Marathon

After calculating the approximate number of timber wolves that would need to be slain in order to go back home, which happens to be about 200 million, I decided that that would take not only an obscenely long amount of time but it probably would not be very socially acceptable and my karma would drop (whether or not timber wolves are evil) to the point where spontaneous critical existence failure was actually rather likely.

With nothing better to do, I began the long march off to Canterlot. Supposedly the view is great. And an audience with the Princess and/or a map could be 'acquired'. Ehh, maybe skip Celly. I doubt that the guards would let a killing machine in regardless of how crappy they may or may not be at fighting. In any case visiting Canterlot was a simple enough goal. It wasn't that far, was it? Shouldn't take that long.

THREE HOURS OF TREES AND DIRT AND OCCASIONAL RUSTLING LATER

The obscured sky started to change color. The temperature dropped noticeably. A few nocturnal creatures began to stir. And so the sun set. The moon comes out. Night falls. And with night fallen completely down, the other side of the world wakes up. Here however we are still concerned about THIS side of the world. The side of the world where one lone pseudo-Spartan is starting to lose it. Hey, if you're in a magical forest that's dangerous enough during the DAY...

Ever played Amnesia? The Dark Descent? That game. If you don't know, don't ask. I was something in between the severe streaked vision and red tint. Seriously. Let's look at the checklist. After being through two fights, suffering guilt at having killed 4 may-or-may-not-be-innocent timber wolves and already being a scaredypants AND now being in the middle of nowhere at night time in a place that is well known to be rather dangerous, what does that equal? Totally optimal conditions for completely clear thought. Yeah. *cough*.

Every noise is something plotting to kill me. Every shadow a beast. Every tree. The stars are watching. They are listening. Ceiling gigantic spheres of nuclear fusion are watching you HIE. Along with that chicken. Why's there a chicken in a bush? I should probably take it home or something. I walked towards it and tried to figure out just where to take it to. Stealth check: 17. Perception check: 4. Another Stealth check: 3. I snuck up on the chicken, failing to notice that first of all that's just a chicken's head. There's something else underneath. Second, there's a twig where my right boot is about to go. OH SNAP. Literally. The head turned around at the snap and stared at me.

Unfortunately it was not merely imagination that the eyes were red. A weird tingling sensation crawled over my armor. Far too late, I realized that it was a cockatrice. Upon realizing my mistake, I facepalmed. Then facepalmed again with the other hand. 2x combo! Then it was noted by the cockatrice and myself that no stoning had occurred. Aww HECK YEAH. Knowing that I needed more points, and being rather ticked off at an attempt to turn me into merely so much granite, I steeled myself and put the creature's head in the sights of the M6c. BANG BANG click. Click click click. Click click click click WHACK WHACK click. Momentarily distracted by the alarming fact that the pistol refused to discharge anymore, I did not see that the cockatrice had actually died on the first shot. +83m.

How do you reload one of these things? After looking at the gun for a while, I gave up and tried RELOAD CURRENT WEAPON. Having your limbs move without voluntary direction is a funny sensation but it got the job done. Now what to do with the body? The sentimental mentality said that the noble and now mostly headless cockatrice must be buried. A quick visit to TARDIS will come in handy. I think they need a wider variety of shovels. 8t is clearly not enough. Specifying search terms of color, size, shape and abilities narrows things down a little.

Finally, the desired shovel. A nice green handle, black blade, almost indestructible with Minecraft-level digging abilities. Just one slight problem : it cost 2560m. And I only had 131m. Or 132m. It just changed. Weird. A quick check to the graph button revealed a whole bunch of data and graphs and text and other weird stuff. Scanning over the dizzying array of information, my imaginary eyes saw "Background gain: +19/min". So apparently just by existing I get 19 points per minute. What the hay do you even buy for 19 points? Must have just tipped over the edge of 131999999 into 132000000.

There was no buy button. Probably because 2560m was slightly more than 132m. Instead there was an "Alt. Pay" button. That's a very nice feature. Alternate payment methods include everything from "Attempt interpretive dance" to "Zealot's sacrifice". After reading the descriptions for a few, I chose "Generic Quest". Disclaimers, notices, transdimensional legal signatures, and a good 15 minutes ended with me going on the quest, installing Internet Explorer 4 and Generic Quest Manager into my suit, being required to name my 87th son Nigel Nixon and doing the hokey pokey for three hours. Then the actual quest started.

After installing and attempting to and failing to uninstall IE4, keeping Generic Quest Manager, pointing out I did not have an 87th son (at least I didn't think I did) and also invalidating the hokey pokey for lack of singing ability, my next objective was to bring the cockatrice to the Altar of Urtan. Below that it said "Downloading coordinates... 0%". In a few moments a location marker appeared on-screen. Picking up the slightly disgusting corpse, I marched off to the little blue triangle.

Having seen a "downloading coordinates" and a few other various oddities, there was one command that had to be tried. One command that could change the way technology was viewed by me forever. IPCONFIG. The results were incredible. Among other things it explained how the TARDIS worked, and possibly how 4th wall breaking worked. And a bunch of other weird stuff. And it was just really cool.

IPCONFIG

Device: TARDIS coms gateway model 1337-N

Full Address: gpc91.ceq77.w53.0.0.1.1.68.4

Service Provider: Golden Potatoes TDC

Realm: CEQ77

Realm Owner: Faust

Current Timestamp: ceq77(-295308495872576612)

Irregardless of having an actual explanation for the internet I still felt like I was in one of those crappy fanfics. It would even be a self-insert! Eww. Those rarely turn out good. A few do though. Clearly the only way to resolve this situation is to not use it for anything other than the actual TARDIS service. The only excuse for being cliche is the Rule of Awesome or puns. Being a hipster is okay in private. Wouldn't want to cause a pundemonium. Ha. That one almost gave me a puncture wound.

Valiantly resisting tempation to further punetrate the silence over the course of the night, eventually the moon climbed to the top of the sky. It was a little brighter now through all the branches. Not that that mattered much. The wonders of having not monoscopic or stereoscopic but infinite-scopic vision with a receptor roughly the size of your face. Ahead there was something shiny. It was a stone structure in a clearing. I had finally reached the Altar of Urtan. Whoever that is.