You know those history lessons they told us, Smith?
Long Ago, The world was ravaged by a race of bloodthirsty warriors, Centaurs and Gargoyles, Lead by Lord Tirek, Prince of Centaurs.
Some say that Tirek's sheer brute strength could move entire mountains, Others say that he could take away an individuals magic, Some say he ate their magic instead.
But what all historians could agree on was the way he was defeated.
Betrayed by his brother, Lord Scorpan, Prince of Gargoyles.
Scorpan, who was disgusted with his brothers brutish and bloodthirsty ways hatched a plot.
With the assistance of an esteemed Unicorn named Starswirl, Scorpan lured his brother into an Ambush, were all of his magical power was then taken away and his armies were decimated.
Scorpan and Starswirl built a prison, one so secure and secret only select few know of its location, all just to imprison the now weakened and defeated Tirek.
The Prison was called Tartarus, where Starswirl, now a leading figure of the Three Pony Alliance, would put only the worst of the worst. Criminals so evil they will never again be allowed to see the light of day.
And after Tirek's Imprisonment is where the stories usually end.
The grand evil has been defeated, never to terrorize Equestria again.
But what about Tirek's armies? What about Prince Scorpan? Where did they go to?
History books simply tell us that Scorpan took the armies to a far-away location, where they would be safe from Tirek should he ever escape, But after nearly fifteen-hundred years you would expect to hear something about them.
Did they simply vanish from the world? Did they perhaps all go extinct like so many other ancient races seem to have? Or are they still out there somewhere? Hiding and Waiting for Tirek to escape his prison and take his vengeance.
These question haunt me, And I must find an answer to them.
By the time you're reading this note, I most likely would already be on the first train out of town.
I am deeply sorry Smith, But I can not stay here with you with these questions plaguing my mind. Tell Bright that his Papa loves him very much, and that when he next sees him, His Dad will have answers to one of histories greatest mysteries.
I Truly Love you Apple Smith,
Yours Truly~ Gold Delicious.
Deep inside a jungle, In the ruins of an ancient building, a black and blue body stirred as the rays of the sun entered from between the cracks in the ceiling.
The body was covered head to waste in Cobalt Blue skin, contrasting with the black horse that seemed to make up its lower body.
On the creatures head, were two, small, corkscrew shaped antelope horns.
Below the horns, was a head of short, white hair, going down until it reached it's shoulders, which were connected to two muscular blue arms, each ending with a hand of three fingers and a thumb.
Soon the sun's rays entered through the small cracks in the ceiling of the ancient building, hitting the creature in its face, forcing the creature to wake up.
"Ugh, My head..." I Groaned as I shuffled myself awake, feeling my back lying on a cold stone surface.
"How much did I drink last night?" I tried to groggily stand up, my body swaying from the vertigo of standing up when you're obviously drunk.
I squinted my eyes open to see that I was in some kind of cold grey building, with its walls barely holding.
"I made it to a construction site? Ugh, The Dean is going to kill me." I unsteadily walked towards a doorway leading outside.
The place was surrounded by trees, I closed my eyes and rubbed them with my hand before opening them again.
"Yep, Definitely off campus, I'm fucked..." I tried to walk towards the tree line as steadily as I could, intent on getting back to the dorms before somebody noticed I was missing.
As I got closer to the trees, I tripped.
Trying to catch myself before I hit the ground, I grabbed one of the tree branches with my strong blue arms...
Wait... Blue Ar- HOLY SHIT THE TREE IS DYING!!!
I didn't get any time to think as I quickly sobered up in shock at the fact that the tree I was just grabbing onto seemed to have withered into a dry husk.
I quickly let go of the tree, ignoring the fact my skin is blue for the moment, and notice a small line of silver smoke exiting the tree and flowing into my hand.
After the silver smoke stops flowing, I take a look at myself, Lower body of a horse, okay, blue skin, manageable, four fingers, understandable.
"I seem to be dreaming," I say out loud, before taking another look at my fingers, and then at another nearby tree, before I slowly walk, Or is it trot? Seeing as I'm some sort of Centaur now, Toward the tree.
I placed my hand on a low-hanging branch and I looked at the process.
Where My hand was placed, the tree started to crack, slowly losing color, turning from brown to grey, the effect spreading across the tree until most of the trunk was grey and cracked, the leaves had already begun shriveling up, and when I let go of the tree...
Another line of silver smoke started leaving the tree and heading towards my hands, doing a little circle around my palm, like a miniature cloud twisting into a silver tornado, before seemingly piercing into my hand, the smoke disappearing into my skin like water being absorbed into the dry sand.
"Is this some kind of life-steal power? Am I a Lich? What kind of dream is this? Jack the Centaur Lich? That sounds dumb..."
I took another look around myself before I started giggling like a kid in a candy store with a twenty-dollar bill and no parental supervision.
Soon all the trees around the ancient Mayan-looking temple I found myself waking up in have turned into cracked grey husks, their floral life force being sucked into my body.
And after absorbing all the trees in direct line of sight of the temple, I finally noticed a difference.
"Have I gotten buffer?" I asked loudly as I looked my new body over again, my muscles had clearly gotten bigger than they were before I absorbed the trees.
Now, I already had muscles, don't get me wrong, These guns are one-hundred percent pure, natural, beef.
But my already impressive muscles seemed to have gotten more defined. Where previously I looked like I worked out, now I look like I Worked Out. If you catch my drift...
"Wait a minute," I stopped and thought to myself, "Does using Tree Eating Life Steal Touch count as using steroids?" I looked at my four blue fingers before I clenched my hand, balling it into a fist.
"If it does, It doesn't matter since I'm dreaming. Soon something magical will happen to showcase how fantastical dreaming can be," I said as I looked at the trees I hadn't yet husked out.
Dried up? Sucked?
What do you call taking away a plant's life force?
I think I'll stick to Husked for now. That word reminds me of corn...
As I trotted closer to the trees, I started to feel a rumbling in the ground, slowly getting stronger.
"An Earthquake?" I whispered in question as I tried to keep my body stable.
The rumbling slowly got stronger, And I remembered one rule of how to survive an Earthquake! It's to stop, drop and roll!
Or was that something else? I never really had to use the knowledge of how to survive an earthquake so it escaped my mind.
The hollowed trees around me started to flake apart, their dry bark flaking to ash as the tremors grew louder and stronger.
The quaking got so strong I could barely stand, I grabbed another tree to hold myself before needing to soon let go as the tree husked away beneath my fingers.
"What kind of dream is this?" I shouted to myself out loud, trying to hear my own voice over the loud rumbling.
And then it stopped.
The quaking, the rumbling, the tremors, the noise.
All gone.
I tried to stand up from the ground once more, pushing myself up.
I didn't even notice I fell.
Before I finally stood at my full height once more.
I looked around to see that most of the hollowed trees had turned to ash, and the small building I woke up in had collapsed into rubble.
"What the hell was with that earthquake? Totally not cool, Brain! Let's change the dream!" I told myself before I tried to think of a comfy mattress, hoping to will it into existence.
[ESCAPEE SPOTTED] My train of imagination was interrupted as a loud robotic voice suddenly bellowed out from the jungle around me.
"Who's there?!" I tried and call out, thinking this dream had some plot I must follow in order to move on to the next dream.
As I looked around for the source of the voice, heavy footsteps started to sound out near me, my body turning around hoping to find out where the noises were coming from.
"Who are you-" I tried and ask before I paused, my body freezing in place as the source of the noise appeared before me.
Towering over the tree line in front of me, at the height of a four-story building, was what seemed to look like a giant stone-robot Elephant.
The stones making up its body were covered with glowing blue lines, similar to circuitry, all converging at a large brown gem in the middle of its forehead. Its limbs were as thick as trucks and its head was as large as a house. The tusks extending from its statuesque head looked as sharp as spears and were as long as a car, with a long stone trunk, easily the size of a bus, hovering menacingly above my head, the glowing lines of blue circuitry humming a sound similar to a hovercraft in a sci-fi show.
I couldn't see the back of the stone behemoth, but I imagined it kept the elephant look.
All in all, the giant didn't look too dissimilar to something I would imagine being seen in a show like Stargate, or a conspiracy video about ancient aliens building old temples in the jungles of Cambodia.
"What are you-" I had to end my sentence short as I quickly rolled out of the way, the giant stone trunk slamming into the ground in front of me with a cloud of dirt and dust.
[ENGAGING ESCAPEE] The robotic voice came out of the elephant's unmoving stone mouth, the circuitry glowing brighter as it spoke.
I quickly scrambled back onto my hooves just in time to move out of the way of another trunk slam.
I turned away from the giant robot monster and started running, Galloping?
I ran away from the giant stone elephant.
Deeper into the jungle.
Author's Note
Okay, Hi there, Its Ya Boy, Netap, or Netapel if you wish to call me that.
So, This is a mostly original plot, following up on some unanswered questions from the show.
Most notably as you will learn, "What Happened to the Centaur and Gargoyle?"
And "What Happened to Scorpan?"
But yeah, this story will take place on a deserted Island, Ark:Survival Evolved Style, But in the world of My Little Pony.
Please comment what you think so far,
Hope you all stay for the ride.
Thanks for reading :)
16/01/2025 Edit: I want to try making a few new chapters, giving this story another go. So I re-edited some of Jack's parts and fixed some types here and there. I'll try and work on chapter 2 now.
I know it's been 2 years, but it's never too late to try and finish what you started!
Also, this Ganesha skin from Smite was the inspiration for the Elephant, if any of you needed an example to fill in.
My mind screamed at me as I ran deeper into the foliage of the jungle, the ground shaking beneath me as the giant stone elephant followed in pursuit.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" I screamed as I ran, trying to keep a steady pace, only to continue to stumble as my now four legs shook, tremors rushing through the ground as the earth quaked beneath me.
Feeling my back grow cold and watching a shadow loom over me, I quickly ran to the side, avoiding the large stone trunk that slammed down where I had been running previously.
The elephant seemed to keep pace easily with my running. Both because I was clearly not used to this weird blue body yet, and also because of its long stone legs.
"Come on! Wake up wake up wake up!" I screamed in my mind, my body scrambling to escape the stone monstrosity, mud and leaves from the ground sticking to my chest as I tried to continue to run deeper into the jungle, whatever foliage made contact with my hands quickly husking away into grey ashes.
No matter how much I tried to make this dream disappear, nothing seemed to change.
Cuts started to form on my forearms as small branches clipped me, my face kept getting slapped by leaves and vines, and my legs started to ache as mud and leaves stuck to them.
I didn't have time to think of what was happening to my body at the moment, I was too busy trying not to get crushed by the giant stone elephant.
"I can't keep running like this!" I thought to myself, my mind racing as I tried to think of a way to escape this situation, "Come on, think Jack think!"
I kept running, my mind running faster than my body as I took in the surroundings, the dense jungle foliage, the vines and trees in front of me, the muddy ground beneath me, the shadow of the elephant approaching behind me, the world shaking all around me as the tremors grew stronger.
"I can't keep running like this!" I repeated, "I need to slow it down, somehow!"
And it was as my hand pushed a vine out of my way, that a plan hatched in my mind.
Moving as fast as I could, my hands started grabbing onto every tree I passed by, husking it away. My smile grew as the quaking ground hastened the process of the log turning to ash, flaking away and allowing the tree to fall behind me, crashing against the stone behemoth.
It wasn't much, but it was worth trying.
More and more trees fell behind me, the tremors from the elephant and the leeching power of my touch turning the lush forest around me into a playground full of obstacles to throw around.
Sadly, no matter how many trees I fell onto the elephant, it wouldn't stop. It barely slowed down, its long tusks flicking the trees away, its trunk slamming on the ground where I stood without slowing its momentum in the slightest.
At this rate, I'd die of exhaustion instead, but I couldn't stop running, I couldn't let myself be crushed by that stone monster.
"This is nothing like cross country!" I yelled, a chuckle escaping my lips as my lungs ached for more air, my new body swaying as the ground shook harder than before, the closer the elephant got the more tremors reverberated around.
It was as the earth shook, that a hole opened on the jungle ground beneath me, crumbling away into an underground cavern, a river coursing directly beneath me as I fell into the sudden sinkhole.
[UNSTABLE TERRAIN DETECTED] The elephant shouted in its robotic voice as it followed me into the growing hole in the ground, the underground river slamming into its body and pushing it towards me as I flailed in the water, trying to keep myself above water, unable to swim properly with this new body.
[TARGETED ESCAPEE LOCATED] The elephant sounded out, its trunk moving once more to try and slam me, the blue circuitry that surrounded its body glowed once more, the large brown gem on its forehead releasing an ominous glow as the trunk attempted to slam into me once more, slowly moving through the surprisingly deep underground river.
Seeing as my current options were to either be dragged deeper into the underground river and risk drowning, or attempt to use the stuck statue as an escape back into the jungle, I decided to keep hold to the wall I was hanging off from, waiting for the trunk to get close enough for me to grab.
As the trunk reached me, I grabbed onto it, my body screaming in effort as I tried to pull myself out of the river and onto the moving statue, trying to use it as a lifeline to save myself from this river.
[CONTACT WITH ESCAPEE ESTABLISHED] The elephant's voice boomed in the underground tunnel [INITIATING TREMOR ENGINE]
As those words escaped the robotic elephant, the blue circuitry and the brown gem shone again.
I blacked out, there was no other way to explain it. One moment I was hanging on to the elephant for dear life, the next I was coughing out water, having nearly drowned as my unconscious body went on an underground joyride down the world's least fun water slide.
In my mind, the robotic voice of the elephant kept echoing.
[ERROR - MAGICAL ENERGY SUPPLY DEPLETION APPROACHING RAPIDLY] it screamed robotically [ERROR - ISLAND PROTECTION PROTOCOL - DESIGNATION TREMOR MACHINA - INITIATING BACKUP ENGINE] my mind ached, my skull pounded as the voice kept going, robotically booming as if it was still chasing after me, crushing me beneath its trunk [ERROR - MAGICAL ENERGY BACKUP SUPPLY DEPLETION APPROACHING RAPIDLY]
[ERROR - ISLAND PROTECTION PROTOCOL - DESIGNATION TREMOR MACHINE - SHUTTING DOWN]
I threw up, my mind growing numb as the world around me seemed to keep shaking, as if the elephant was still right behind me, its large stone trunk ready to slam down upon me at any moment.
Everything shook, my legs, my arms, my mind, I just wanted to wake up from this dream, from this nightmare, I wanted it to stop shaking so much.
So much shaking.
Quaking.
Tremors.
"STOP IT ALREADY!!!"
As those words escaped my throat, my body collapsed onto the soft sand beneath me, the underground river having dumped me at the edge of a tropical beach, with palm trees and white sands.
My breath ached heavily in my lungs as I simply lay there, staring at the waves hitting the beach, watching a small crab walk sideways into the water a distance away.
I was out of breath, I was tired, I was blue, I had four hoofed legs, I had a pair of corkscrew-shaped horns emerging from my head, I was bruised, I was cut, and most importantly of all.
The world stopped shaking, and I was still alive.
As I felt my eyes close, sleep ready to pull me away from this world of hurt, a simple sentence passed through my tired mind, accompanied by images of the glowing brown gem from the elephant's head.
"I have a feeling I'm not in Kansas anymore..."
Author's Note
Two years later is still better than never!
Poor Jack...
The next chapter will hopefully be much sooner - I'm trying to catch up on some of my lesser worked-on stories because I'm kind of getting burned out from Trash of the Royal Castle and I need something to work on in the meantime.
