The Player amongst Ponies

Well howdy doody, kiddies! Sorry this took a while, ICT CA to complete and whatnot. The plus side is, I now have a short break, so expect a few more short chapters. GaryGibbon

My Little Pony belongs to Hasbro. Minecraft belongs to Mojang studios. Et cetera, et cetera.

Spike rested his scaled legs on the ash coffee table, soothing his aching feet after a long day’s slog of being Twilight’s personal assistant. A few new books arrived today and Twilight, being the obsessive compulsive bookworm she was, simply had to reorganize her entire library. For the most part, Spike didn’t mind. Her adoptive sister was simply being her, simply using one of the characteristics that made Twilight-well, Twilight. He took a drawn out sip of hot chocolate (60% cocoa solids, milk, no sugar) and bit off a chuck of brown garnet (pyrope-almandine-spessarite structure) with his impossibly-sharp teeth, savouring the salty gemstone which, after considerate mastication, he decided had a hint of sapphire. Of course, his favourite garnet, and to be honest, his favourite gemstone was blue garnet, but one of these rare gems was as expensive as Twilight’s entire book collection combined. He’d only gotten the experience of eating a blue garnet once, for his tenth birthday, but it was oh so worth it. Heck, even now he could remember the taste as if he had eaten it yesterday. He bit off another clean fragment and crunched again.

Spike sat in the library basement in the “relaxation zone,” as he liked to call it. There wasn’t much room for small home comforts in the library or his and Twilight’s bedroom, so he had decided to scratch out a little corner of the basement laboratory for their own purposes. There was the ash coffee table Spike was fond of, a chaise lounge made from foam covered in magically treated calico strips, a gramophone player with the latest hits in the music business and some classics (these were more Twilight’s thing, although he enjoyed a few pieces), and some books that Spike had stolen away from their homes on the endless bookshelves twilight dedicated her free time to. The one he was reading was a musty dog-eared and yet fascinating book labelled The History Of The Multiverse by a pony who used a penname of Doctor Whooves. He was enthralled by the fantastical descriptions of seas of molten silicon where multi-eyed diamond based life forms had built domes of cooled quartz; of great towering apartment blocks made out of green and gold materials, surrounded by thin networks of glass tubes that peach-skinned bipedal creatures, not unlike him, raced around in, crisp black business suits being crumpled and compressed onto their bodies as strong winds sucked them around; of vast floating islands of beige sand with ochre sunsets and obsidian pillars. He knew for a fact that this had to be made up; there was no way that this could possibly exist in real life! And yet, this wasn’t fiction. At all.

BEEP

He was suddenly brought out from his trance by a loud beep that emanated from one of the many, many gizmos and gadgets that Twilight had invented in her time in Ponyville library. Amongst a mechanical toaster (which somehow got the idea it was a homicidal maniac, and eventually had to be dropped in a bathtub) and a device to measure Pinkie’s “Pinkie Pie Sense”(which failed spectacularly), was a device to measure journeys between nearby “Paternal” dimensions. Every so often, about once per week, it would detect a portal being opened and it would just make a quiet “beep” noise, hardly noticeable. This one, however, was deafening. According to the book, this could only mean that either a lot of activity was going on, or something had crossed into a Forbidden Zone. And that was very, very bad.

BEEP

The resonant singular note rang out again through the basement. Spike had approached the machine, and regarded it with apprehension and worry. He briefly wondered whether he should’ve called Twilight down.

BEEP

BEEPBEEP

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

Spike sucked in as much air into his lungs as he possibly could.

“TWWWIIIIIIIILIIIIIIGHHHHTTTT!!!!”

The Player groaned. He felt a dull throbbing in his head, and he could feel a lump forming on the back of his head where it had hit a smooth, rock hard surface. He flipped over, and saw that that surface was obsidian. Now, normally under most circumstances he would’ve praised his luck, pulled out a flimsy-looking pickaxe and cut out neat squares of the impossibly strong volcanic glass. But not today. Something made him look up, instead of immediately sate his greed. What he saw shocked him.

The sky was, well, an anti-sky, if such a thing could ever exist. There was no light, no sun, not even a moon or stars or clouds. Just-just blackness, a void, stretching out for eternity. It sucked at one’s eyes, hurt to look at it. He looked away, but his eyes were irresistibly drawn back to this hole where the sky should be, where the sky should provide a barrier between the cold vacuum of space and the Overworld.

But he wasn’t in the Overworld anymore, was he. No, he had inexplicably decided to travel to The End. Why he had chosen to cross the sealed doors between dimensions was an absolute mystery to him-but no matter, he was here now. He turned to walk off the pillar, to see wh-

Wait. Pillar?

His Sneakke Charm automatically kicked in, and a small barrier of pure energy formed around the pillar, protecting The Player from plummeting to an unworthy end, in a foreign land. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t look down. What he saw terrified him, and he squeezed his eyes shut, tight, locking out the world from his view.

He saw Endermen. Everywhere. He saw them walking down ruined roads, saw them sitting around campfires, saw them conversing with each other in the gravelly thought-speak that so defined their species. He saw a nation of Endermen. And he had just stared at all of them.

Endermen are very self-conscious and shrewd creatures. As The Player learned the hard way, if an Enderman is stared at, then, under their old laws of the fabled Council, they are entitled to deal with the trespassers of privacy as they see fit, which often results in the offending starer to be brutally killed by the offended Enderman. And he had just stared at at least 50 Endermen. He shut his eyes tight and hoped that the ensuing tide of angry eight-foot tall sinew would be quick. What he got wasn’t what he expected.

++The Player Has Arrived!++

++At Last!++

++The Scrolls Foretold The Truth!++

++He Has Arrived. Arrar Is Doomed!++

++Our Deliverance Is At Hand!++

A wave of voices lifted in praise engulfed The Player. They were exultant with joy. They got up and danced. They cheered, they sung. And in the middle of all this excitement, The Player began chiselling his way down the obsidian tower he had been stranded on. As soon as he reached the bottom, he was beset by exclamations of joy and relief and happiness, echoing throughout his mind, as if they completely forgot what he had done to their brethren.  But all the time in the physical world, the Endermen didn’t make so much as a whisper. They were celebrating, and yet they did not make even one single utterance of noise. And as suddenly as they had started celebrating, they stopped. They stood still and began not-staring at The Player, almost looking at him, but not quite, not exactly. He was beginning to be unnerved, and as he slowly started to draw out his steel sword, a voice, weighed down with age and experience, resonated through his aching cranium.

++There Is No Need For An Act of Violence Yet, Butcher. The Time For Bloodshed Will Come, And Has Passed.++

An Enderman, cloaked in a tattered blue robe, slowly walked towards him. Its face was wrinkled with age, both physical and emotional. The Player managed a split-second glimpse at its eyes, and he saw sadness and grief behind the outwardly jubilant balls of meat and jelly and nerves. He swallowed what little saliva he had in an attempt to soothe his cracked aching throat, and for the first time in months, asked a question, voice cracked and broken with disuse.

“W-what do you mean by bloo-“ His voice petered out as he began coughing and spluttering violently, choking on spittle swallowed the wrong way. Heh, he really had forgotten to talk. The Player recovered and tried again.

“ What do you mean by bloodshed, and of it having passed?”

++I Mean What I Mean, Player. You Have Murdered Many Of Our Kin In Overrealm. But Now Is Not The Time To Bring One Such As Yourself To Justice. That Must Wait.++

“Those deaths were unfortunate, but they were acts of self-defence! Those Endermen attacked me!”

++Incorrect. You Provoked Them. You Looked At Their Eyes. And When You Finally Learnt This, You Merely Shut Your eyes Tight As You Slaughtered Them.++

The Player was stunned. He had always assumed that he was in the right, that he was allwed to do what he had done. He had no idea that he would brought to justice for his actions. The elder sensed this change in emotion, and changed the subject.

++As I Have Decreed, Sentencing You Must be Postponed In Favour Of Obeying The Scrolls.++

“What must I do to obey the Scrolls?”

++ Surely You Heard The Others? Of How They Spoke Of Arrar? If We Are To Obey The Will Of The Scrolls, You Must Kill Arrar. Otherwise It Is The End Of Us And You.++

“And who is this Arrar who talk of?” The elder paused for a moment, hesitated, before continuing.

++He Is The Doom Of End, The Almighty Tyrant, The Ender Dragon. He Is A God.++

“I’ve killed gods before.” The Player responded menacingly.

++Have You? You Have Killed A Manifestation Of The Stars, You Have Killed The Stones Of Madness, But Have You Killed A God, Murderer?++

The Player was at a loss for words. No, no he hadn’t.

++I Did Not Imagine So.++

Suddenly, an unimaginably loud shriek tore through the air. The elder Enderman looked up fearfully, before speaking again, his voice hurried and scared.

++There Is No Time. He Is Upon Us. Now Is The Chance To End His Cruel Reign, Player. This Must Happen. Arrar Must Be Defeated Here, In This Realm. Otherwise, We Will All Die, Rent Asunder By His Cruel Talons And Snapping Jaws.++

The shriek rang out again, closer this time. The pillars began to shift and change, sprouting archaic runic circles where giant lattices crystals floated on an ethereal current of magic.

“What must I do then? What must I do to kill this mighty Enderdragon, hmm?”

++Destroy The Crystals On Top Of What Remains Of Our Homes. They Provide Him With Succour And Life. And When They Have Been Destroyed, Arrar Will Be Mortal At Last.++

“And then?”

++Kill Him. Deliver The Final Blow.++

“And what will your kind do? Hide in the dust whilst I risk my life?”

++We Cannot Help With The Destruction Of The Crystals. Arrar Cursed Them So That Only Those Born From An Outside Realm Could Touch Them Without Crumbling Into Dust. Once They Are Destroyed However, We Will Fight Alongside You. However, You Must Deliver The Final Blow. The Scrolls Decree It. Also, Your Crossing Of The Realms Will Have Alerted Other Realms, Old Allies To Us. They May Send Reinforcements. We Can Only Pray.++

A third and final shriek resonated, eardrum-burstingly loud. In the horizon, something could be seen, flapping large wings towards them. The elder broke and started running, jumping into a hole and covering itself with dust. As an afterthought, he thought-spoke again.

++At This Point I Can Only Wish You Great Luck. You Need Every Last Iota Of It.++

And just like that, The Player was left with a homicidal, irate, and very powerful being on his hands gunning for his blood. The Player knew that now was the time to stop messing around, now was the time to prove his ghastly reputation wrong. He pulled out a birch-bow, shimmering with enchantments. From his back he drew a quiver, the razor-sharp tip enchanted to penetrate just about anything. At his hip was a diamond wrought sword, also swimming in magical runes. The Player was an instrument of destruction. He was ready for this.

And then as a gargantuan, jet-black, thick-skinned behemoth, with bulging slabs of sinew and muscle for arms and legs, landed on the top of a pillar, crushing the crystal beneath it, screaming an impossibly loud, malice-filled roar of pure contempt, The Player knew, in one single moment, that he wasn’t ready at all. Oh so not ready.