Freebie Mondays: My Little Domerin – Episode 5: Act 2

I promised my twitch chat I would take Domerin, the grumpy elf main character from the Aruvalia Chronicles, and turn him into a pony if they helped me pay for my replacement computer. I never thought we’d reach that goal – but of course we did. Because my twitch chat continues to be the most generous community out there.

For more details on the project, check the intro. (There are pictures of my characters converted into ponies there as well.)

This story is meant to take place in the same world as “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,” though it’s unlikely any of the characters from the show will appear in the story. I have attempted to adopt the style of storytelling used by the show (including an episodic format and a ‘season’ instead of chapters in a novel). And some of the ponies that appear were created by donators from my chat. VoDs of the writing sessions are available on my youtube channel!

I hope you enjoy this crazy, silly little romp!
. . .

Greg allowed his gaze to soften as he took in the atmosphere of the princess’s secluded tower. Though the weather outside had grown dreary, and chill raindrops clung to the outer stone walls and their wide, bright windows, in here it was warm and cozy. The thick, heavy grey of the clouds was somewhat muted by the gentle wave of the trees that shaded the tower within their canopy, and it was easy to imagine that everything happening outside, beyond this small circle of warmth, was unimportant – or at least, happening to someone else.

In the corner, about ten feet away from where he sat propped on a plush, overstuffed cushion, four ponies gathered around a board game that had been spread across the floor. The first was a young pony with white fur, bright blue hair and a gleaming rainbow heart for a cutie mark. She adjusted the pastel purple glasses that sat across her nose as she considered her latest move, then triumphantly nudged a piece across the board with her hoof.

Across from her, an older unicorn with blue fur and midnight hair likewise adjusted a set of glasses as she peered at the game’s rulebook. She had been flipping rapidly through the pages for most of the game, sometimes making soft, contemplative sounds and others pointing out when they had done something wrong.

Over her shoulder hovered a pegasus pony with purple fur and wings. Her body was curled so that she could also see the pages of the instruction book. But whenever Greg looked directly at the ponies participating in the game, he got the impression she was actually looking at the unicorn instead.

The final member of the group, an earth pony with tawny red fur, paced lightly along one side of the board. She didn’t seem like the sort to sit still for long. But whenever it was her turn, she would move her pieces quickly and with confidence.

She did so now, which drew a small cough from the unicorn’s throat. “I’m not really sure you can do that, Karly,” she explained as she glanced over the rim of her glasses in her friend’s direction. “The rules for this game seem woefully unclear, but the diagram for movement suggests-“

“We’re fine,” Karly interrupted and lightly pushed the pages of the instruction book closed before she grinned down at her friend. “Does it really matter what the instructions say anyway if we’re having fun?”

The unicorn looked uncertain. Greg didn’t get the impression any of these ponies was a particular stickler for rules when it came to board games, but the unicorn seemed concerned that she wasn’t providing an ideal experience.

“Karly’s right, Striker,” the pegasus soothed. “Maybe next time we won’t pick the most complicated game on the shelf. There are actually a few we’ve played before.”

“Bard’s right,” Karly agreed quickly. “I think I saw Parcheesi. I know you love Parcheesi.”

Striker grinned, shrugged and slid her piece across the board. This triggered a cascade of events evidently described by the rules but only half-understood by the players – so they spent the next several minutes making up what they thought should happen instead.

The chatter and the game play added to the overall warm ambiance of the tower’s main room, which drew a soft, relaxed sigh from the police constable’s lips.

“I don’t know where you found those three,” Domerin murmured as he lifted his head from the cushion it had been buried in, “but I appreciate it.”

Greg grinned. His friend was currently sprawled across one of the princess’s couches. Until a few moments ago, it looked as if he’d been sound asleep, though he had glanced up to greet Greg when he entered with the three younger ponies in tow.

This was a most unusual position to find Domerin Loorhoves, the captain of the Royal Guard, occupying. So Greg couldn’t help being amused by it.

He shrugged and replied, “I actually found them during the evacuation from Silvergarden. They’re the girls I mentioned before. They’ve been doing a lot of volunteer work in the area rather than retreating to one of the shelter points, and it seemed like they either didn’t have anywhere to go or were hesitant to leave.” Recruiting them had been a no-brainer. They had the perfect energy for soothing and distracting a young pony displaced from time, and Greg got the impression giving them something useful to do greatly eased their tensions.

“They’re a godsend, and so are you,” Domerin declared as he pushed up a little higher on the couch. His front legs were folded beneath his chin now, propping it up, though his back legs remained sprawled behind him in a most undignified and relaxed manner.

“I’m just doing my job,” Greg protested, “same as you. Though it looks like you’ve had a much rougher go of it during the last half day than I have.”

Domerin snorted then shook his head. “I feel hungover,” he admitted.

Greg didn’t want to tell him, but he looked hungover too. His usually tightly braided mane and tail had come unbound, leaving both a loose disarray, and his eyes were wide and bloodshot.

If Greg had to guess, he would say the real culprit behind Domerin’s appearance was lack of sleep, but he doubted the guard captain would admit it even if he pushed.

“Is this a side effect of the-” Greg started, but Domerin cut him off before he could attempt to refer to the time machine downstairs under some fanciful name.

“I don’t think so,” he said and pushed into a proper sitting position. “I think it has more to do with how much this whole situation constantly twists my brain. But it was tiring to live more time than actually passed in the day, if that makes sense.”

“It does,” Greg replied. Often in their line of work, grueling tasks could make a day feel elongated. Hours of trudging through poor conditions could feel like weeks of walking, especially when heavy labor was involved. But Domerin had actually added hours into the missing span, which must have made things far more difficult.

Though whenever Greg tried to press about what happened while Domerin and Crescent were gone, his friend became very cagey and avoided saying much. I don’t want to risk altering the future, was his primary excuse, but Greg thought there was more to it than that.

He was pretty sure Domerin wasn’t thrilled about whatever he had to do while he was hopping through time, and Greg had a feeling the real story would turn out to be hilarious. Someday, when the rest of this was well in the past, he’d have to prod Crescent and see if he could get the details out of him.

Until then all he could do was offer reassurance to his best friend that they would, in fact, get through this eventually.

“Do you have any idea when you’ll be leaving again?” he asked as laughter erupted from the game session on the far side of the room, neatly hiding his words.

Domerin shook his head. “I suspect Rose hasn’t been rushing because she wants us to get some rest. And Crescent has been sleeping like a log since he fell into bed. But as soon as she’s ready, we’ll go. We all want this to be over with as quickly as possible.”

This time, Domerin’s words were accompanied by a side-eyed glance toward their intrepid time stowaway, which caused Greg to nod. Restoring their capital to its former glory was a goal each of them was eager to achieve, especially considering how many ponies had been displaced from their home. But getting that little pony home to her mom was a top priority for everyone aware of her situation as well. And since it would mark the end of all this, it was something they were also all eager to see.

“I don’t envy you this task,” Greg said softly. Normally, it wasn’t the sort of thing he would say to someone about to embark on a dangerous and stressful mission. But it seemed his friend could use a little bit of commiseration to get him past his current rut. “The number of considerations alone must make your head spin.”

Domerin snorted again. “I just hope this time it’s quick and easy. Get in there, draw attention to the trouble brewing and get out before anyone has a chance to realize I’m meddling.”

“Look at the bright side… Whatever you do, it won’t take long on this side. So when you get back, you’ll have plenty of time to rest, relax and forget about everything you had to do to get there.”

He was trying to sound reassuring, though the words struck even his own ears as hollow. Obviously, it would be far easier for everyone on this side of the barrier than it would be for Domerin and Crescent on their mission.

So he wasn’t surprised when Domerin snorted again and muttered, “Something tells me it’s never going to be that easy. Situations like this never are.”

*   *   *

When Rose summoned them back down into what Crescent preferred to think of as the tower’s basement, it was filled with several clanging and clicking sounds. So many, in fact, that Crescent initially thought the entire machine had broken down. Tiny puffs of smoke rose from liquid vials stacked in careful rows along one side of the room, and the steady tick of a hammer striking metal made his ears twitch.

Still, Crescent put his head down and completed the march down the floating stairs without questioning the situation or anything he saw. He had accepted from the start that all of this was far more complicated than he was ever going to be able to understand. The best he could do was roll with the flow of the situation and offer the support Domerin needed to complete his tasks.

Based on their last jaunt through the portal, it should be easy. All they had to do was find whatever was at the crux of the current situation, solve the problem attached to it then run back home and see what had changed.

Easy in theory, anyway.

Whatever waited for them on the other side of this jump was unlikely to be a colorful club’s party planning gone awry.

Rose and Rupert were waiting for Domerin and Crescent when they reached the base of the stairs. Crescent found himself performing the same appraisal he had the first time he met the artificial pony – noting the bolts and welds that connected the various portions of his otherwise perfectly shaped body as well as the metallic sheen of the paint that coated his body segments and made him shimmer whenever he walked directly beneath a light source.

Overall, he regarded Rupert in the same way he might regard a child. It was clear he was still developing his sense of self while also learning about how society worked. He needed a gentle hand and the ability to make mistakes so that he could put together the truth of the universe for himself.

But he was also far more intelligent than any other pony Crescent was ever going to meet, given that his brain was, in fact, a complex computer capable of thousands of calculations per second, so the territory grew a bit murky. Crescent was used to taking his cues from others, however, so seeing which aspect Rupert engaged and responding in kind seemed to work best.

“Is it ready?” Domerin asked doubtfully as his eyes trailed along the smoke and spark trails exuded by different areas of the workroom.

“We have fine-tuned the portal so that it now operates within a fault variance of less than three percent,” Rupert declared in his usual monotone, though Crescent could have sworn it sounded cheerful.

Both his eyes and Domerin’s quickly drifted toward Rose since neither of them understood what Rupert meant.

“It’s as ready as it’s going to be,” Rose reported on the tail end of a soft sigh. “But I have to admit, I’m far more nervous about this test than the last one.”

“Test?” Domerin interrupted, and the single word was spoken in a tone that bordered on outrage.  “You mean your last attempt to send us into the past to fix this mess was just a test?”

“Technically everything involving this kind of technology is a test of some kind,” Rupert replied – clearly unaware of the trouble brewing between the Royal Guard’s captain and his princess. “We are unlikely to ever quantify enough data from ventures of this type to consider our knowledge complete.”

“What Rupert said,” Rose added with a faint, tired smile. “Listen, Domerin, I’m not going to try to convince you that I have absolutely all of this figured out. Magic is always about trial and error. And though I’ve tried to trial out all the possible errors, clearly my first set of calculations didn’t work quite right. I’ve tried to pin down an exact date and time at which this particular problem can be solved, but the historical data and the mathematical data don’t line up.”

She was losing them again. Crescent could always tell when Domerin didn’t quite understand something because his eyes took on a glazed and distant sheen. His own brain was buzzing, which made it difficult to concentrate on the meanings of the individual words being spoken let alone how they all worked together to form a unified meaning.

“What Her Majesty means to say is that choosing a specific time and place to send you based on the information we have available from recent witness accounts does not allow us to compensate for the element of human error. Feeding the data into a mathematical equation produces far more reliable results, but it means we cannot tell you exactly where you will end up when we activate the machine.”

“But you’re sure we’ll go into the past this time?” Domerin pressed.

It seemed he didn’t want to keep venturing through these portals if he couldn’t be certain they would allow him to do what he was trying to do.

For his part, Crescent would gladly gallivant through time for as long as was necessary. There were plenty of exciting times and places he would happily visit if only just to observe them from afar. Aruvalia’s history was packed full of interesting people, events and styles – to say nothing of its neighboring kingdoms across the mountains.

He was keenly aware this wasn’t a fieldtrip. They weren’t taking these jumps through time to observe or chronicle interesting events. And he would never do something that would put their current time in jeopardy.

Yet there was an excitement to the idea of catching glimpses of historic events that Crescent couldn’t deny. When he had been a young colt, he had dreamed of taking magical adventures throughout time and space. Now it finally felt like it was happening, even if the circumstances leading to it were terrible.

“My assumption is that this portal will result in a short, five-day jump into the past,” Rose replied. “All my studies suggest that should give you ample time to disband the enemy forces before they begin their push. Then if you get word back to me at the palace, I can send a diplomatic team to handle the rest.”

Meanwhile, Domerin would rush to assemble the kingdom’s defensive forces. Crescent knew exactly how he would go about it as well, since he knew exactly how Domerin tended to think about these sorts of situations.

“But you can’t be sure we’ll end up within that exact time frame?” Crescent asked, hoping to give them all a break from Domerin’s increasingly demanding tone and deepening scowl.

“Exactly,” Rose agreed with another soft sigh. “What my gut tells me is the optimal time to disband this situation might not bear out against the complex calculations we’ve fed into the machine. We’re relying on a lot of different forces here. One of the biggest is the energy that sits at the core of the magic that makes this work.

“Time magic resonates with a specific type of energy that’s always present within our world. The magic taps into the flow of that energy and shifts it. But in order to that, it must understand the basic goal and function of the energy its manipulating at any given time. It may sound odd to attribute thinking, feeling and understanding to magic – but understanding those aspects of the energy we work with is a critical component of time magic.”

Rose drew a deep breath, and Crescent could tell she was trying to adjust her explanation so that it wouldn’t cause both of her subjects to give up on ever understanding what she was trying to say.

“Think of it like this,” she suggested. “When you try to push your hand through a wall, the solid nature of it stops you from doing so. You understand that if you punch that wall, it’s going to hurt, so you don’t. The same is true with fire. There might be a portion of a fire that you could stick your hand into and experience minimal damage, but the heat of the flames warns you there’s going to be pain if you stray too far from one side to another.

“Time understands itself. If you try to twist it into a shape that blocks it, it will resist you. You’ll get an off feeling from the spell. And if you push through, the spell might still work, but it won’t have the results you want.

“We’re focusing on end results here.” Rose tapped the floor beneath her with her right front hoof. “So to a certain extent, we’re trusting that the energy of this highly complex spell understands our intention enough to pinpoint the exact moment in time where action is needed.

“The last time I used this method, it might not have send you to the time I anticipated. But it did send you to Rupert and Rupert has been an immense help when it comes to setting up this second attempt, so I’d hazard to say it did actually work.”

Domerin was in no way placated by the explanation; Crescent could tell. There was nothing in this complex network of magical energy and mathematic calculation that he could see, taste, touch or smell, so he rejected it as being hogwash.

But he trusted his princess more than anyone else in the world. And more importantly, he believed in her and the things she asked him to do.

So despite the fact that he obviously thought he had just been taken for a ride, he would step through the portal that was about to open without questioning it farther because he believed that Rose would do whatever it took to save her kingdom and he was merely the vessel through which that will would be achieved.

It was one of the things Crescent admired most about his boyfriend – he was steadfast, he didn’t waver in the face of enormous obstacles that would have caused others to falter or buckle. So in moments like this, he tried to be equal to the man he’d chosen to walk beside.

“Let’s find out where the time stream thinks we’re best suited to solving this problem,” he declared and tapped his hoof against the floor beside him.

Rose mustered a weary smile, perhaps glad for the encouragement, then she turned and nodded to Rupert.

What followed was a delicate dance that Crescent couldn’t entirely follow. While the princess adjusted dials on the central portion of her device, Rupert adjusted switches and tapped things into a computer keyboard.

Beside Crescent, Domerin danced from foot to foot to express either nerves or impatience – it was hard to say which. Crescent himself was simply so mystified by the whole thing, he didn’t know what to think or say.

The princess moved to another side panel and Rupert took his turn adjusting dials set along the opposite side of the device. Then the two of them started calling details to each other, at which point the other would call, “Check!” or, “Confirmed!”

At last, the two of them stepped back, clearing the center of the room, and Rose breathed a soft sigh of relief.

Just like last time, the hum and buzz of the machine grew almost deafening. Then a sharp line appeared to carve its way through the exact center of the workroom. It’s edges drew apart, cleaving a hole in reality itself. Where the mass of reality parted, a vigorous swirl of color and energy sparked like fireflies, then it whirled and danced until it formed a whirlpool.

At last, the circle reached its full diameter and the image within it resolved into a singular, solid form. Like before, it held a forest filled with trees and a wide clearing into which Domerin and Crescent could safely step.

Domerin braced. Crescent could feel it as well as see it. As the guard captain’s muscles tensed, he inhaled sharply, puffing out his chest with the effort of containing his consternation. Then he pranced forward and Crescent followed in his wake.

Domerin didn’t pause at all; he practically leapt through the center of the portal. But Crescent paused long enough to nod to Rose and confirm that he still held the remote which would bring them safely home.

Then he darted through the circle in Domerin’s wake, worried they wouldn’t end up at the same time or place if he delayed. He felt a crackle and a fizzle, as if his body turned to static. Then the sharp jerk of the world rushing up to meet his hooves informed him that he had arrived.

Domerin stood beside him, pawing the ground as the portal and its view of the workroom faded.

The air was brisk; that was the first thing Crescent noted. Much like the weather they had left behind, the air was thick with heavy cloud cover and the scent of rain hung in the air. The grass beneath their hooves was not yet damp, suggesting the rain had not yet begun to fall – but it would, and soon.

A crisp chill cut through the forest as the trees began to sway. It carried with it the sour hint of approaching winter, though any season could hold that bite if the temperature dipped enough.

Crescent tried to think back to the weather surrounding the capital these last few days. But so many things had happened, it was impossible for him to recall if rain had fallen during the interval.

Then again, he also had no idea how close to the capital they were. Aruvalia was a large place, and if they were in the mountains near its edge – where the army they needed to intercept was most likely to gather – it would make perfect sense that the air was colder and the weather gloomy.

Domerin must have come to the same conclusion. When he completed his silent scan of their surroundings – during which Crescent didn’t doubt he assessed where they were most likely to have emerged from the portal – he turned and motioned with his head toward a thin, nearly invisible path.

“We may as well head down. There’s a slight incline to the landscape here that suggests a slope. I imagine we’ll find something at the base that tells us where this is. And hopefully allows us to deliver our message so we can get the hell out of here and get back to everything making sense again.”

Crescent just barely resisted the urge to smile. Domerin’s curt nature, he had long since learned, often had more to do with his desire to be efficient than any other emotion he might be feeling. And in this case, he understood why his lover was so keen to see things through and return to ground he considered to be more stable.

Even so, he couldn’t suppress the sense of wonder and excitement that swelled in his chest as he fell into step beside his lover. The last time they stepped through the time portal, it offered them a glimpse of their future in the form of Silvergarden gleaming and beautiful beneath a sparkling sun. Even if this rendezvous was destined to take place in the present, he was eager to witness another wonder – another aspect of the kingdom he so loved and adored showing its best features – and he resolved to greet whatever awaited them at the base of this long trail with an open mind for the possibilities the next few hours might create.