The Tale of The Stone-turner

I leaned back against the wall of the cave, smirking. They could easily be heard coming, the sounds of hooves on stone echoing down the tunnel. There was nothing I could do to escape so why bother panicking. The first came into view, a purple one, it had a golden crown atop its mane, just above its horn. Five others quickly filed in along side it, each wearing a necklace, they were a plethora of various colors, purple, pink, white, yellow, orange, one was even blue with a touch of rainbow thrown about it. So these were the things to put me down. Pegasus, unicorn, and earth pony; a pair of each. It's just as well, I was doing a lot of damage. Inadvertently of course, but damage nonetheless. At least I could take some solace in the fact they had to send this mysterious weapon 'The Elements of Harmony' and its wielders after me, that's a good ego stroke.

Sighing I stood straight and put my hands behind my back, no point in making too big a fuss. Maybe it'll turn me to stone, like with that 'Discord' thing, that would be nice and ironic. My executioners stood in a row between myself and the only way out of this cave, giving me looks that would strike fear into my heart if they weren't so adorable.

“This is the end of the road Stone-turner!” ooh, I like that name.

“Ya'll got nowhere left to run” I hope that's the name they call me by in the books.

“We're gonna stop this right here.” Maybe I should ask them to speed it up, it's getting kinda cold in here.

“You won't ge-

“Excuse me.” I interrupted the white unicorn in the midst of her contribution to this riveting conversation. “Could you maybe just use those element things on me already, it's getting a bit cold in here and I would hate for you to all get sick on my account.” They all seemed just a little off balance from that but didn't argue.

“With pleasure” They all seemed to get a very unnatural glow around them as the purple one finished speaking. Their glows each grew outwards to join with one another and began intensifying to the point where I thought I would go blind just before a great rainbow launched itself out from these ponies and towards my person.

“Heh, it's kinda pretty.” Damn, and I was doing so well with possible last words too. As the rainbow struck me full on I could feel the memories of the last couple months moving in my mind, almost like they were being judged.

~Bam Flashback Time!~

I had clearly been wrong about those wild mushrooms, that was my only rationalization for what I was looking at. Laying there in the dead fall trap I had somehow figured out to make properly, was a chicken. Well, it was a chicken when looked at from the head, all the rest of it was very much non-chicken and possibly evidence that dinosaurs turned into birds and had started going in the opposite direction. I wasn't even about to question why it was in a forest when I myself should not have been there. My stomach complained, it clearly didn't care what I gave it at the point so long as it was closer to being full and after two days of no real luck with food I had to agree.

So I carried this monstrous poultry to the nearby stream I had been drinking from and started washing off the blood from the bits of meat I cut off and then ate them. Surprisingly it tasted nothing like chicken and would have been marvelous cooked, if only I could figure out how to get a fucking fire started. I still couldn't believe I dropped my GPS over that damned cliff, I'm usually so careful about it. Sure this was my first rating 5/5 Geocache, but I'd be damned if it was my last Geocache ever.

Picking myself up from the ground I wrapped what remained of the odd bird in the small white trash bag I had brought, keep our forests clean, and stuffed it into my pack along with the few things I got out for my camp before continuing to follow the stream in hope of finding civilization. As I walked I glanced at the stream, this part of it was calm enough for reflections to show surprisingly clearly, my brown hair had quite a bit of dirt and leaves stuck in it from sleeping on the ground, my matching colored eyes had bags large enough for a two week stay in any major city, and I was beginning to get a beard to match my hair and eyes. Combine all that with the mud dried to my left cheek from where I slept and I had a look to match my situation, fucked.

After several hours of following the stream the trees became more and more spread out until I breached the edge of the forest. Looking around I found something that almost made me jump for joy, off to the right just barely in view was a trodden dirt path. That meant someone had to come through here at some point, that meant there might be people nearby, that meant I might be able to get a ride to my car or possibly home and a tow. A stupid grin beginning to find its way onto my now optimistic face I marched to the road and started following it away from the forest.

My grin had long since died, I trudged for hours upon hours along the road only stopping to drink the last of my water bottles and eat more of clucky the monster bird. The sun had just set when I made out lights in the distance. Could it be true? Was civilization really in sight at last? I picked up my pace just a bit.

By the time I reached the edge of the town the moon had been up for at least an hour. Moving near the first buildings I just felt like something was off, maybe it was the strange brightness of the moon or how colorful each of the houses were, but something just didn't sit well with me. Looking around as I passed in between buildings I noticed that this town seemed untouched by the modern world, or at least only lightly bumped by it's passing. The streetlights were candles on poles, the roofs seemed to be made of straw or hay in some cases and brick shingles in others, but oddest of all there was no sign of any electronics. No telephone lines or poles, no cars, no solid electric glows from the windows of a single home. It just seemed.... off-putting. After looking for anyone out at night and finding none I settled myself down between a couple of buildings and rested my head and arms on my knees, come morning I would try to see if anyone could help me get back to my home or car. Slowly and uncomfortably I drifted off to sleep.

Commotion was the first thing I heard as I opened my eyes to the lovely sight of my dirty shorts covered crotch. Raising my head from my arms with a yawn, I about choked on the air I was inhaling at the sight before me. The town was alive but not with people, to and fro everywhere were these brightly colored miniature horses. Now I say they were miniature horses but in the sense that they had a shape of a horse, other than that there was no comparison between these and a horse. Where a horse would have shades and colors befitting a natural creature these looked like they were under the effects of particularly bright shades of Microsoft paint, and instead of the straight rectangularish heads normal horses had these had a definite rounded look above the snout, all of that is beside the point that these horses were talking and doing business with such an air of normality I automatically assumed I was the odd man out here. I think I'm done eating clucky until he has been tested for hallucinogenics.

Carefully and quietly I got up on my feet before two new revelations hit me. The first of these being that not all of these horses were just horses, some had been carelessly defying gravity with wings that have no right to support the weight of a horse regardless of how miniature it is while others had a single horn protruding from the forehead that seemed to emit a strange glow from time to time. The second being that these horses were absolutely adorable, I felt like I got a sex change and turned five years old just looking at them. Essentially I'm saying they made me feel like a happy little girl and I am not ashamed to admit it. After about five minutes of standing in the shadow between the buildings watching the horsey people, I decided to bravely step into the light and hope they could at least point me to a human city.

Well that didn't take long at all to go straight to a disaster. I had barely been in the light more than thirty seconds and some of the horses began screaming about a monster come for their children and others either stood too shocked to move or just curious enough to move a little closer. Of course I could just stand there grinning like an idiot, too scared of the panicking horses to actually try and stop any of the panicking. That is until one of said horses plowed into me before giving a shriek of terror and reversing directions. That hurt, but then falling backwards and smashing the back of my head into the stone ground hurt even more. I cursed quite audibly as I saw a deep red and felt a shudder flow from the center of my body out in all directions. Rolling onto my front I began to try and get back up when something I heard seemed out of place, well I should say it was what I stopped hearing. The screams and panicking had stopped. Slowly I began to force myself back up, the red fading from my vision, and what I saw boggled my mind. All of the horses had completely stopped moving and become gray as rock. I looked from one to the next and even at the birds atop some of the houses, every single one had entered the same state. Experimentally I moved up to a stomach height horse that was sporting a top hat and mustache and I poked at it. It wasn't just gray as rock, it WAS a rock. All of them, all the horses around had just become statues. I ran straight out of that town opposite the way I had come into it.

That was the first town I ruined. Thirteen, that was the number of towns that underwent the same fate, each series of events leading up to it different but ending the same. With all the inhabitants turned to stone. Well not truly all of them, that is what got the manhunt after me started, they didn't all turn. As it turns out those far enough away from me when I let off that.... pulse.. don't fully petrify, they experience something I am truly ashamed to cause. Some of them get off with a hoof or two or maybe a wing petrified, while others will have half their body or random patches all along them transformed. From their screams I can tell it is a fate nothing should have to endure.

As I ran I got better at remaining hidden for the most part. I got to where I could go five or six days in a town stealing food and books in an attempt to find a way home. Every time it ended the same way though. I learned it took one solid blow to my body to set off the pulse. The location of impact didn't matter in the slightest it just had to be enough force to cause intense pain without knocking me out. Once the Royal Services were sent after me I felt that plenty of times. I did learn about this new land I had stumbled into from the books I stole as I ran. Apparently it is called Equestria and the inhabitants are called ponies. I prefer mini-horses but whatever. The sun and moon are controlled by two Alicorns, which are ponies with wings and horns, and the only two of their kind at that. I learned that these ponies had some kind of weapon called 'The Elements of Harmony' that had been used at one point to banish one evil to the moon and encase another in stone much like what I had been doing, and that this weapon was wielded by six ponies each being a living embodiment of one of it's individual parts. I had also learned that as far as written knowledge went there was no way for me to find my home, nor any way to remove this pulse ability or even a knowledge as to where it came from.

I went insane. OK that's a little overboard I didn't just suddenly turn insane. First I got desperate, desperate to escape this world, desperate for anything I could talk to without it turning into a fight and then to stone, and desperate for the running to end. Then I got depressed, depressed that I was trapped in a world not my own, depressed that I had nothing to relay my depression to, and depressed that the running would never end. That was when the insanity began, or should I say a sort of giddiness. I would become excited whenever I saw a new town, 'Oh maybe this one will have somepony I can speak with that won't end in stone turning, or maybe a book to show me how to get home, or news that the manhunt has ceased.... nope nope and nope! Oh well off to the next one!'

That was how it went from town eight to fourteen. Town fourteen is when I overheard that The Elements had been brought to head me off. Town fourteen is when desperation took back over and I ran away from the roads and towns deep into the forests and then to this cave with a squadron of pegasi following me. Town fourteen is the last town I turned before it came to this outcome of me in this dead end cave taking a full on assault from a rainbow of doom. I hope it doesn't hurt too bad.

~Flashback End~

I slowly came back to the present, the memories of the past months fading away. The rainbow was still enveloping me but aside from being pretty, it did little else. I frowned deeply, this was suppose to be the ultimate force for stopping things such as myself, maybe I just wasn't feeling it right. I closed my eyes and tried to feel inside myself to see if anything fishy was going on. All that got me was the feeling of a pulse but in reverse order minus the pain and a warm spot telling me that either everything wasn't my fault or that I lost bladder control. Whatever. With a shrug I cheerily sauntered out of the rainbow doom beam and up to my would-be executioners. They all looked so adorable with their little faces full of absolute horror.

“So then, would any of you have happened to brought a plan B?”

That was when I learned that if a sudden impact caused by let's say a pair of hooves to the head via a pegasus knocks me straight the fuck out I don't pulse, who knew?