about to die, but was so close to beating it that she just had to continue fighting.
Twilight felt the wall of the house behind her and realized it would be impossible to dodge now. Seeing the eye charge at her, Twilight struck with all her might, being sure she would die but still holding out.
An explosion of giant eye bits greeted Twilight that night, as she struck the killing blow on the eye. As she watched, she saw a number of potions and some kind of ore drop from the corpse, while a message read that the eye was defeated. Twilight could feel her confidence rising from her victory against this monster. She walked forward to pick up the drops before heading inside. She wanted to know what she could make with this ore, and ultimately wanted to know what bosses there were so she could defeat them all. Probably starting with that King Slime.
Author's Note
And so Twilight has officially defeated her first boss! Sure, she also defeated the Brain once, but she didn't really do anything that time. She has also officially died to her first boss, too, but that's irrelevant. And now that Twilight feels high on victory, she's probably going to die a bunch. Tune in next time!
Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 7: In Which Reality Gets Hoiked
Twilight really wanted to defeat the King Slime. But she didn't really have much to do it with. In terms of weapons, Twilight had a large sword, which worked wonders on some enemies, and a boomerang that she wasn't too skilled with. And Twilight knew that just running backwards on that large, kind of flat plain wouldn't work forever, especially with all the enemies that could appear and get her killed. Twilight was pretty sure she didn't like dying.
So when the message that Fodder had arrived graced Twilight's presence, she mentally jumped for joy. now she'd be able to learn a little more from him!
"Oy!" She heard him shout. "Sparklebutt! Get over here!"
A little peeved at Fodder's language, but still as curious as always, she trotted off in his direction. She noted he looked slightly different now, by the new brownish shirt he wore. She also noted with great interest the wings on his back which seemed to be made of space, somehow. "Hello, Fodder. What do you want?"
Fodder gave Twilight a huge grin, which could be commonly associated with insane psychopaths. "I have obtained the ultimate awesomeness!" he cried out.
Twilight wasn't sure how awesomeness could possibly be ultimate, or even what he meant. She quickly reminded herself that this person was kind of crazy, which allowed her to inquire about his statement. "What do you mean, 'ultimate awesomeness?'"
Somehow, his grin got even wider. "Behold! The Meowmere!" As he said that, he pulled out a giant white sword sword with a cat's face on the hilt. She was about to question why such a sword even existed when he swung it, sending a meowing rainbow kitten bouncing out. As she watched it, it made rainbow explosions wherever it landed, until finally disappearing.
Fodder snickered slightly as he sheathed his sword somewhere. "Okay, that's enough from me. How about you, little one?" He kneeled down, almost looking like he cared.
"Well," Twilight was unsure what she wanted to say. She really just wanted answers, but wondered if he would even give them. "Um, I defeated the Eye of Cthulhu?"
Fodder made a "hmm" sound as he started to stroke his chin. "Well done. It's commonly the first boss any player faces, unless you're lucky enough to get a slime rain." He looked around a bit before continuing. "You don't have any arena, though. How did you possibly defeat it?"
"I just ran back and forth on the ground. And what's an arena?"
"You got lucky, didn't you? Well, don't count on it. Soon enough, you'll have to face bosses that like to shoot lasers at you." He leaned in. "And, trust me on this, those bosses REALLY like lasers. Just so you know."
"O-kaay. And the arena?"
"Ah! Right! I think I'll just show you. Just hold on a sec." As Twilight watched, a strange, mechanical saucer appeared in a flash under Fodder, which promptly lifted him up and sent him zooming away. Twilight wondered why he needed it when he had wings, but decided there were more ridiculous things when she remembered his "Meowmere."
After a few minutes passed with nothing interesting happening, Twilight was suddenly startled when something fell on her. She looked back to see Fodder wearing that crazy grin again. "Gotcha! Oh, and, about that arena..." Fodder pointed behind him into the air. When Twilight followed his pointing digit, she narrowed her eyes in confusion at the huge series of stacked platforms floating in the air. She looked toward him to say something, but he shushed her and walked toward the platforms, motioning for her to follow.
"This arena is going to be your boss-battling friend for a while to come, at least until you get yourself some Cosmic car keys, like myself. Come." Fodder led Twilight to a single pillar extending all the way up to the first platform. Twilight stepped around it and say it wasn't a full pillar, but one pillar with a bunch of sloped pieces of wood facing towards it. She looked towards Fodder to see him walk toward the sloped side before being whisked away at an alarming speed.
After a few seconds, Fodder fell back down and started to speak, motioning at the pillar. "This, my dear friend, is a hoik. The way it works is by putting you inside a block. The world then pushes you out of the block because that's just not right. However, in pushing you out, it pushes you into another block strategically placed to send you in a certain direction. It's pretty fun, unless you get stuck in sand."
Twilight was dumbfounded. How could he possibly get inside a solid object in the first place? She certainly let her confusion show on her face.
Fodder chuckled at her confusion. "How about I let you see how it works? Go on, get in the hoik."
Twilight didn't really have anything to lose attempting this. So, taking a deep breath, Twilight stepped forward into the hoik. She felt herself suddenly pulled up, but then also felt a sudden stop. She noticed she was still pretty close to the ground right now.
"Huh." Twilight looked back to see Fodder as he stared at the hoik. "You don't have the same dimensions that I do, do you?"
Twilight wasn't sure how to respond. She simply got out of the hoik and turned toward Fodder. She watched as he got into his floating disc thing and flew up, destroying all of the sloped blocks. Then he came back down while placing regular blocks of wood. Again, he zoomed up, only now he wielded a golden hammer, which he used to change the blocks into slopes. Finally, he fell back down and motioned for Twilight to go up again.
Again, Twilight stepped into the pillar. Now she could see the land falling away from her, instead of just stopping at the beginning. She looked up to see the many platforms racing up to her, which almost made her think she was going to splat against the roof. Thankfully, she wasn't splatted and instead made her way up onto the the first platform. Twilight heard the whirring of Fodder's craft as he came up in front of her.
"Sooo, whatdja think? Pretty cool, right?" He nudged her for a response.
Twilight took a moment to respond. "I, uh, don't know? This is kind of strange."
"Hah! Only a day in the life of a player." Fodder shifted slightly. "Well, I'm done here. Oh, you wanna know something?"
"Sure?"
Fodder leaned in close to Twilight. "I'm writing a really funny story which I'm going to get back to once I leave. It's about a purple pony who gets stranded in an alternate universe and dies a lot. I think you'd really enjoy it."
"Okay..." Twilight wasn't sure why he Fodder shared that information, but decided to think nothing of it. At least, until the relevance of what he said finally reached her. "Wait, what?"
Twilight was too late. Fodder had already left, leaving Twilight very confused and a little angry. Twilight was pretty sure she now knew what put her in this place. And she wanted to tell him she didn't like what he put her through. But then Twilight looked around at the giant arena and realized she probably wasn't going to be able to do that anytime soon. Giving an irritated sigh, Twilight teleported back home. Maybe she might be able to cool off by building some more houses.
Author's Note
Slightly shorter chapter this time. We learn that Twilight is super-small, that Fodder is a prideful asshole, and that it's fun to mess with reality. Tune in next time on ReptileSpaceJewFlatLand!
Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 8: In Which the Fog is Lifted
Twilight tried yet again to jump to the next level of platforms. While Twilight did somewhat appreciate the arena Fodder gave her, she noticed early on that she was unable to jump high enough to reach the next level. Therefor, the arena could only be used as a flat plain to run back and forth on, which Twilight assumed she wouldn't have to do anymore with the arena. Twilight reckoned Fodder built the arena with some item in mind, not realizing she didn't have the item yet.
Eventually, Twilight just decided to let it go. She was pretty sure she would find whatever she needed at some point in the future, and teleported back home.
Now Twilight sat down, wondering what to do next. She decided it would probably be some time until the next slime rain, which meant she had plenty of time to find whatever she needed. Suddenly, Twilight had an idea. Maybe she might find something useful out in the world, and not cooped up in this house all the time. Images of the strange, blood-drenched place filled Twilight's mind, and she shuddered involuntarily. She probably wasn't going to go that way. Instead, she decided she would go the other way, towards the jungle area.
Once again, Twilight found herself in the snow, and then immediately inside the desert afterwards. Twilight had decided she should just stop trying to make sense of this world, since a lot of things inside it didn't really make much sense. She also noticed she hadn't seen any slimes in a while, which was promising to give a quick, easy trip.
As if the universe heard her thoughts and really wanted to mess with her, something hit Twilight in the face rather harshly and fell down, startling her out of her thoughts. Twilight ducked behind a nearby dune and tried to spot whatever it was that shot at her. While she couldn't see what was shooting her, she did recieve another projectile to the face. In the few moments it rested there, Twilight was able to tell it looked like sand. Which means Twilight now had to deal with something that threw sand. Finally she spotted some kind of giant worm with mandibles sticking out of the ground, which had just now shot another block of sand at her. Twilight was preparing to boomerang the creature, but was interrupted when she heard skittering behind her. She turned around just in time to get brutally dissected by a similar-looking insect.
As Twilight entered the desert again, she was glad to not see any more of the insect worm sand things. Although sitting on one of the cacti was a vulture, which was just staring at Twilight. She carefully attempted to edge around the vulture, but then had to stop when it started flying at her. Deciding it wasn't friendly, Twilight struck it a few times with her sword and moved on.
Now Twilight was out of the desert, which was plenty relieving for her. She found herself in another grassy area, although it seemed to be a lot hillier then her home. Twilight shrugged and continued under the giant floating mass of land that was somehow staying in the air, and came across a very lovely-looking wooden chest. Upon opening the chest, Twilight was greeted to the sight of a yellow spike called an aglet, as well as the usual assortment of potions and coins. There were also a number of pots around the chest, which dropped more potions, coins, and rope when broken. Although Twilight probably wouldn't be able to use the rope, given her equine body.
Twilight exited the cavity and found the jungle. It didn't look too dangerous, although she could say the same thing for pretty much everything, Well, maybe not the bloody place, but she really didn't want to go back there. Twilight put the image out of her mind and trudged into the jungle, spotting some very bright green slimes and brown bats. It wouldn't be too difficult for Twilight to deal with them.
And then a giant spiked vine thing burst out of the ground right beneath Twilight, yet again putting her into a startled state. Twilight realized a lot of things were startling her in this world, which probably wouldn't be too healthy if it continued. Fortunately for Twilight, the large mouth disappeared into the ground, which allowed Twilight to back away out of its range when it came up again. It was surprisingly easy to defeat for such a scary-looking monster, since it just wasn't ever able to reach far enough to hit Twilight. After defeating the monster, Twilight continued on her journey.
After a sizable amount of piranhas, bats, and slimes, as well as the occasional vine monster, Twilight made it to the other side of the jungle, which happened to be another plain. There weren't any chests, unfortunately, but there was a beach right after which then led to an ocean. Twilight knew that sharks and other dangerous ocean critters couldn't possibly be this far out, so was very confident that she could make it through the ocean unscathed.
Twilight was, frustratingly, unable to swim, and was forced to inch forward at the bottom of the ocean. A few crabs and jellyfish tried to get to her, but her sword was still somehow able to work quite well underwater.
That was when she spied a chest. Twilight was starting to realize she really liked chests, and rushed as best she could to it. Inside, she found a very long, hollow stick, which she assumed she could use to go underwater. She didn't really think it would work this far, since its length wouldn't reach past the surface. Ultimately, Twilight had nothing to lose by trying, and stuck the tube in her mouth. She didn't notice any effects, but decided to leave it in as she continued onwards.
But just as Twilight was about to open the next chest, she heard something swimming towards her. Looking up, she was surprised to see a shark making a beeline right towards her. Twilight really didn't want to face any sharks, and teleported out as soon as she could. She gasped for air, and out of shock, before calming down.
Why would there ever be sharks so far upshore? That doesn't make sense! Twilight sorted out the items she obtained as she continued her mental comment. I just can't wait to get out of this place. It's so different and confusing. She finished sorting everything out and exited the building. I guess that'll be enough exploring. I still feel like I need something, though. Maybe I'll find it underground. With her new destination set, and her trusty pickaxe ready, Twilight entered her mineshaft to try and find whatever it is she needed, and whatever else caught her eye.
Ponyville
Given the unknown status of the research team for so long, Celestia finally decided she would have to go there herself. She didn't want her little ponies to be caught in any type of crossfire, however, and had to decline the offer to be royally transported. Besides, Celestia thought she needed to refresh her flying skills.
As she approached the quaint little town, she was met with a truly terrible sight. The town was completely overrun by groaning bipedal creatures, flying eyes, and the occasional bouncing slime. She attempted to find the team from where she was, but was unable to find any sign of them. As she got a little closer to the town, a few of the eyes noticed her and flew at her. They didn't stand much chance against her idle fire spell.
Finally, after a while of flying and plenty of eye burning, Celestia managed to find the crashed wreckage of the golden chariots. It showed that the team attempted to put up a fight, but were ultimately defeated. Celestia didn't know what happened to them, but was determined to find them.
At that moment, the bipedal things noticed the living thing among them, and started shuffling lazily towards her, groaning all the way. They reminded Celestia of those zomponies that some of her subjects were obsessed with, which spelled bad news in case what she realized could have happened might be real.
It was only confirmed when she spotted a few ponies in golden armor shuffling towards her just like the others. She really wanted to save them, but didn't know of any magic that might work. But, even if she managed to save them, they would still have large chunks of flesh bitten out of them or organs trailing on the floor, which wasn't very desirable. Celestia decided it would be the kindest thing just to kill them, or whatever now inhabited these lifeless husks.
And then a torrent of slimes fell on everything. Celestia was pretty surprised by such an occurrence, but the zombies didn't even seem to notice what were now on their heads and continued groaning forward. Celestia attempted to burn the slime off of her head, but the half-formed spell fizzed harmlessly into the slimy substance. There was also slime pretty much completely coating her, which made it really difficult for her to move or fly. And with the zombies closing in on her, she realized she was in a very bad situation.
But then, as they reached her, they only managed to bounce their heads right off of her. Celestia realized they wouldn't actually be able to hurt her with the bouncy slime coating everything. She found a lot of humor in that fact, although a lot of it might have come from the fact that she was in a life-or-death situation.
All of the humor vanished when the giant flying eye appeared in the air, immediately turning to stare at her. The slime on everything hadn't disappeared so far, and the eye came in after the slime rain,which meant it was at an extreme advantage.
For the moment, the eye didn't really do anything except stare at Celestia while floating back and forth. It made her feel as if something evil was staring into her soul, which was really unnerving. She was then officially creeped out when its pupil split off, revealing a massive, tooth-filled maw. It then rushed at her, aiming to bite her in half. Celestia reflected that she probably shouldn't have come here.
As she waited for the end, she realized she still hadn't been eaten. She slowly opened an eye to see the empty, fleshy void inside this thing. She turned her head behind her to see the jaw struggling to chomp through the thick layer of slime. Once again, her life was both doomed and saved by this elusive slimy substance. But she was still unable to do anything meaningful to the eye, and it was unable to do anything to her, so she decided to prepare for a really long wait.
Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 9: In Which Death is In Yo' Face!
Twilight was, once again, exploring underground. This time, she went a different direction from the initial crossroads and found herself in a massive black cavern. Twilight would have wanted to enjoy the sight, but apparently had to deal with the various monsters that came with this area. Specifically, the flying black rocks and the black rock golems.
The flying ones weren’t that annoying, as they just drifted lazily towards her. The golems were a lot more annoying, however, as they took a lot of punishment and would often become invulnerable by crossing their arms in front of them.
As Twilight explored the cavern, she had to use a lot of her platforms simply because it was so massive. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to find anything very interesting or useful, save for a couple of hearts. Down one of the numerous tunnels, she did manage to find another abandoned building, which had an extractinator in it. Twilight really wanted to see what it did, and kept it as she continued exploring.
Now Twilight found herself under attack from various gold-plated skeletons throwing javelins. This was Twilight’s first encounter with ranged enemies, and as such, she was taken completely by surprise. She could have used her mirror to escape before becoming a gross pile of flesh, but she was too focused on trying her best to defeat them to notice the fatal javelin about to turn her into a pony shish kabab.
On the bright side, Twilight was back home and now able to try out this extractinator. Its dull grey exterior sat motionless as Twilight somehow held it with one hoof. Upon placing it, the spiral thing on top started to rotate, even with Twilight doing nothing to activate it. She noticed faint writing on the side, telling her that it “Turns silt/slush/fossils into something more useful.”
Twilight quickly went over to her chests, which were absolutely full of items. She rooted trough to eventually find her silt and slush, then went back to the extractinator. She couldn’t see any silt or slush slots at first glance, though, and had to take a second to look around. When she didn’t find anything useful, she double-checked it, just to see if she had missed something. On her triple-check, she finally realized there probably isn’t a slot. Sighing in frustration, she smacked it with the same hoof she was using to carry the slush. She was pleasantly surprised to find a number of coins being ejected from somewhere into her inventory, which led her to determine that she had to blindly smack it to get it to work.
Twilight sat down in a comfortable position and started swinging, while idly contemplating the effectiveness of just hitting things with other things to get them to work. After a while of silt and slush bashing, she ended up with a nice, full inventory, which consisted of a number of ores, coins, and the occasional gem. In Twilight’s mind, it was entirely worth her getting killed by a spear-wielding skeleton.
A number of ingots later, Twilight stepped out of the guide’s house to greet the rising sun. A number of zombies and eye monsters had started to run away, which was very convenient for Twilight. Today, she decided, she would brave the Crimson on her quest to find loot. Although she had to reassure herself that she wasn’t just being greedy, she was going treasure hunting.
But first, she had to deal with the Traveling Merchant that had just arrived. She had never heard of a Travelling Merchant before, but she decided she really wanted to know what he sold. He was relatively easy to spot in his gaudy blue outfit, and she found him wandering around next to some slimes. She quickly killed off the slimes before walking up to his stoic, uncaring self.
“Hello?” she asked. She wasn’t expecting something very intelligent, but she was going to be polite anyway.
“Meet me behind Joe’s house in about three hours,” he said, “I think I have something you will find very appealing.”
“Well, I actually had some plans for today, so I might not be able to do that.” Twilight gave him a friendly smile. “But thanks for the offer!”
“Hmm, you look like you could use an angel statue! They slice, they dice, and make everything nice!”
“Uh, sure?” Twilight looked at what he was selling, but wasn’t able to find any angel statues. “I thought you said you have angel statues?”
“If you’re looking for junk, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
Twilight tilted her head in confusion. “Why would you be selling me junk?”
“Buy now, and get free shipping!”
Twilight decided she didn’t want to deal with him anymore, and turned away from him just as he started yelling about fish. She took a few seconds to remember what her previous plans were, and upon remembering them, she set course for the Crimson lands.
They were just as she remembered them, in their completely bloody glory. She stepped cautiously through the pulsating masses of flesh that she would normally lose her lunch to, keeping an eye out for the denizens of this land. She seemed alone for now, but she knew she would have to prepare for the worst.
One of the face monsters came charging down the hill at a breakneck speed, roaring out of its terrible, gaping maw. A few flying monsters started to circle Twilight, as if sizing her up before striking. Twilight was starting to rethink her decision to come here.
Looking behind her, Twilight realized she wouldn’t be able to go back the way she came, as evidenced by the army of monsters behind her. Her fight-or-flight instinct took over logic and she charged through the lone face monster in front of her, narrowly missing the lunges of the flyers. She attempted to jump over the monster, but it just had to jump at the same time, stopping her in her tracks. She swung her sword madly at the monster, just barely able to keep it from overtaking her. Twilight raced through its already fading flesh pile, jumping over the cavity that just so happened to be there, and raced over the first stone hill. The flyers were still after her, so she started throwing her boomerang back at them as she continued to run through the uneven terrain.
After what seemed like only a few moments, she could already see a second hill with another one of the cave entrances. Twilight couldn’t see any convenient way to get over it, so she ended up running into the cave and pulling out her pickaxe. She could hear monsters coming very close to her, so she started swinging as fast as she could. In was very unforgivably slow, however, and she couldn’t see cracks of any kind in the fleshy wall.
Come on, come on! The monsters were pretty much breathing down Twilight’s neck at this point. Let me through!
The wall didn’t even budge, and Twilight eventually gave up trying to destroy it. As she was about to accept her fate, she realized she could just teleport out. She got out her mirror and tried to use it as fast as she could, while still aware of the monstrous blood spiders swarming her. Her mirror just didn’t activate in time, and her face got bitten off.
Understandably, Twilight was pretty upset. As soon as she was able to calm down, she started going over what had happened. The caves were too tall to jump over, and the enemies too numerous to handle them efficiently.
Maybe her explosives could do something. Twilight had obtained a large amount of bombs from going spelunking, but had kept them in her chest to just forget them. Maybe they’d be more useful then she originally thought.
Of course it was Tartarus to get through that land again, but Twilight would like to think she was slightly more prepared.
Twilight made her way into the same cave she died in before. It was empty for now, but she knew it would fill up really quickly, at which point she’d most likely be dead again. She noticed she had a little stone in her inventory, so she decided to surround herself with it. But she was pretty sure the bombs would hurt her if she was too close to them. So, making sure not to let the bloodthirsty blood spiders get through to her, she expanded her little stone hideout until it very nearly blocked off the whole passageway. Then she rolled one of her bombs over to the far wall, expecting it to stop somewhere around there. What surprised her was when the bomb, without slowing down, made it to the other end of the platform, bounced off of the far wall, and slowly rested right in front of her. Then it exploded.
Twilight was starting to wonder if trying to dig through the wall was the wrong idea. Perhaps she should just risk the open air and make some platforms to jump up on. It was certainly risky, but Twilight didn’t really have anything to lose in this world.
Once again making her way back to the dreaded cave entrance, she attempted to place a platform above her. Of course she should have realized they couldn’t just hang in mid-air. Although it should be a simple-enough matter to make a base for the platforms somewhere in the cave, on which she could accomplish her mission. The snarling monsters behind her are probably, ultimately more important than the platforms, so she turned to face them. And then promptly got knocked into their awaiting mouths by the previously hidden spider.
Twilight sighed in frustration. And it was a very large sigh. Maybe she should just leave that place alone. Of course, given the mare she was, Twilight wouldn’t be Twilight if she just gave up! She went back yet again, and accidentally fell down a hole she had forgotten was there. And when she went back to patch that hole up, she was smacked into it by one of the silent flying things!
The pattern of Twilight dying continued for quite a while, before she FINALLY managed to scale the cliff. Twilight was afraid she might have been getting too angry to operate intelligently, but had just barely managed to accomplish the thing which was frustrating her.
Twilight made it to the other side of the Crimson lands and found herself in a small forest, which was like every other forest that existed, and was, ultimately, absolutely boring. She did find a chest, which happened to have climbing claws in it, completely nullifying Twilight’s need for platforms. At least, if she could figure out how to use them.
Eventually, something caught Twilight’s eye. It appeared to be a large, pinkish dungeon jutting out from the ground, with a figure in it. As she got closer, she realized the figure was an old man, with a faded grey coat and eerily red eyes. Twilight expected some sort of attack, but was pleasantly surprised when the figure just decided to aimlessly wander about.
"Hello?" She ventured.
"I cannot let you enter until you free me of my curse."
"Curse? I don't actually believe in curses..."
"My master cannot be summoned under the light of day."
Twilight understood now. "Oh! Your 'curse' is probably just having to defeat your 'master,' right?"
"I cannot let you enter until you free me of my curse."
Now she was confused. "I don't see any doors anywhere. Is your master inside?" Twilight walked toward the entrance into the dungeon tentatively. "Well, wherever he is, I will free you!" And so Twilight plunged into the darkness.
She didn't actually plunge, though; that would just kill her, which wouldn't be very useful. Instead, she tried to hug the jagged wall as best as she could, lighting the way with some torches she had. It shouldn't be too hard to-
Before Twilight knew what happened, a roaring, spinning skull flew out of the wall and smashed Twilight into a non-existent paste. And then night fell, bringing a blood moon with it. Yep, Twilight was probably going to have to resign herself to quite a lot of frustration.
Author's Note
A new chapter, at long last!
I will try to keep this story updated, but my life is deemed a lot more important than this story, which means I won't be able to update as much. I swear I will NOT forget this story!
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Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 10: In Which Monsters Have Feelings Too!
Twilight woke up once again back in her home. She really wanted to help that "cursed" old man in the temple-like structure, but she also really didn't want to deal with those giant flying skulls. And there was the matter of getting across the bloody hills yet again, which was never a pleasant experience. She found herself almost wishing Fodder was here, just for the purpose of him explaining what the hay she was supposed to do. Of course, she was also pretty sure he would just tell her in the most roundabout way while also somehow getting her killed.
But Twilight still hadn't satisfied her urge to go exploring. She wanted to see if she could get up into the sky and see what was up there, but she knew of no ways to do so. The only method that might work was if she just built a very tall tower, but she wasn't sure how it would stay standing. She looked toward the arena that had been made in her backyard, which confirmed to her that physics didn't work quite the same in this world and there could very well be floating platforms or ridiculous towers. But, even if she decided to make a tower, she knew she would need a lot of materials to do so, which she could probably get in abundance from gouging out the land beneath her.
As she came upon that train of thought, Twilight suddenly had an idea. If she couldn't very well go up or sideways, perhaps she could go down? She decided that would be a brilliant idea, and she would be able to maybe satisfy her inner explorer. She might need more torches to light up the place, though, and would have to go slime hunting to do so. As she exited her house with a sword at the ready, Twilight wondered just when she had decided going out to mass-murder creatures for their resources was a good idea.
Ponyville
The ice slime was bored. Really, really bored. The strange horses beneath it seemed to have just fallen asleep as they were completely chilled, which meant the slime probably didn't have to watch them anymore. Which was good for it, since it was not only bored, but also really tired. It really wanted to see what else existed where this town resided, which it couldn't really do if it was just staying in one place the whole time.
Being mindful of the knocked out horses, it carefully hopped off of the one currently beneath it. It could feel that the horses were still very frozen, which might change soon. Of course, the slime wasn't even sure how long they would stay frozen, since it seemed to be in an entirely different world that didn't seem to be run on programs and timers. It took another ginger hop away from the horses, noting that they were still fast asleep. Then it took another, and another, until it was merrily bounding away in a random direction.
The slime turned a corner, not knowing what might be around it, and came across the Eye of Cthulhu flying about with reckless abandon. Upon closer inspection, the slime could see something very white stuck between its jaws, and could also see the multicolored remains of many of its comrades covering the entire area. It also noticed a horde of slimy zombies gathering under the giant eye, all bumping into each other as they tried to follow it. It had to admit that was pretty funny, even if it was simultaneously sad that so many slimes had been turned into goop. It promptly forgot about all of that stuff and resumed its merry bounding.
Meanwhile, the Eye of Cthulhu was in a very strange and somewhat embarrassing situation. Not only was it covered pupil to trailing flesh in slime residue, but it was also unable to do anything to the super slimy super horse in its mouth. It could also faintly hear the horse saying something along the lines of "release me you fiend," but that wasn't really important at all.
It was interrupted be the otherworldly screeches of its brethren flying in to see what could be the problem. The larger eye grunted as best as it could that there was something stuck in its teeth that it couldn't get out. The smaller eyes screed that they would try to help, but they also screed in amusement that their boss had been defeated by lowly dental problems. As they set to work trying to pry the struggling horse out of the giant mouth in front of them, the Eye growled in mock humor at the situation befalling it, which it reminded the smaller ones was being experienced by itself and ultimately wasn't funny at all.
Meanwhile, Celestia was stuck quite thoroughly in the giant eyeball's mouth, and had to unfortunately deal with the giant monster's slobbery breathing, which reminded her that she might need to take a nice, long bath once this madness was over. Suddenly, she was assaulted by round things smashing into various locations on her still very slimy body, and was greeted by a screeching eye appearing in her face. As she started to struggle, the eye in front of her smashed into her face. It pulled back, getting ready to smash her again, but Celestia re-positioned her head just enough that the eye skewered itself on her horn. Then another eye appeared in front of her, and she realized that she would be unable to skewer this one, and now she also had a rotten eye on her horn. She groaned inwardly about the situation she was in, even as the what she assumed were all eyes trying to smack her out of the giant mouth.
We return to the slime as it managed to find a nice path to follow up into the wilderness. It was a very winding path, but it found a lot of fun in trying to follow it exactly, even when it twisted into itself and started to do loop-de-loops. Eventually, the slime found itself in front of a very nice little cottage with a number of both tiny and not so tiny animals gathered around it. The slime bounced up the steps and stopped right in front of the door. It could see a handle, but it would be unable to turn it given that it was just a blob. It shot some ice at the door, fully expecting it to just shatter on it, but was pleasantly surprised when it smashed right through the door and onto the leg of another horse-thing.
The pony inside, which we would know as Fluttershy, was, understandably, very freaked out when she felt her leg suddenly go cold and numb, and used her remaining three legs to jump away from the now shattered door. A split second later, a long, serpentine arm shot out and opened the door the proper way, even if it ended up falling flat on its front afterwards.
The single-toothed amalgamation of various different animal parts scowled at the shivering ice slime, and said, "Who goes there!" in a gruff voice. It also had a police cap on its head, for some reason.
Discord's demeanor immediately changed when he saw what, exactly went there. He scooped up the slime and started to cuddle it, and started making baby noises at it, while still sounding very gruff. He turned to where Fluttershy's rump was sticking in the air and brought the confused slime over. "It's perfectly fine, Flutters, it's just a cute little blob thing!"
When Fluttershy refused to stop "hiding," Discord sighed and pushed the couch to the side, causing it to bunch up like a strange couch-accordion hybrid. With nothing left to support her, Fluttershy fell flat on her back, being able to easily see both Discord and the slime. She suddenly shot forward and started cuddling the still being held slime, which was probably not used to this kind of attention.
Of course, it was still an ice slime, and Fluttershy wasn't immune to the cold like Discord was, so she almost immediately froze and fell back down, still snuggling the slime. The slime made a little protesting squeak at the strength of Fluttershy's grasp, and attempted to slide out of it. Being a partially frozen amorphous blob, it wasn't able to squeeze itself out with nearly as much success as other, non-frozen amorphous blobs.And since its constant presence was causing the pony holding it to never unfreeze, it would probably be stuck in that position until something else did something.
Discord, instead of trying to pry the blob out, instead put a very tacky multicolored blanket with Discord faces all over it on the frozen pony before heading outside. He took out a telescope, facing the wrong direction, and looked over at the town of Ponyville, where he could see a number of chaotic events happening everywhere. He chuckled heartily at the thought of Celestia stuck in a giant eyeball's mouth, but he also knew that something else was causing the chaos, which Discord didn't like very much. He really wanted to be the one causing the chaos himself, and he definitely didn't want to kill ponies like those zombies did to the team Sun-Butt sent. With that in mind, he put away the map and began a leisurely stroll towards Ponyville. Maybe, he thought, if I take as long as possible geting to town, something more exciting will happen!
Feeling satisfied about the result of his backwards thought of train, he got out a plaid green and orange adventuring jacket and started walking with exaggerated arm movements.
Terraria
Twilight really hoped her friends were doing alright without her. She was pretty sure they were, but something might have happened as she was gone that would require all of the Elements of Harmony to defeat, in which case they wouldn't have much luck without her.
Thoughts like this were what Twilight experienced as she made the super long tunnel straight down. She was starting to feel kind of hot from being so deep own, but otherwise was perfectly fine. She had found a few caves on her journey down, but decided she would explore those later.
Twilight dug away yet another layer of stone, and a wave of heat washed over her. As soon as she had recovered, Twilight looked through the hole in the floor and her eyes widened in surprise when she saw a literal ocean of lava beneath her. Twilight would probably have to be real careful as she attempted to continue her tunnel.
She had started to extend the tunnel into the hellish landscape, when she heard something digging through the ground. She turned towards where she heard it, and was very surprised to see a giant, bony dragon skull, which knocked her off of the platform and into the lava below. In her final moments before dying, Twilight was just able to scream angrily at everything before her melted self exploded into melted remains, which then melted further.
Author's Note
Oh my god! They killed Twilight!
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Twilight Sparkle and the Terrarian Trials
Chapter 11: In Which Lots of Progress Was Made
Twilight appeared in the guide's house for the umpteenth time and gave a long sigh of annoyance. This place really seemed to get to her nerves extremely often, which usually led to them being melted or exploded. Unfortunately for Twilight, she would have to deal with this aggravation for the duration of her stay, however long that was.
At that moment, Twilight decided to not do anything and instead reflect upon what she did. She did a lot of exploring, which definitely got her a lot of useful items, but was that enough? From what she saw and learned from Fodder's interaction, there was a lot more she could do than just explore and die. But what?
Twilight exited her contemplative state of mind and went over to the chest overflowing with items. She had a lot of earth-related things, a bunch of wood, and a small collection of ingots and gems, but nothing else. She already tried to find out what she could use these things for using the Guide, but realized she didn't have the necessary things.
Although there were a number of potions Twilight had been completely ignoring so far in her travels. And Twilight just realized she could make staves with the gems and bars she obtained. And she had some red ore dropped from the Eye of Cthulhu which could be very useful. And she could make a whole bunch of houses for more people to live in, including one for herself.
And then Twilight realized that there was so much of the world she hadn't explored which could have a lot of useful things in it. She could go into the crimson and attempt to defeat the Brain of Cthulhu to get that red stuff it dropped. She could go underground and attempt to brave the hellish landscape beneath the world, but would likely have to find some way to get down semi-safely. She could see if she could go into the sky to see if she could find any wyverns to try and get some wings. Or she could wait for nightfall and somehow collect fallen stars.
Twilight gave herself the largest and most facehooviest facehoof she could muster, which somehow ended up killing her, but she didn't care about that! She could finally make some progress in this world instead of blindly wandering into sort of useful things!
First, Twilight made herself a sword out of that bloody reddish stuff, which she could somehow wield even though it larger than her. She also made the best staff she could, which ended up being a sapphire one that shot blue clumps of magic. She wasn't able to sustain a magical assault for very long, although that gave her a reason to collect stars.
Next, Twilight looked over the potions she obtained. A lot of them gave her different status effects, which Twilight didn't find very interesting, but she did decide to put some healing potions into her inventory. She also took some gravitation potions she obtained, which she could use to go into the sky and do whatever was necessary up there.
Twilight stepped outside for a few seconds and estimated she had a while before night fell. In that time, Twilight could make some more houses in her house tower to see if anyone else wanted to move in. Then maybe she could spend the night collecting stars and fending off the monsters that appeared with her new sword. Then she could go into the sky and explore there a bit, and hopefully use whatever she gained to fight the Brain all by herself and obtain loot! With her schedule planned, Twilight gathered the necessary resources and got to work.
A while later...
Twilight loved schedules, and loved completing schedules even more. But sometimes, doing the things that led to the completion of those schedules is not the most interesting. Case in point, repetitively making houses on top of other houses with the exact same contents in each and every one of them. Thankfully for Twilight's patience, it didn't take too long to get a total of 15 houses in place, including the ones she already made, before night fell. Although Twilight realized the fruits of her labors probably wouldn't be seen until night had passed, unless the people were suicidal or just plain stupid. Which might be the case, when Twilight thought back to her first night here.
But that wasn't her priority right now. Twilight could already see some stars falling in the distance, which excited her. She really looked forward to regaining at least a rough approximate of her magical ability. She also kind of wanted to see how powerful her new sword was, which led her out of the safety of her home and into the waiting arms of a sizable amount of monsters. She grinned in anticipation and charged out swinging.
It was then she realized that constantly swinging her sword at everything that moves and occasionally picking up fallen stars might get boring quickly, which nullified some of her enjoyment. Nonetheless, Twilight kept going because she knew it had to be done.
By the end of the night, Twilight was really getting tired of the constant stream of monsters and stars. She breathed a sigh of relief when the sun began rising, prompting the various monsters to start running to who knows where. Twilight quickly got rid of the various junk items she obtained and moved on to her next objective: sky exploration.
Twilight started running past the looming structure of the arena floating in the sky and gulped down one of the potions. And then nothing happened. Twilight skidded to a stop, frustrated that her schedule was unable to be completed, and attempted to puzzle out why the potion wasn't working. On a hunch, Twilight looked up at the sky, which suddenly turned into her looking down at the sky. Twilight let out a drawn-out "Whee!" as she fell up and her brain attempted to rectify the strange sensations it was feeling.
As Twilight was falling, she noticed these weird bird people flying after her. She really wanted them to be friendly, but her hopes were crushed when they started to shoot feathers at her. And Twilight could have sworn they looked sharp. She decided she didn't want to deal with the bird people and continued falling.
As she continued falling, Twilight wondered if it was possible to fall to far. The sky had faded into pitch blackness, with stars twinkling in abundance and the sun moving steadily across the expanse. If Twilight had a little more time, she probably would have just stayed here, marveling at the beauty that existed here. Alas, bird people wanted Twilight's soul, while she wanted to both find wyverns and not rocket too far away from the ground.
Twilight looked up. As she looked up, Twilight spotted the top of a floating landmass, which she quickly fell towards. But she also spotted that the bird people from before were directly below her, and she would have to fall through them to reach the peculiar object. But she was prepared. Twilight quickly got out her staff and started firing, thankful for all the stars she collected earlier. She did manage to kill one before she fell into the mass, which cost her a lot of health.
But as Twilight fell toward the island, she realized she would likely die from the fall damage. Thinking quickly, Twilight reversed her gravity a few more times, until she landed gracefully on the island with nary a scratch. From here, she could notice a few more details of the island, including that it apparently had a mini forest. The island itself was a chunk of dirt that was suspended in a cloudy bowl, and there were smaller clouds above her dripping water. But what was most interesting was the bright yellow house that Twilight was surprised she didn't notice sooner.
Twilight rushed towards the house, mindful of the bird-things that still wanted to kill her. There wasn't any door on this side of the house, although Twilight noticed she could jump much higher than usual. She managed to find a door on the other side, which she managed to get through just before getting bombarded by insanely sharp feathers. Twilight breathed a short sigh of relief before looking around her. The house wasn't very populated, with just a table, two chairs, and a chest, all of which were made of this interesting material.\
Before she did anything else, Twilight put one of her torches inside the house in case anyone was crazy enough to live here. She then took a look in the chest, which contained the usual potions and coins, as well as some sort of golden horseshoe. Upon examination, she realized it would completely negate any fall damage, thanks to a helpful description she somehow knew about. Although Twilight wasn't exactly sure how to put it on, since she didn't know of any smithies.
Twilight decided to look in her inventory in case the answer to that problem existed. There were a number of slots below where she put her armor, which made her wonder if that was where she put the horseshoe. When she discovered it did go there, she realized she could also put her climbing claws in there so that she could actually use them.
Twilight would have wanted to sit there, basking in the feeling of new discoveries and knowledge, but was unable to due to the fact that potions don't last forever. But Twilight would have to go through the bird people piling outside the door in order to not waste some of her precious potion. Twilight idly wondered if she could hit multiple enemies with one sword swing as she prepared to face the onslaught of enemies.
But immediately after opening the door, all the bird people instantly flew in and shot all of their feathers at Twilight, which killed her before she could even defend herself. On the plus side, Twilight discovered via the death message that these were harpies, so she wouldn't have to constantly refer to them as generic bird people. However, as she waited to come back to life, she mused that it probably wouldn't be any better to know them as generic harpies rather than bird people.
So Twilight had managed to complete mostly everything on her checklist save for finding wyverns. But she had a feeling she could do more with her sword then she initially thought. So, immediately after appearing back at the housing complex, she went over to the guide and put the sword into his information slot, wherein it was revealed to her that she could craft a "Night's Edge." Frustratingly, she was unable to figure out where to get the other swords required for it.
"So I have one of the swords right now," she said to herself as she paced around the house. "One of them looks like it would be found in Tartarus, or whatever it's called. One of them seems to be made from plants; in the jungle maybe? And that last one looks like it would be in the ocean somewhere. Come on, Guide, are you going to say anything useful?"
"I am here to give you advice on what to do next. It is recommended that you talk with me anytime you get stuck."
"That's what I'm asking you for!"
"You can use your pickaxe to dig through Dirt, and your axe to chop down trees. Just place your cursor over the tile and click!"
At that moment, Twilight decided she really wanted to punch the guide in the face. Instead, she just settled for facehooving. She didn't want to deal with the guide anymore, and went out to see if anyone else had entered the housing complex. It didn't look like anyone had entered, but when Twilight checked her message area, it was revealed to her that a dryad had moved in. Twilight puzzled over that information for a little while, until she realized that the dryad must have gone to the cloud house. Which didn't make sense because it was entirely disconnected from the rest of the world!
Understandably, Twilight was pissed. In her pissed state, she thought it would be a good idea to see if she could take on the Brain of Cthulhu. And so, without even preparing for it, she set off on what she would later realize was a fool's errand.
Author's Note
Hello everyone! I am terribly sorry I kept you all waiting for so long for this new chapter, but I got distracted and/or uncreative. I absolutely forgive you if you wrote this story off as dead and deleted it from your mind.