I must’ve wandered into a trans-dimensional warp or something, because I’ve been wandering beneath these trees for days. The searing heat of the sun is baking my brain, and I’ve not seen any sign of civilization or life beyond the endless trees. I should’ve stayed back. I should’ve known that the universe would do this to me!

I’m going to die out here! I’ll be lost forever, flickering out and never seen again! Woe is me! Woe is m-

Oh, wait, there’s the farmhouse.

I trek up the hill and look back, the clubhouse peeking up over the foliage of the next hill over.

Huh, guess it was only, like, twenty minutes. Tops. Well, I feel like a dumbass. I wonder if that means the same thing here? Do they have donkeys? I decide to ask later. I head up to the farmhouse and knock on the door.

The door opens with a creak, and a withered sack of green wrinkles looks up at me. Granny Smith sure is looking better from the last time I saw her.

“Heya, Granny Smith, how are you today?”

She smiles up at me, a warmth in that smile reminding me of my own grandma. “I’m doin’ alright. The insurance money from the orchard that great burnin’ galoot torched came in, and we got m’ hip replaced! See-ram-ic and arcanium! I c’n walk better now than I could forty years ago! And we had enough saplin’s to replant without needin’ the money, so tha’s even better. How’s you doin’, Anty-boy?”

Wow... that was... close. Thank god it’s just her way of speaking. “I’m doing great. I figured since I didn’t have anything to do today, I’d see if you needed any help. Not sure what I could do, but I’m making the offer all the same.”

“Weeell... c’n ya do any pipin’? the kitchen sink is clogged agin, and Applejack and Big Mac don’t know squat ‘bout nothin to do with pipes.”

“Well, I’m not exactly an expert, but I’ll give it a shot. Show me the pipes.”

Granny Smith leads me into the kitchen, and points at the double sink. One side was so dry that the little cracks in the porcelain were visible. The other was almost overflowing with black-green water, and smelled like a sewer had thrown up in it.

“Yep, you definitely got a problem. I’ll see what I can do...” I think for a moment. I suppose I could just reach into the drain and see if I can find the blockage... but that water... is no longer water. Come on man, you’ve killed a Changeling Queen, you’ve literally blown a demon’s head off, you’re the hero of Equestria... you’re gonna need a looooooong shower after this.

Closing my eyes, I reach my hand into the not-water and feel for the drain. Once I find it, I reach in, trying to see if I can touch whatever’s stopping up the sink. I could probably go intangible... no, then it’d be in me, and I really don’t want to think of the implications.

“Well, y’ gonna fix it?” Granny’s voice urges me forward, and I swallow the lump in my throat and whimper. The water feels like... well, not like water. I also can’t feel the pipe as anything more than pressure around my wrist. Also, I think I may be stuck.

That said, I think I found the problem. Whatever it is, it’s grainy and mushy all at once, like really low-grade schnapps runoff. It’s packed in, and probably settled into the pipe when it was backed up slightly, and then just piled on top of the obstruction. I’d need a pretty powerful batch of Liquid Plumber, or the assistance of a star-powered Mario to get through it.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any of those, so I’m gonna have to think. Then I get an idea. I enter my Heat form and heat up my other hand over the not-water. I’m gonna try and make this sludge evaporate.

several seconds on high heat pass, and I’m starting to see the water bubble, then boil. It’s working! But the stench is really doing a number on my gag reflex.

...Oh god, it’s cooking onto my arm!

It’s like the cast all over again, but when I pull my hand out in panic, I see that it’s a crusty green-black-brown, and smells like the rancid insides of something that died of cholera.

Or diarrhea. I am suddenly so glad I only put one arm into the sink.

Granny smith starts cracking up. “Sonny, you do know we’ve got one ah them fancy pipe-cleanin’ doohickies, right?”

“Well, yeah, but if you push the blockage from the sink end, it’ll just get stuck further down the pipe. You need to push the stuff up or you risk making the problem worse.”

Granny Smith nods sagely. “Tha’s why it’s a grabby-one.”

“...” I sigh. God damnit. I end up with my arm looking like I just punched the Swamp-Thing for nothing. Fuck my life. “Alright, where is it?”

“Right above th’ sink, Anty-boy.” I look up. It’s right at eye level.

“Right.” I grab it and pull my arm out of the drain. That was probably the most disgusting noise I’ve heard in my life. Anyway, I lead the tool down into the drain and when I feel resistance, I try and grab it.

I pull up a mass of rusty, organic sludge... and a mass of blonde and red hairs.

“Uh... huh.”

“Dag-nabbit! Those look like Applebloom and Applejack’s hair! Ooh, I’m gonna give ‘em sucha walloping’ when they get back, they won’t be able to sit fer a month!”

I think for a moment. They’re quadrupeds, how often do they need to sit, anyways?

The sink gurgles and slurps as the now-cleared drain slowly does its thing, leaving a crusty layer of baked gunk on the sides of the sink. Granny Smith eyes my arm. “Well, Ah guess y’all should get yer arm cleaned off. I’d offer th’ sink, but... Don’ want it gettin’ clogged again. Take yerself to the hog pen, they’ll clean ya, an’ they don’ bite, neither.”

“...fine, where’s the pen?”

Now that that horrific experience is over and my arm is clean, minus the pig slobber, I decide I have learned my lesson. Don’t offer help to the Apples!

I still don’t have anything to do today though, so I think on what other ways I could waste time. Maybe I can finally talk to Twilight about the harp? That seems like it might take another couple of hours. I think I’ll try something a bit... softer for a demonstration though. Not sure how well she’d take to my appreciation for dark music.

I make my way to the library, looking around me as I go. Everyone has fully accepted me and then some! I can remember when I first came here, all the closed doors, scared faces... that’s all over. I’m accepted. These ponies aren’t so bad, I guess. As long as they keep their minds off my junk, that is. I’m going to have to make Canterlot hear my speech next.

I return to the library, go into my room, and pull out the harp. The sunlight coming in through the window leave stark, deep shadows of nightscape on the instrument, and I take a moment to look closer at it. The strings themselves are thin strands of night time, and I shake my head. It’s quite obviously a powerfully magic artifact. Or, at least, a really impressive party-trick, one of the two.

I head down the stairs, just in time to see Twilight walking back in, levitating a large wooden crate, the top already being pried off with nothing but magical force. Damn this unicorn is good.

“Hey Twi. What’s in the box?”

“Hmm? Oh my package arrived from Canterlot! they had to bring it down slowly, by cart and carriage. It must’ve gotten held up in Fetlock, the town at the base of Mt. Canter.” Fetlock, at the foot of a mountain. I swear, I lost brain cells from that. Twilight set the crate down, and propped herself up on the edge, like a puppy trying to see into a box. I hear her squeal with delight as she pulls out... a single, battered journal.

For a moment, she keeps her delighted face, but it fades as she looks at the book. “Uhm... I don’t recognize this... is it written in gryphon?” she holds up the book in her magical grasp, and she makes an almost pained noise in the back of her throat as she looks over the pages inside. She looks at me with a  pitiful expression, ears down and her eyes wide. The book, labeled “Mein Tagebuch” floats in front of her. beneath the title, a smaller line of text reads, “Nicht öffnen!”

“Well I’d help, but I don’t know much German, honestly...”

“German? This is gryphon!” She pokes at the book again, still looking miserable.

“Well, it certainly looks a lot like German to me. You probably have similar languages as humans but have different names. For example. I have a bit of understanding of French. With an ‘F’.”

At this point, she’s stopped paying attention, pawing at the book as if petting it will make it divulge its secrets to her. Offhandedly, she replies, “It’s prench, from Prance. Fancee is a dialect.” she doesn’t appear to be actually responding to my statement, but a statement from someone else, probably said a long while ago.

“Why do you want to read this anyway? It’s just someone’s diary or something. Seriously, what’s so important about some bird-lion’s journal?”

She turns the book back to me, flipping open to the first page. The inside cover has more writing on it. “Because of whose it is! I recognize the name, it’s the title he used while in the Gryphon Empires!” The words she’s pointing at are ‘Wirbelnde-Sterne der Bart.’, which is a load of gibberish to me.

“Sorry Twilight, but it’s just some German junk. I don’t read it fluently.”

She perks up at the last word. “But you do speak it a little? You could help me get started on a translation! The lost works of Starswirl the Bearded!” A sudden gust of wind stirs the room, sending some of Twilight’s research notes fluttering into the air and causing the journal’s pages to flip wildly. Twilight immediately began grabbing all the loose pages and collecting them. “Oh, drat, Spike or Rainbow Dash must’ve left a window open again. I suppose if you’re not interested, Anthony, then you’re not interested. Did you have anything you wanted?”

“Hmmm, not exactly say as much as show.” I hold up the harp to Twilight.

Twilight gasps and drops the book. Wow. I didn’t think the harp was that impressive. Her entire expression is wide, and I feel the harp get yanked from my grip, sailing into Twilight’s hooves. She immediately begins rotating and turning it, examining it from every angle.

“How did you get this?” She hisses at me, a look of... terror? Yeah, I think that’s terror on her face. What is wrong with this harp?

“Well, I got it from a Unicorn I met a few days ago in the park. Her name was Lyra Heartstrings.”

“Who?” Twilight furrows her brow, and I can see from here that her breathing has picked up in pace. Jeez, something has scared her.

“I have no idea, but she certainly seemed to know a lot about me. Anyway, what’s so special about the harp? I mean, there’s something I know is strange about it, but what do you know?”

“This isn’t ‘A Harp’, it’s a lyre, for one... secondly, it’s the Lyre, all others are based on this Lyre. It’s the Fundamental Lyre, and without it, stringed instruments wouldn’t exist!” Twilight stopped to suck in a breath. “It’s also Princess Luna’s!”

“So this was design number zero, huh? Well, guess it’s mine now.”

“You can’t just steal one of the Fundamental Tools of Creation!” Twilight looks aghast at my announcement, clutching the lyre with all four limbs and her magic aura.

“I didn’t steal it. It was given to me by someone who was definitely not princess Luna. I stole nothing, just acquired it from the thief.”

“That’s still stealing! I’m going to get this sent back!” Her eyes have gone wild. There has got to be more to this harp if she’s going this nuts about- wait, she called it a ‘fundamental tool of creation’, and even I could hear the Capital Lettering on that title.

“Well, wouldn’t it be better to be held by someone of similar power to Luna’s before it’s official return?”

“No! There’s no telling what sort of calamities could be summoned or manifested! It’s a tool of unimaginable power and unknown utilities! We don’t even know how it works!” She stared at me, panting and flailing her forelimbs for emphasis.

I scoff. “I do.”

Her forelegs came down. “Y- you do?”

“The lyre, please?” I hold out my hand, and once she reluctant parts with it, I hold it up. “First of all, it’s a musical instrument, no matter what powers it has, so of course that’s it’s main function. Now, how about a song? A song from my world?”

I Spark up and focus on the song. “This, is called What I've Done.” With that, I begin to play the lyre as before.

My fingers find the strings by instinct once more, tugging, pulling, plucking and caressing to pull forth the notes as needed. This time, it doesn’t start with a screech, probably because it’s already set to ‘band’. The music flows out, and I sing along, the lyrics sad and almost depressing. Once the song ends, I see Twilight staring in shock.

“A-Anthony! You have no idea what that might’ve done! What if you played a song and made weather happen, or an earthquake, or- or-”

“And? Can’t you control your weather? Or stop earthquakes? What happened to all that environmental control you had?”

“Anthony, you’re holding one of the eight things that made the world! You’re basically asking what an ant would do if a rhino had been about to step on it! they’re strong, sure, but not that strong!”

“So what you’re saying is, I’d be giving Equestria a taste of what my world deals with on a regular basis?”

“No, you’d be changing the fundamental structure of Equestria! You could’ve made an unending, ever-growing hurricane, or an earthquake that continues for centuries, or a tidal wave immune to wind resistance and friction!”

Okay, those thoughts never would’ve occurred to me without serious prompting.

“Well, then if it’s Luna’s and it’s so gosh-darned important, why’d she let it get stolen? How’d that other pony get it?”

Twilight shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know! She gave each of the Fundamental Tools to a constellation of stars to keep safe, where nothing can get to any of the tools at all. The Stars use them to grant wishes.”

I think. Constellations. “Hmmm, one wouldn’t happen to be a weighing scale of rather simple design, would it?”

“Yes, Libra. The scales have control of the balance of morality.” Those I could see having catastrophic consequences for messing with.

“Leo, Cassiopea, Aquarius. Just to name a few. And of course, Lyra”

“Well, not quite. The Lyre is one of them, along with the Scales. There’s also the Sword, the Crown, and the Hammer.” Twilight said.

“Alright. the Sword... That’s either Orion the Hunter... or the other one I can’t remember, the Hero.”

“No, Orion is one of the heroes of the old Unicorn nation, before Equestria. Marecules is the constellation dedicated to the earth pony hero who defeated a corrupted alicorn with her strength alone.”

“Huh, well, I’m only going off of the stuff I know from my world. Oh yeah, that’s it. It was Perseus, the Hero. Anyway, yeah. I’m only going off my knowledge of the constellations that I was taught in human school. You ponies are bound to have some differences.”

Twilight nodded. “That makes sense. That you recognized any at all is impressive. But Leo is a type of monster-class creature here. In the order Stellamorphous, to be precise. All of these parallels, though... do you think that, maybe, our worlds were connected, once?”

“I don’t doubt it, anything’s possible when you figure in the ‘infinite-universes’ theory, which I happen to believe in. Also, I suppose another Stellar creature is Taurus, a bull?”

“Cattle, but yes, they’re pretty common in the Minotaur’s countries. They raise them as sacred animals.”

“Taurus is a bull in the human constellations. Eh, whatever, I suppose there’s not a huge difference. So, I guess I’ll take this back to Luna after tomorrow.”

Twilight nodded. “Thank you. I don’t know how somepony could’ve stolen it, but it shouldn’t be running around.” Twilight, shuddering from the adrenaline crash, went to the couch and lay down on it. “Oh jeez, I am exhausted. I’ll... I’ll reshelve the...” Twilight yawned broadly. “in th’ ev’n’n...” She was snoring before long at all.

I think about the instrument in my hands. I seem to have control over the way it plays so wouldn’t that mean that I have control over what it does? Couldn’t I just tell it not to cause any disasters? Eh, whatever, I’m still gonna rock that party tomorrow. Vinyl might like some of our music. Who knows. I wonder what I’ll play... I think on that for a bit, but decide I’ll choose one once I’m on stage. This is gonna be good.

Next Chapter: Chapter 54 Estimated time remaining: 27 Hours, 48 Minutes