Freebie Mondays: My Little Domerin – Episode 6: 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!
. . .

Rose glanced up from the gauges she had been monitoring when the return portal began to form in the center of the room, and it took every ounce of effort she possessed not to shift suddenly and potentially disturb an important piece of equipment.

While Domerin and Crescent were away, the princess’s job was to monitor the machinery that kept the time portals active and make sure nothing overloaded. If the delicate magical bubble she had constructed in this tower were to flicker, even for a moment, it might be impossible to return to the time period the left. Worse, if the core machine was to give out, Domerin and Crescent might be stranded forever out of time. And while the jump they had executed was meant to be a short hop back just a few days, the potential for disruptive chaos if they couldn’t get back was high.

Rose was even gladder she kept a tight rein on her emotions when she saw the state her two chosen guardians were in. They tromped through the circular opening in the center of the room drenched from nose to tail with water dripping from every inch of exposed fur and hair. Their cloaks were plastered tight against their skin, no longer able to provide protection from the elements, and their hair likewise clung to their necks, backs and hind legs.

It was lucky for them all that both ponies had the presence of mind not to shake the water free of their figures when they finally came to rest. Instead, they stood dripping in the center of the floor while small puddles formed between their feet.

Domerin’s first act was to reach up and pull the braiding free of his mane and tail, perhaps in hopes each would dry faster with more exposure to warm, dry air. But when he tossed the newly freed locks over his shoulder, they plastered to his neck and rear legs with a sickening smack.

Rose winced, but the warrior merely grunted as he turned to meet her gaze.

“Is it finished?” the princess asked quietly, barely able to believe this ordeal might finally be over. It seemed as though Domerin and Crescent hadn’t been gone for very long. Only a few minutes had passed when she had expected to be at this for days. But she supposed it also made more sense that the return window would always be shortly after the departure window. The rest of the time span had already happened, after all.

“It better be,” Domerin murmured, and Rose got the impression he was speaking through clenched teeth. But then he sighed and said, “We visited a town that clearly occupied the outskirts of the kingdom and alerted them to the potential of a raiding party. I suppose we just have to hope the rest went smoothly.”

It was brief, as far as reports went, but it was what Rose expected to receive from Domerin. So her eyes shifted toward Crescent and she arched an eyebrow expectantly.

The diplomat shrugged. “We tried to minimize our contact and our ability to do damage,” Crescent reported. “Domerin was adamant about that,” he added, casting his lover a sidelong glance that suggested he wasn’t entirely happy with the course they had chosen.

“It seemed as if the people of the village were aware of the potential threat,” Domerin went on. He was too observant to be oblivious to the looks exchanged between Rose and Crescent, so he must have chosen to ignore them instead. “I felt it was ill-advised to become involved in the struggle when everyone knew my potential location.”

“Fair,” Rose admitted. When it came to time travel, no one could be too careful.

“So when do we go back?” Domerin added and stomped his feet. The princess assumed he was eager to slide into his own bed and recover from what had no doubt been a harrowing ordeal. And that made her answer heart-breaking.

“Before we lower the protective time barrier, we need to confirm that the timeline has been successfully altered,” she declared somewhat sternly.

“Great,” Domerin replied and motioned toward the wall, clearly hoping she would summon the stairs that led to the upper floors. “Give me a chance to change clothes and I’ll make the journey myself.”

“No,” Rose retorted blandly and refused to make the gesture that summoned the stairs.

The captain of her Royal Guard glared at her with daggers in his eyes, but she ignored him the way he had ignored Crescent’s light chiding.

“The two of you look like you just waded through a hurricane,” the princess snapped in her ruler voice, which brooked no argument – even from the likes of Domerin Lorehooves. “You both need a chance to get dry and eat a warm meal. Not to mention, you probably need to sleep.”

Rose had never been able to venture fully through a time portal herself. Her position made that too risky. But she had experienced enough time manipulation magic to know it drained the body and the spirit.

As if to prove the truth of her words, Crescent slumped slightly and leaned his nose into Domerin’s wet side.

It was clear Domerin was about to protest. The stallion was not tireless, but he certainly worked as if he was. However, when it became clear his partner his partner had begun to flag, he relented.

“Fine,” he growled, motioning again toward the hidden staircase. “But we need to do this as quickly as possible.”

He didn’t say how he would react if another time jump was necessary, but Rose imagined him marching into the woods so he could scream in a place where no one else would be able to hear it.

“I’ll send Greg,” she declared as she finally made the motion that would summon the staircase. “And I’ll send him as soon as I make sure the two of you both have what you need.”

She slid up the freshly revealed staircase ahead of the two newly returned ponies, partly so she wouldn’t slip on the water they left behind but partly so she could make sure neither of them disobeyed her orders once they reached the tower’s upper floors.

She paused a third of the way up the staircase, however, and glanced back down at the artificial pony who was still adjusting dials and cooling tanks. When Rupert became aware of her gaze, he paused and glanced upward.

“Keep an eye on everything for me, will you?” she asked sweetly. Just because Rupert was artificial didn’t mean he wasn’t deserving of manners. “And try to figure out where the time portal led.”

She had a feeling that was going to be important.

*   *   *

Domerin tried not to click his hooves against the floor while he paced. The ponies in the adjacent room were all younger and none of them deserved to deal with the stress and strain of this fiasco – especially not Rainbow Heart, who didn’t even occupy the proper time period.

Any minute now, Greg would return from the task the princess set to him. Domerin imagined he could hear the stallion’s frantic hoof beats pounding up the hill outside. The Royal Guard captain wanted his old friend to burst through the door and announce breathlessly that everything was okay now, that the streets of Silvergarden were free of fire and destruction and that it was safe to go home.

He wanted that with a desperation that stole his breath. But he didn’t think it was going to happen.

“Come on,” he muttered under his breath as he executed a sharp turn and once again placed each of his feet with great care as they carried him back across the room.

He might have increased his pace or even begun cursing if Crescent hadn’t sidled next to him and once again leaned his nose into Domerin’s flank.

The contact relaxed the warrior. He came to a halt and momentarily curled so he could nuzzle his partner’s neck.

“We all want this to be over,” Crescent pointed out softly. “Some people quite a bit more than you.” This last was spoken in a rueful tone, and Crescent shifted so he could cast Domerin a coy look.

“I know,” the Royal Guard captain admitted with a soft sigh. “And I know pacing isn’t going to help. But-“

The sharp ring of hoofbeats in the hallway silenced him, and Domerin once again moved into high alert.

Maybe he hadn’t imagined the sound of hooves striking the hard-packed dirt on the hill outside!

A moment later, the frantic approach outside halted and the door to the princess’s inner chamber burst open. The constable stood in the doorway, his flanks heaving as he attempted to catch his breath. But before he could demand to see the princess, she appeared from the stairs below, her eyes wide and her mouth forming a small o.

“What is it?” she demanded, speaking the words on everyone’s lips – because they could all tell that something was amiss.

“It’s gone,” Greg gasped when he finally managed to get enough air into his lungs to form words.

“All signs of the attack?” Domerin demanded sharply, though with a distinct lack of hope.

A terrible sense of dread was building in his stomach, and he had a terrible feeling Greg’s next words were going to set it free.

The constable shook his head and said, “No. The city. The capital. The kingdom… It’s just gone.”

All the air fled Domerin’s lungs and, for several tenuous seconds, he couldn’t replace it. His mind reeled, and his head spun. He gasped, but it felt as if the oxygen skipped out of his body as soon as it entered. His heart hammered in his chest, and he was certain he was going to fall over.

Instead, his rump hit the floor and he settled in a seated position. The bump allowed air to start flowing throughout his system again, but it didn’t clear his thoughts enough to grasp what had just been revealed to him.

“How could you possibly know that?” he demanded, his voice choked with disbelief.

How could this possibly be real? He must be dreaming. He must have fallen asleep after he toweled himself dry. The stress and strain of the last few days, the constant questions about where and when he was in time – they must have drained him beyond his ability to sustain consciousness.

Except he felt the thud when his body collided with the floor. And he felt the polished hew of the beams beneath his hooves. There were ample signs that this wasn’t a dream – including his terror failing to startle him awake.

Which brought him back to the how.

How did this happen?

And worse, the thought he couldn’t banish from his mind: this is all my fault.

The precious seconds Domerin spent fighting with his horror allowed Greg to catch his breath. He shuffled through the door and closed it in his wake. Then he sat as abruptly as Domerin had, perhaps needing the support of the solid floor to get him through his report.

“The city wasn’t there,” he insisted. “I checked the landscape and galloped well past where it should have been waiting on the roads, but there was nothing. Not even a settlement or even any signs. On my way back, I ran into a couple who were clearly on their way elsewhere. I stopped to ask them about Silvergarden and Aruvalia when that yielded nothing – and they looked at me as if I had gone crazy.”

How?

Domerin wanted to breath the word as if it was an act of defiance, but he couldn’t get his numb body to move. If he tried, he would fall flat on his face, and the indignity might just finish him.

“I might be able to shed some light on this,” Rose declared. Her tone was soft, but her voice carried a hard edge that made Domerin shudder. “I asked Rupert to calculate the exact date and time to which our formula sent you.”

Something they should have done before their departure, as far as Domerin was concerned. Though Rose had been adamant they needed the data from the portal’s opening to be precise.

“When did we go?” Crescent demanded, speaking for both of them while Domerin was still trying to recover his voice.

The princess cleared her throat, and the sound wavered when it passed her lips. Domerin’s knees quivered as he tried to brace for the blow, but there was no possible way he could banish the sickness choking his gut.

He had tried to save his home from an invasion and, somehow, he had erased it. That had to be the biggest screw-up on record.

Rose said the year, but it passed through Domerin’s ears without penetrating. The numbers were slippery as eels and their meanings momentarily eluded him. He forgot what the current year was supposed to be or even how to calculate dates.

Then the truth resolved for him like a brick slamming into his chest, and he inhaled sharply.

“That’s the year Aruvalia was founded,” he gasped as logic and sense returned to his numb brain. He glanced up and met the princess’s gaze – and knew he was right. “Which means the war party we warned the townsfolk about wasn’t the one on the way to attack Silvergarden five days ago. It was the one that started the war of our ancestors.”

Silence filled the room, and all the ponies present bowed their heads.

No one needed to expand upon Domerin’s statement because everyone knew the story. It was basic history taught in every classroom from the time a pony started attending school.

Aruvalia had been founded in the wake of a bloody struggle – a struggle won only by the tenacity and quick wit of Nirem Truestrike, the hero whose statue once adorned the courtyard in the center of the capital’s palace complex.

That war had established the enmity between Aruvalia and the hill folk who had come to strike back after years of what they evidently perceived as abuse at the hands of their former conquerors. And while it would have been easy to assume that the kingdom should have grown and flourished without such a struggle ever taking place, it was clear the opposite was true.

“I did this,” Domerin murmured, though the sound of air rushing past his ears nearly drowned out the words. “This is all my fault.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Crescent started, but Domerin cut him off with a savage hiss.

“Weren’t you the one who suggested we should take more time to scout out the situation before we made a decisive action?” Stupid! Domerin chided himself because, in retrospect, he could see all the signs.

The old construction of the buildings. The lanterns instead of modern electricity. Even the name of the man who greeted them was an historical name – though not an uncommon one in Aruvalia today.

Or whatever day the kingdom had existed, since was gone now. Erased from history by his stupid hubris!

“Trying to leave quickly and minimizing your interaction wasn’t a bad decision,” the princess protested and shook her head, sending her long, curly main bouncing across her shoulders. “It’s what I would have advised if you had asked me. And I sent you because I trusted you to make that decision.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have!” Domerin barked back, anger, frustration and sorrow all choking his voice at the same time. “This is exactly what I feared would happen, exactly why I didn’t want to mess with the past.”

And now poor Rainbow Heart – not to mention the three lovely girls entertaining her – didn’t have homes to go back to.

“Stop!” Crescent snarled and brought his hoof down sharply on one of Domerin’s front ankles.

The blow was clearly meant to startle him as it wasn’t heavy enough to do lasting damage. But still, the Royal Guard captain winced as the pain rippled through his body.

“We could argue all day about the things we should have done,” Crescent went on, his gaze sweeping the small gathering of bowed heads. “But it won’t do us any good. We should be focusing on how we fix this problem.”

“I would argue that understanding how we got into this mess is critical to figuring out how to undo it,” Domerin snapped, though he had to admit in the silence of his own mind that his bitterness was directly related to his anger at himself for messing this up so badly.

“This is why the time protection bubble exists,” Rose interjected before Domerin could begin to berate himself again. “Just in case something drastically alters the course of history. And so long as those of us inside it are protected by its magic, there’s a chance to set things right.

“Maybe it was naive of us to assume we could solve this problem on the first try. Maybe we should have expected dozens of time jumps in order to set the timeline right-“

“We cannot do this a dozen times,” Domerin interrupted, and he hated how savage he sounded. “We shouldn’t even have done it once!”

At least if they had accepted the attack on their capital, they might have been able to fight back, reclaim their territory and rebuild.

There was no coming back from this.

But the worst part about this situation, the thing that Domerin desperately didn’t want to acknowledge, was that he was going to have to step through that time portal at least once more. Because he had to get Aruvalia back. He couldn’t wipe it out of existence and go on living – that simply wasn’t who he was.

Silence hung heavy in the room for several long seconds before anyone spoke. Then, at last, the princess drew a long, deep breath and released it at a slow, measured pace.

“I already have Rupert working on a new set of calculations,” she declared calmly. “I believe if we send you back one day prior to your previous arrival, it should erase that moment from history. We would essentially pre-empt your arrival by sending you to that time sooner.”

Domerin noted the should in her statement but bit his tongue against another bitter retort.

He didn’t like this dealing with should haves and could haves. The next time he stepped through that time portal, he was going to make sure he did everything right.

To that end he rose and paced toward one of the other doors that led from the princess’s private lounge. “Let me know when the calculations are finished,” he muttered. Then he left and slammed the door in his wake.

His companions were wise enough not to follow.

*   *   *

When Domerin slammed the door in his wake, both Greg and Rose shifted as if they would sprint in his wake. They might both have gotten tangled in the door if Crescent hadn’t raised a leg to block their path.

“Don’t,” he said sharply and shook his head. “Let him have space. He needs time.”

Hard as it was, Crescent understood that even he had to stay away and allow Domerin to deal with this situation in his own way. He wasn’t the kind of pony who talked about his feelings. And the last thing he’d want at this moment was to be comforted.

Domerin was a pony of action – so action was probably what he sought, limited though it was bound to be.

“What if he runs off into the forest?” Greg protested. “He doesn’t know the limits of the barrier, and he doesn’t have one of these.” The constable prodded the charm that hung around his neck. It was designed to extend the protection of the time barrier even if a pony ventured beyond it, though Crescent’s understanding was that the charm wouldn’t last forever.

“He won’t,” the princess replied and sighed. “The door he went through leads to my library.”

“He’ll come around,” Crescent insisted. “But right now, he blames himself. And nothing we say is going to convince him otherwise.”

Domerin was stubborn. There were days that served as one of his best traits, especially when something near-impossible needed accomplishing. But at moments like this, it was infuriating. Crescent had learned when to step back and wait for his lover to be open to new perspectives, but it didn’t cure his own frustration with the current situation.

Especially since he understood all about blaming himself. He had been with Domerin in that storm-tossed city. He could have put his foot down and insisted they go out to check on the state of affairs before they committed to a course of action. And even after Domerin decided to speak, Crescent could have refused to return until they followed Ryland and ensured his task was complete. Though they might not have been able to identify the difference between an ancient warband and a modern one.

Like Domerin, when Crescent encountered situations like his, his instinct was to seek action. But pacing wasn’t going to do him any good, and he couldn’t roam beyond the tower. So he ended up slinking into the adjacent room to play games with Rainbow Heart and her guardians.

The hours ticked past slowly, even when Crescent managed to forget the doom hanging over their heads. Yet he waited until the sun kissed the horizon beyond the tower, several hours after Domerin stormed away, before he ventured into the library to seek his wayward companion.

He found Domerin half-buried in a pile of books he had pulled free of the shelves in the princess’s library. Crescent glanced between the heap and the empty shelf space and couldn’t help snorting softly with laughter.

“Are you looking for something specific or are you trying to build a fort?”

Domerin whirled around in a way that suggested he was about to charge forward and bite through the neck of whoever had just interrupted him, but he relaxed when he saw it was Crescent. He sighed then shook his head as he lifted one of the books from the top of the pile.

“I’ve been scouring history volumes,” he declared and shoved the book he’d just opened in Crescent’s direction.

Crescent glanced at the book when it came to rest in front of him, but he could tell it wasn’t the sort of thing he liked to read. Given the heavy type headings and the dense number of lines crammed onto the page, he guessed this was the kind of dry history that recorded only facts and figures. In fact, most of the books surrounding Domerin were probably dry and boring, though he understood his partner was far more interested in such things than he had ever been.

“I assume you’re looking for details about whatever event we messed up?” Crescent ventured. Given Domerin’s extremely logical brain, it made sense that he would be trying to figure out what he had to do to set history right.

“Something like that,” Domerin agreed. “But if we’re going to have to go back to that time period again, and this time stay for longer, I want to understand what I’m getting into. I want to know how events are supposed to unfold so that I don’t interfere with something important. And before you point out that we all know the history, I do have a general understanding of that time period, yes. But I need specifics. I need to know what to avoid and what might be safe to tamper with.”

Crescent clenched his teeth against suggesting that none of it was safe to tamper with. His personal opinion was that they should probably just prevent themselves from screwing up the start of the war and then come back to deal with the rest of their problems in the present, but that wasn’t their orders. And since that wasn’t the task Domerin had been given, it wasn’t the one he was going to try to achieve. So he said instead, “How will you know the difference?”

Domerin sighed in a way that suggested the real answer was trial and error – the exact thing both of them wanted to avoid. But after a moment of consideration, he said instead, “By understanding the results and consequences of the things that happened.”

The captain of the Royal Guard swept one of his forelegs in a wide arc to clear the pile of books surrounding him, then he stepped forward. “I think the reason we came home to the colossal failure we did was because we believed we needed to stop a conflict. And in the present, maybe we do. But glancing back over these histories, it’s clear to me that war had to happen.

“The people of Aruvalia in the days of its pre-history were scattered. They were looking for a purpose and a place to call home, but they were desperate an scattered and they didn’t have a lot of faith in the young princess trying to pull them together.

“Aruvalia was a harsh land in its infancy, and the amount of work that went into taming that land detracted from the sense of community people needed to form a long-lasting kingdom. The conflict with the hill tribes gave them the kick they needed to come together and form strong bonds.”

“You mean the war taught all of the scattered settlements how to work together,” Crescent suggested. “And the value of continuing to do so.”

“Precisely,” Domerin agreed, and nodded to show he was pleased with Crescent’s succinct summary. “By eliminating the threat that forced people to take decisive action, we allowed them to scatter and break apart, so the impetus to form our kingdom was never born.

“I’m hoping we won’t have to stick around long when we go back. But whatever we do, we need to make sure we foster that sense of community. So anything we change will have to be outside the ultimate outcome of the war.”

“But clearly the formula Rupert used to calculate this trajectory indicates that something that happened between our ancestors and that of the hill folk needs to be adjusted,” Crescent interjected. “Because we can’t hope to change one thing and keep mostly the same outcome this far ahead of time. If anything, we’ll have to lay the foundations that will allow us to negotiate with the hill folk in the present.”

Those kinds of minute adjustments wouldn’t be found in a history book because, likely, they were too small to be worthy of notice.

Indeed, Domerin sighed in a way that suggested he had already run into the same problem.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “And I get the impression that whatever we’re looking for, it did happen in the earliest days of the struggle. Something that so upset the hill folk, they were never able to overlook it or consider it mended in the coming days. But all of my scouring and all of my searching have come up empty. I have no clue what we could possibly have done to create such a deep and lasting wound – and I’m afraid we won’t have a lot of time to find it when we get back there either.”

Crescent grinned. For most of this situation, he had simply felt like he was along for the ride. He could handle himself in a fight, so escaping the initial assault and protecting the princess had been firmly within his wheelhouse. But after that, he’d simply felt like he was along for the ride.

But this? This was his bread and butter. His job was to make sure people talked to each other and worked things out without biting and kicking.

What Domerin described was the work of a diplomat through and through. So for the first time, Crescent felt like he was exactly where he needed to be.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I understand negotiations like the back of my hooves. You take care of nudging the conflict in the right direction and I’ll look for the things that might subtly adjust the hill folks’ attitude toward us in the future.”

If anyone else had said it, Domerin might have rejected the idea outright. But Crescent could see the gears in his head turning as he connected a straight line through all the ancient battles – the wins and losses – that had brought Aruvalia to its inception. He would know them all by heart. If he hadn’t known them before, he had certainly spent the last several hours committing them to memory.

And he trusted Crescent in a way he didn’t trust anyone else.

So at last he nodded and said, “But this has to be the last trip, Crescent. Whatever we do, we have to get it right this time. We owe it to the people of Aruvalia, past, present and future.”

“So we do,” Crescent agreed softly. Then he shuffled close and nuzzled against Domerin’s neck to reassure him this was possible.

Because at the end of the day, he had to believe it too, or this wasn’t going to work.