Cube Land

Chapter Eleven: Resolution

Twilight cautiously walked up to the biped's room and knocked her hoof against the door to get his attention. He looked over at her from the desk he was sitting at and nodded. Their silent guardian scribbled a few more words down on the piece of paper he'd been writing on, stood up, and motioned for Twilight to go ahead of him.

Nodding her head, Twilight carefully turned around, unused to the armour that she was currently wearing. Whatever the material was, it was strong and light.

When Twilight and her friends had first laid their eyes upon the six sets of armour spread out on the carpet, they had all been a bit worried. After Twilight had finally remembered the spell that Celestia used to communicate with foreign diplomats, her brief and one-sided conversation with the biped had allayed enough of her fears regarding the necessity of the armour.

The purple mare made her way back to the living room where her friends were walking around (and in one case, hovering) to get a feel for their new bulky bulwark.

"I can't believe that those gems were made out of such a strong, lightweight material," exclaimed Rarity as she magically fit the last piece onto her back. "It hardly feels like I'm wearing anything at all! When we make it back to Equestria, I might just have to start a new line of designer protective wear!"

Applejack grumbled from where she was standing in her own armour. "Ah wouldn't get yer hopes up too soon, Rarity. There was a hefty amount a monsters down there, last Ah checked. Ah can only think that there's gonna be more the closer we get to...whatever it is the biped's after."

"C'mon Applejack, lighten up!" teased Rainbow Dash from where she was hovering. "We kicked those monster's butts last time and we didn't even have any protection! Just look how strong it is!"

To demonstrate just how tough it was, Dash flew head first into the wooden wall fast enough to dent it. "S-see?!" stammered Rainbow Dash as she tried to stand. "S-super t-tough!"

Twilight stamped her hoof in frustration at Dash's shenanigans. "Rainbow, the armour is supposed to protect us from swords and arrows, not flying head first into walls!"

"Why didn't someone tell me that before I did that?!"

Everypony present rolled their eyes at the Element of Loyalty. Twilight did a quick headcount and realized that everypony was present and wearing their designated sets of teal, glowing armour. Even Fluttershy, who had to be practically forced into her armour, was standing as resolutely as she could, even though that only meant not quivering in fear as much as when she first laid eyes upon the biped's handiwork.

"Everypony ready?" asked Twilight.

"Ah'm ready," stated Applejack adamantly.

"Buck yeah!" responded Rainbow Dash, ready to go crush some unlucky monster's faces.

"Do we really have to go down into that dreadful pit again?" Rarity whined. After everypony looked at her and nodded, she relented. "Well, if we must... I'm ready as well."

"I...I suppose so," murmured Fluttershy.

"Absopositivilutely! Right Jumpy McJumperson?" announced Pinkie Pie. The spider's eyes blinked one at a time, causing a rippling effect. It punctuated it with a short and sharp hiss. "Jumpy's ready too!" she reported happily.

"Everypony's ready then," said Twilight. "All we have to do is wait for the bip--"

No sooner had the unicorn said those words than a towering pillar of the mysterious and lightweight gems started ponderously walking towards them from the hallway. Each tremendous step that it took reverberated along the entire foundation of the house, causing the ponies to slowly back away in fear.

It was only revealed to be the biped when he reached a plated hand to his helmet and slid the visor up, revealing it to be him. Everypony breathed a collective sigh of relief that it was only the friendly creature and not some strange, armoured automaton. Armour clanking, he made the motion of leaving. Twilight and the rest of the ponies nodded their assent.

"Alright! Let's do this!" exclaimed Rainbow Dash. The biped smiled at her obvious enthusiasm.

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Final Journal Entry

I'm a monster.

Not just in the figurative sense, but in a very literal definition of the term. I became...

...Infected. Infested. There was a parasite living inside of me. And it called itself 'Herobrine'.

...I'll start from the beginning.

...

The ponies were all wearing the armour that I made them. I noticed that Charity and Daybreak were wearing each others set, but they are so similar in body type that it didn't really matter. I doubt that they even noticed.

When I walked out in my own set that nearly covered me from head to toe, the ponies were definitely frightened of my appearance. Only after I raised the visor on my helmet and they saw my face did they relax. Perhaps they thought that I was some sort of mechanical apparatus. With all the armour that I was wearing, I barely looked like myself, so I couldn't blame them for being startled by my now even-more-so towering form.

With my new, vastly improved sword and my trusty diamond pickaxe attached to my waist and back respectively, I left my home with the ponies in tow. Of course, my sword and pick weren't the only things I brought along with me: I had a few other odds and ends packed in and around my persona. I will describe what I had when it becomes relevant to my retelling.

The walk to the Mine felt like it took longer than usual. I can only assume it was a combination of the full diamond bulwark making my movements less fluid and my own fears and worries slowing my steps. Was it right to enlist the ponies to assist in the delve? I couldn't answer that question. Even if I could, I'm not sure whether I would've accepted the answer or not.

I led the way down into the Pit, torch held in one hand and my sword in the other, burning a path through the darkness. I was exorbitantly protected, more so than I have ever been before, yet I still felt weary and oppressed as we descended once again into the Pit. The pony's hooves clopped and clanked behind me as I approached the chasm that had blocked their passage last time.

This time, however, I was prepared to make a path for them. I opened up a small compartment in my armour and pulled out some small cubes of cobblestone: I was going to make them a bridge. Motioning for the ponies to wait behind me, I placed the cobblestone blocks along the gap, attaching them to each other to make a bridge three blocks wide. I would've made it one block wide, maybe two at the most were it just myself, but I didn't know how well the ponies could balance.

After I turned back to Daybreak, who had taken it upon herself to be my delegate, and motioned for the ponies to follow once more I received some very curious stares. It took me a second to realize why: the ponies hadn't seen me exercise my power of amorphous-izing the small cubes into one meter by one meter blocks before. It was only after I tramped back and forth on the bridge to show it's stability did the ponies accompany me again.

Not long after we crossed the crevice, we came upon the remains of Spectrum, Apple, and I's battleground. It didn't look like anything had disturbed the remains since I was last down there, which was a relief. It meant that my collapsing of the tunnel had actually worked in keeping whatever monsters were beyond locked away.

As I continued to walk onward, my nose was filled with the disgusting scent of decomposing flesh. If it was possible, dead zombies smelt even worse than they did when they were alive. I briefly looked behind me and saw through the slit in my helmet a pony quivering in fear and trying to make herself as small as possible. After a second or two, I realized that it was Benevolence. I had already pegged her to be the most likely pony to require aid or encouragement to continue forward.

Fortunately for our...quest's sake, Charity, Apple, and Daybreak were able to soothe Benevolence enough to be able to coax her through the putrid stench. Through an unfortunate circumstance, Benevolence's armoured hoof accidently brushed up against one of the dead zombies. She made a terrified squeaking noise which ended up startling Charity, who was walking right beside the other timid pony in what I could only assume was for moral support. Charity ended up bumping into a spider's carcass. The scream that followed most certainly alerted any monsters of the Night of our presence, if they weren't aware of it already. Ponies aren't exactly the quietest species, with their loud, clopping hooves and their continual chittering. While wearing armour, that noise level is only amplified.

I had presumed yesterday that Charity was uncomfortable around spiders, as she had been extremely wary around Joy's pet. While confirmation is always nice to have, I wish that the validation of my guess hadn't been quite so...loud.

With Benevolence curled up into an armoured ball on the ground, whimpering softly, and Charity screaming her lungs out, I was at a loss on what to do. I had Daybreak to thank once again for solving the issue for me. After she realized what had happened, she unceremoniously put both Charity and Benevolence into two separate, floating purple spheres that seemed to be Daybreak's specialty. The wailing stopped as soon as the white pony was encased in the sphere, much to my relief. Spectrum and Apple seemed to share my relief, as they sighed in unison.

Daybreak waited until Charity had regained her composure, then she carefully placed her back onto the stone floor of the tunnel. Benevolence, however, was seemingly incapacitated. Whether it was out of fear or something else, I cannot say. No amount of coaxing from the other ponies could get Benevolence to move, so I ended up picking the pony up and carrying her over my shoulder. She was lighter than I had expected.

Thankfully, there were no more delaying incidents; we made it to where I had collapsed the tunnel the last time I was down there. I carefully put Benevolence onto the ground: she seemed to have come back to her senses during the time I was carrying her. I opened up another compartment in my suit of armour and pulled out a single cube of TNT.

TNT is an extremely explosive substance. I only make it when something needs to be destroyed, completely and utterly. It's not easy to make either: the main ingredient, sulphur, can only be obtained from the corpses of fallen creepers. I'm not sure why creepers are suicidal, walking explosives, nor do I know how they ignite themselves: TNT only explodes when a Redstone charge passes through it.

I looked at the collapsed entrance with a professional eye: if there's one thing that I'm familiar with, it's underground tunnels. There was one spot that was perfectly situated for the TNT to do maximum explosive damage, but it was higher than I could reach, and I couldn't see a feasible way for me to climb up there to place it. Conveniently enough, there happened to be a pony that could fly nearby.

************************************************************

"Be careful Dash!" admonished Twilight as the blue pegasus nearly crashed into a wall. "If I understand correctly, whatever's in that block is highly explosive!"

"I'm...trying!" huffed Rainbow Dash as she tried to regain her balance. "It's a lot...heavier than...it looks!"

After flailing her wings for a few more seconds, Rainbow finally got back her equilibrium. She hovered in the air for a few seconds more before flapping her wings as fast as she could, trying to gain some more height. Finally, she managed to drop the block of TNT off in the spot that the biped had indicated.

Panting and sweating, Rainbow Dash's armoured form collapsed onto the ground. "I...I take it back. This armour...isn't that light..."

Twilight rolled her eyes. She was going to tell Dash that it was the bulkiness of the armour and not the weight affecting her flight capabilities, but she was distracted by their towering bulwark of a guardian. He seemed to be putting some sort of red dust on the ground, starting from the explosive box and moving away from it. Twilight was curious as to how he was actually going to ignite the explosives: was the red dust some sort of ignition, or was it the wick, like a candle?

The answers to Twilight's questions came faster than she expected. The biped motioned for them to back away from the blast zone. When all of the ponies were sufficiently away, he bent over and procured what Twilight thought was an ordinary torch at first glance. At second glance, however, the torch gave off a weak, red light rather than the stronger, yellow light of the other torches that she had seen the creature use. He placed the red torch on the ground, right where the red dust trail ended, then he sprinted away from the cave-in and towards the ponies.

Twilight heard a fizzing sound come from the block. Before she could ponder why it was making that noise, the explosive box detonated, causing Twilight's vision to shake and her ears to ring. Through jarred vision, Twilight managed to catch a glimpse of a massive hole where the cave-in used to be. Wow, thought Twilight, awestruck by the amount of damage that one block caused. There's so much that we still have to learn from this world!

The lavender unicorn's future expedition plans would have to wait however, as from beyond the smoke and haze that the explosion generated, she heard a chorus of chilling moans and eerie hisses.

Twilight gulped. I really hope Applejack and Rainbow Dash were exaggerating how gruesome some of these things were...

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The TNT worked exactly like it should have. With the help of Spectrum, the explosive block was able to be placed in the most effective spot. After laying a line of Redstone dust on the ground to act as the trigger mechanism, I ignited it with the single Redstone torch that I brought with me, then I ran to cover: I wasn't feeling up to testing my armour against explosions at that particular moment in time.

The explosion was...larger than it should have been. I think I put too much sulphur into that particular block. Regardless, the TNT block did its job: it cleared the debris out of our way without destabilizing the rest of the cave network. A few seconds after the TNT successfully detonated, I heard the all-too familiar sounds of zombies and spiders voicing their anger and hatred. The foul creatures of the Night started spilling out of the newly created entrance.

I'm not going to write down a detailed list of every move I made. I will however, write about how much the ponies helped me in the battle.

Spectrum and Apple were even more effective while they were wearing the diamond armour. A single kick from one of Apple's armoured legs would normally be more than enough to put down a spider or zombie for good. Spectrum continued with her reckless, flying charges, but I'm happy to report that the armour stopped all of the possible injuries she may have sustained while doing so.

I learned that Charity does have similar abilities to Daybreak, although they don't seem to be as powerful. The colour is different as well. Instead of the purple of Daybreak's, Charity's ability is a light blue. Both of them would assist Spectrum, Apple, and I by trapping the monsters in mid-air, making them easy prey for us.

Benevolence did not actively participate, although she did race forward and drag Apple to safety when she slipped on some spilled...internal liquids of the monsters. Benevolence may be shy and kind, but she was still capable of putting herself in harm's way to save Apple.

Joy. I have absolutely no clue as to what she was doing the whole time we were fighting. She'd somehow pop up behind the monsters and distract them before disappearing and starting the whole process over again! I couldn't keep track of her: she seemed to be everywhere at once. I don't understand how or why Joy did what she did, but I can't argue with results. If anything, the spiders and zombies seemed even more confused regarding her behaviour than I was!

After the monsters were defeated, we slowly made our way forward. I'm not sure when, but at some point, the regular stone melded into the crafted stone that I had seen all those days ago. It seemed only right that my little adventure would end where it began. The tunnel condensed as we continued to walk forward on the strangely familiar, crafted stone. With a torch in one hand and my diamond sword in the other, we hit the first snag in an otherwise straightforward and linear path: an intersection.

There were three options: left, right, or continue forward. I briefly thought about it, then decided to continue forward...

...He was waiting for us.

*************************************************************

"Ah don't like this, girls," said Applejack in a hushed tone. "This place feels all sorts of wrong."

Twilight was inclined to agree. Ever since the tunnel had narrowed and the stone had changed, everypony had felt something that just wasn't right. The biped seemed to be unaffected, but Twilight couldn't see his face, so she couldn't be sure.

"I...I have to agree with you, Applejack. It feels...oppressive in here," agreed Rarity.

"Hey, what's that?" asked Rainbow Dash as she pointed with one of her hooves.

Everypony looked where Dash was pointing. There seemed to be light coming from the end of the tunnel. As they slowly walked closer, the tunnel was revealed to end in a great, spacious cavern. There were torches symmetrically placed all along the walls and there were colossal, towering bookshelves placed haphazardly on the ground.

"Is...is someone living here?"

This doesn't feel like someone's living quarters, thought Twilight. This feels like someone's catacomb...

Twilight forced aside her unease as the biped continued to walk forward. There was another portal that was nigh-identical to the one that brought them to the cube land, but instead of the film of energy being purple, it was silvery.

"Everypony, look!" shouted Twilight, unable to help herself. "Another portal!"

Everypony started cheering when they laid their eyes upon the portal as well. The cheering stopped when another biped with glowing white eyes appeared in a flash of darkness between themselves and the portal.

**********************************************************************

The abomination was waiting for us. Waiting for me.

"Ah, what a pleasure it is to see you again, my dear nephew," it said.

I didn't respond. Instead, I planted the torch at my feet and gripped my sword with both hands.

It made a tsking sound. "Have you no respect for your elders, boy? I came here to talk; not to fight."

I kept my sword at the ready. There was no way I was letting my guard down now.

"I see my Curse of Silence is still working. Good to know. I always seem to forget how long that lasts for. Speaking of forgetfulness..."

I blinked, and the abhorrent creature was right in front of me. I tried to swing my sword, but I was frozen in place.

"...I think it's about time that you remembered your place in life, no?"

It ripped my helmet off and laid it's hand on the top of my head. I tried to resist, but whatever dark magic he had cast upon me did not release me from its grasp.

A flood of memories, images and feelings, scents and sounds, filled my consciousness. I started to remember things that I should never have forgotten: the valley that I grew up in, my parents...I even remembered my name.

Unfortunately, I also remembered some things that I wished I hadn't. My faithful companion, my one and only friend during my childhood, slain by my hand. He didn't die distracting the abomination for me to land a killing blow: he died when I slit his throat whilst under the control of the embodiment of anathema.

"Good. How do you feel now?" it asked with malice and contempt.

I couldn't answer. The memories were too painful.

"I figured as much. I suppose you're wondering why I brought these ponies here, yes?"

I nodded. I didn't want to, but I nodded anyway.

"They're the greatest defence that their world has. I intend to take over their world. Can you put the pieces together, Steve?"

I could, very easily. It wanted to trap the six ponies in my world, leaving their own world defenceless .

"Close, but not quite. Instead of trapping them here, I think I'll just have you kill them. I hate it when things come back to bite me in the end."

I was shocked and affronted that it believed that I would ever harm the ponies.

"You think that you have a choice? That's priceless! No, little nephew, you are mine, both in body and mind!"

It's eyes flashed vivid white and I found my consciousness shoved aside as it took control of my body. I could only watch in horror as my eyes moved of their own accord and settled onto the ponies. I felt a murderous grin spread onto my face as I slowly advanced towards them, my sword drawn and ready.

Just as my body was about to thrust downward with my newly created sword, I managed to regain control for a brief moment.

"GO!" I screamed at them, and motioned towards the portal. Daybreak looked into my eyes and nodded once, then ran towards the portal, the other ponies following her.

Just as quickly as I had gained control of myself, I was forced back into the passenger seat. I felt myself growl in anger and watched as I charged after the ponies.

**********************************************************

"Everypony run for the portal!" screamed Twilight Sparkle as she raced across the stone floor.

"Why is the biped all evil now?!"

"I don't know!" huffed Twilight as she glanced behind her. The biped was racing after them, his eyes glowing white and his face contorted into a snarl. "I think he's being controlled by the other one that appeared!"

Twilight reached the portal first, but she made sure that everypony else went before her. Just as Twilight was about to hop into the portal herself, the biped threw his sword, causing it to impale into the purple rock that was the base of the portal. It missed her head by a only a few hair-widths.

In a last ditch attempt to commune with the biped, Twilight cast the communication spell once more.

"I know that you're in there somewhere! I know that you can hear me!"

The biped stopped, his eyes flickering back and forth between white and blue. His motions were jerky, like he was having an internal conflict. Finally, his eyes settled on the pure blue that had become familiar to Twilight over the last few days. He reached into another compartment of his armour and pulled out a book and offered it to her.

Confused, Twilight grabbed the book with levitation. "What am I--Hey!"

The biped picked up Twilight in his armoured arms and unceremoniously pushed her into the portal. Twilight couldn't see, but the creature known as Steve was waving to her from the other side.

**************************************************************

As I looked upon myself in the reflection of the lake, I could only think of one thing: why am I here? I didn't understand before, what with my memory being as fickle as it is.

Now, in the gentle light as the morning nears, I can't say a single word that can accurately sum up my feelings. Where were you, memory, when I needed you before?

Seeing my rugged, scarred hands, so familiar and yet at the same time, not...seeing my own hands that craft the tools that I use, that dug the holes I used to cower in...watching as my faithful hands became not my own.

All the evidence of my vagrant life, all the evidence and facts that I hid behind...I was too afraid of the truth. Without my consent, my fabricated pre-existence was wiped away by a single encounter.

At least I finally did something right. I got the ponies home. Whether or not they will remember me as their faithful, silent guardian or as an abomination remains yet to be seen. It doesn't matter either way. They're safe and secure in their own world, not trapped in this nightmarish, fantastical cube land.

I destroyed the portal. I will not allow them to return, nor will I allow anything from this side to infest their world.

My...uncle disappeared when I forced Daybreak through the portal. I know not where he went or what his plans are now. It would be foolish of me to assume that he is gone for good; my memory was wiped last time. This time, I have no excuse to forget.

I hope that they are able to decipher my old journal. I want them to know that I had only their best interests at heart.

...

I tried to do what I did before. I really did. I attempted to pull the wool over my eyes, make myself forget again...but to no avail. I can't sit still. I can't just stop and think. I have to leave. I have to seek out my old home, my...

...Family. My real family. If they're even still alive...

...

Finally, after all these years, the prodigal son is coming home.

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