Tom had been trudging through the fresh snow, following the clear sign of footsteps through it. He nearly stumbled into the same ravine that had tried claiming Poppy, but he and Wave both saw it in plenty of time to carefully navigate around it. However, two things were really annoying him now.

As the weather cleared up and the first signs of the sun poked out, Tom found out just how sensitive to light his eyes were. Of course, the snowblind effect only made it that much worse. Additionally, while his footing on the hooves he now sported was quite solid, and he couldn’t really feel the cold through them, he could feel the cold quite acutely right above them, as the snow kept pushing up his pants leg. Without those boots to keep his pants tucked inside, his leg was quite chilly, which he had been a bit vocal about, grumbling along the way when he wasn’t busy talking with Wave, learning more about his new apparent wife.

“Finally, there he is… although I think the only thing you managed to do there was yell in my ear, Wave,” Tom grumbled, shifting his hold on her slightly, supporting her on his back for once. He had the barely-filled saddlebags still, his boots added to the pitons and few bits contained within. “Still, I was wondering how much further ahead he’d gone…”

Eric waved to them as well, waiting patiently lest he lose the tracks that would serve as their new guide. He called out to them loudly, bidding Poppy do the same as they awaited their reunion.

Wave whispered in her companion's ear as they approached, "You're looking a little cold. I know you're trying to put your feet in slowly, but a little fur could help with that." She rubbed her cheek against his. "If you want."

“Just a little bit? Without boots, my lower legs are freezing pretty good,” he muttered in reply, still walking forward as he closed the distance between Eric and himself. “Just… I’ve already got hooves, I guess a little fur above them wouldn’t hurt. So long as you don’t turn me into a teddy bear or something, Wave, okay? Sides,” he paused, sifting a few thoughts around in his head before speaking back up, “I’ve sorta committed myself to staying here, haven’t I? It can’t hurt, and it’ll make it easier to deal with this weather.”

Wave pressed her lips against his, the difference subtle but noticed as she pushed further change on him, willing his inner-pony to come out and sending a little more of the alien being known as humanity away. The fur just around his hooves began to spread up quickly along his legs, covering it in striking color. Yellow-green the likes of which would look fine on a street sign covered his legs as the chill was turned away.

Tom returned that kiss, pausing in his walk. The prickling sensation tickled, but the warmth that followed immediately after was very welcoming. Once he was sure that he wouldn’t trip, he continued moving forward, Eric getting much closer now as his pace picked up a fair bit.

Wave nuzzled into the kiss, no longer required, but enjoyed all the more. Her eyes glanced downwards, trying to get a peek even as she did it, but that was quite impossible. The struggle between the two eventually was won by curiosity. "Show me your legs," she said after pulling back from the kiss. Subtle.

Stopping, Tom waved at Eric before grabbing a pant leg and lifting it up, pulling it a few inches above that black hoof. “Well… that’s bright,” he remarked aloud, looking at the yellow-green fur, carefully balancing on one leg as he lifted the other up for Wave to get a good look at. “Goes up my legs, too, not sure where it stops, but it’s warm. Much better in this snow, I’ll say that. Not sure how I feel about the color, though,” he mumbled, setting the leg down as he nearly lost his balance.

Eric smiled a bit at the affectionate couple. Always good to see married couples getting along so well. It always bothered him how many felt like they had to hide their affection even when they wore their bands to proclaim it. Still, the train of thought could not go on for long before reminding him that his own sex life had recently dropped from enviable to nonexistent, with no signs of improvement coming. He saddened a moment until the sight of Tom’s leg made him laugh. 1.4 ponies, and counting.

Wave noticed the strange bands of dark magic that were much more visible than they had been. "What were you doing? And where's the puppy?" She peered at the new canine. "Is that them? Um, so, what were you doing?" She was repeating herself, but the question was the only that came to mind for her.

Tom looked from Eric to the canine, blinking a few times. Even with shadow-conjured shades, the signs of dark magic were extremely visible. “Eric? What Wave said. If you take off those glasses, something tells me you’ll be rocking the Sombra-look. Which, well, it isn’t a good thing,” he added on, shaking his head. “I get that you want to see your family again, but at what point does the cost become too much?”

"Poppy fell down a crevice, and broke her leg. I had to figure out a way down and back up, and shadow magic doesn't include something as simple and straightforward as healing. How bad is it?" Eric asked, pulling off the glasses and blinking in Tom’s direction.

Wave tilted her head. "It's… not normal? If it doesn't hurt, it's not so bad, I suppose." She snuggled against her freakish human as she made judgement calls on aesthetics. "Does it hurt?"

“Eric? It’s pretty obvious something’s not normal. You’ve got shadow literally pouring from the corners of your eyes right now, and your eyes are Sombra’s… do you really want to be using a power that an entire Empire fears? You know that we could ask one of the alicorns, and they could probably help you go to your family, or bring them here. I’m… a bit concerned, honestly,” Tom added on, finally coming to a stop. His eyes noticed the tracks behind Eric at last, and he grinned. “And… train tracks? Awesome!”

"Funny you should mention fear. I just learned that I can draw power from fear. If that's not a problematic incentive, I don't know what is. It’s probably what got Poppy acting the way she was before I purified her. Alicorns, huh? I don't suppose they can give me a less problematic form of power? This is... concerning at best, even if it's great to not helpless," Eric answered.

Wave twitched an ear lightly. "Remind me what an 'alicorn' is?" She sighed a little and pointed to the tracks. "You two know what that is. How many new things are there? Have the ponies just gone and left me behind?" She frowned a little. "I wonder if there's…" She seemed to realize she was ignoring what was being said and smiled a little. "Whatever they are, maybe they can help you, Eric?"

Shaking his head, Tom walked up to Eric’s side, resting an arm on his shoulder. “Look, man. you need help, whether or not you can get power from any of the ponies, you can’t keep using the shadow stuff. Okay? I haven’t known you for long, but I’m concerned. For you, that is.” Pausing, he craned his neck a bit to try and look at Wave. “And Wave? This might sound a little odd, but… Equestria is part of a, show, back home that has let us see into Equestria, back on Earth. I don’t know how much of it is true, but if Sombra and the Crystal Ponies exist, then logically the rest of it should too. Which means that alicorns exist, and they’re extremely powerful, embodying all the forms of ponies in one, or something like that.”

"I'll... I'll try to avoid it, but... what would you have done? Left Poppy to die because she tried to help find Lost?" Eric inquired.

Wave was caught in two conversations. Her mind tried to imagine something that had all the pony types in it. "Does she have a tail like me?" Wave wiggled her thick flipper of a tail. "And wings, and a horn, and is she crystal or not? Halfway?" Yeah, that surely grabbed her attention more than Eric's quandary.

Tom blinked, chuckling at the sight of a Celestia with the literal parts of every pony. Phrasing, it needs some work. “No, Wave, if it’s as the show goes, then she’s got the flight of a pegasus, the magic of a unicorn, and the endurance of an earth pony. And is very long lived, too.” Scratching at her ear lightly, he turned back to Eric, sighing. “Look, man, what’s done is done, okay? Just, you’re already rocking the eyes, let’s try not to have you turning into smoke and stuff too. If we manage to get to the empire, the first guard we see? We’ll tell them we surrender and want to see their leader. Okay?”

"Take me to your leader," Eric said in a mock alien voice. "Joking aside, that's probably a good idea. I am done trying to hide the truth and let things blow up at the worst time."

Wave shook her head. "Unless you have something you really think you should hide?" She clearly didn't entirely get it. "I want to get to their city though. Do you think they know much about Sirens?"

“Wave, if the stuff shown in the show reflects what happened here, that same power is what enslaved those ponies we met, and then when he was about to be beat or something, he made the entire place disappear for over a thousand years? They really don’t like it, I would imagine, but Eric isn’t that pony who enslaved them. As for Sirens, possibly. Their library is pretty big, I think? Should be a lot to look up there,” Tom rambled on a bit, glancing over to Eric. “So… which way do you think we should go?” he asked in regards to the tracks.

“South is my obvious answer, though I don’t have a… hmm, hold on,” Eric responded, before digging out his phone and powering it up, poking around on it. “Of course, assuming the magnetic field of this place is sufficiently similar to Earth may be a stretch, it’s worth a try.”

It quickly became apparent that there was magnetism at work! South was… to the right, at least from the direction they had come from, which was apparently from the west?

Wave peered at the curious device. "Is that a compass? I thought that was a… phone was it? How many things can it do?"

“A wise man once said, and I paraphrase, a smartphone is the worst kind of deus ex machina. If an author were to include one in a story it would be considered incredibly lazy writing, because it just does every god damned thing,” Eric said before beginning to follow the tracks in the southern direction. “The tricky bit with these things is getting software, the instructions that tells it what to do with all the capabilities it has. Especially here in Equestria. But it already knew how to show a compass.” He turned the phone back off to save power, while he could.

Reminded of his own, waterlogged phone, Tom patted his pants pocket for a moment before remembering that it’d been lost in Wave’s pool. However, he felt that round sphere with his house in it, reminded about that. “It can do a lot of things, Wave. Not so much being in Equestria, but it still has some uses,” he simplified Eric’s reply, turning to follow him.

“So, Eric,” Tom began after a few moments of silence. “I really don’t know much else about you besides your wife and kid, and your interest in fantasy stuff… what do you think of this entire mess so far?”

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