This is a story from my non-pony fantasy universe that I wrote as a gift for my friend's 25th birthday. I hope to post the full universe here eventually, but for now enjoy this! The lifeless, oceanic sands of Agdra'sen-Ya stood silent for a brief moment. The gusts had revealed hidden spires of epoch-old temples as others were buried once again by the same sands - one more iteration in a cycle that had been repeating for longer than even some Gods could remember. The facade of one such golden relic shined with glorious light, its triangular obelisk of a steeple rippling like a blazing torch as though drinking in the fierce fire of the planet's three suns. All was serene with stark, sunlit fury save the great structure's precipice, which stood disturbed by some unlikely thieves. Though the solar winds were quite adept at painting their serpentine art across the sands, not even the last strong gust could completely erase the scuffle created by the intruders' footprints. For now the calm and perfection of this dead world would have to wait, as two dark figures emerged like living shadows from the monolith's interior and stepped once more into hot, dusty, near-nothingness. As the suns hit them, only one of the robbers cast a shadow. The other seemed to laugh at the light as it tried to extinguish the perfect darkness of which it seemed wholly furnished from. "Really, you couldn't have chosen a more hospitable locale?" the human griped, pulling down a tan bandanna that had been covering her mouth. Immediately, she turned her back to the once-more blowing wind, sputtering as sand flew into her mouth. The dark thing barely stifled a guffaw as the shadows about its dog-like head parted in a wicked grin. "You told me you were tired of dark, dank, damp, drudgerous dungeons!" Now he did have to giggle a bit. "So you interpreted that as, 'Let's go to a desert world with three suns that's hotter than sweet calamity?,'" she sighed, pushing her large, round-framed glasses back up her nose. "...Good one buddy." As the creature was known to do, finally unable to contain it's sick joy, it rolled about the sand laughing. A few schadenfreude-laden moments later, the shadow dog was up and sitting politely on its haunches, staring at the girl with wide, abyssal eyes. "I told you that I had something special planned though, and I wasn't lying. This planet is one of the oldest in recordable history," he proudly stated as she put her hands on her hips in indignation. "Yeah... you told me that before we left, and while we were in trapezohedo-flight... and twice after we landed." She sighed again as her eyes half-closed with fatigued annoyance. "And you should be thanking me much more profusely than you're currently not doing. Not many worlds hang around this long! Most of them hardly make it past their quindecillions before their basal logic strings collapse, and they crash out of existence. Agdra'sen-Ya just celebrated its quattuortrigintillionial! Isn't that simply marvelous?!" He wagged his tail happily. "It's marvelously scorching out here, and if we stay here much longer, I'll be marvelously desiccated," she huffed, kicking a little pile of sand. "Yes, that's true," he said with sing-song cheer, "but you still haven't guessed why I brought you here!" He looked at her with his head tilted in expectation. "Because you're a sadist, Barky McEvilpants. My suffering fills the limitless void in whatever kind of horrifying heart still exists within you," she said drolly. The wind died down again, and all was silent and still between the two as they looked at each other from such different pairs of eyes. "Always the cynic, Miss Tiala - not one positive bone in your entire frail body - your feeble frame! Your tenuous tenement! Your achy-breaky anatomy! Your-" "I get it..." She had become strangely accustomed to his back-handed affection. "I'm merely saying that I'm not 100% malicious, and this is an important journey we've taken this time. This time. Don't go bringing Xixzdidzix again." "OH! You mean Worm World?! I'm still finding them in my clothes! I can still hear them singing, you heinous hound!" She burst out, leveling her head against his, glaring. "And I apologized! Copiously! And I was also being sincere that time too!" he barred his teeth and glared back. "So tell me, Mr. McEvilpants," she enunciated his hated nickname, "Why, oh why are we here?" The anger vanished from the dog's face. "Ah! I'm glad you Asked Miss Tiala! ahem," he cleared his throat even though he technically didn't have one, "It is my utmost and very superb pleasure to announce that..." He paused, eyes half-winking in a smile. "Yeah?" "That you've..." "I've what?" He lit up the sky with dark blue, purple, and red magical fireworks, "You've leveled up! Congratulations! Hooray!" rearing up on his hind legs he jumped around as void light exploded around them both. "You're now level 25! I had my doubts from day one, oh boy I must tell you I had my doubts. You were beyond pathetic, nigh in-salvageable, but here you are! Standing on a planet over 10[SUP]204 [/SUP]years old! Having learned so much! There was your first spell, your first demon kill, the first word of Elder you learned to say properly, that time you told that angel knight where he could stick his bright-lance - so many wonderful memories!" Tiala Cel only starred in confusion at her umbral companion. "Leveled up?" "Yes!" "Levels? What are you even talking about?" Her face screwed up in strange bemusement. "Levels of experience. The first few are easy. You reached level four by blowing your nose with that handkerchief that one dark sorcerer had magically stitched his bloodline into." "Heh... good times." "Level 17 was a tricky one. I thought you were done-for when the Heaven Mandate excelsiarchs had you corned in the bazaar, but you cut that dimensional-gossamer net right in two with the magic sword trick. Then there it was: Ding! level 17!" "Yeah..." Tiala said contentedly, "I'd never been able to do the sword trick before, but suddenly it just snapped into my head." A smile crept onto her face as she held out her hand, squinting imperceptibly as line segments began to assemble from nothing above her palm until a sleek, angular curved short-sword - both dark and glimmering at once - appeared floating, waiting to be grabbed. "See? You can do it anytime now. Levels!" "I... sorta get it, yeah! How did I reach level 25 though?" She tilted her head a bit as she willed the sword out of existence. "Unimportant, though speaking of which" he paused, raising a paw that seemed to turn slightly liquid, and in the next second a shiny, intricate-looking egg-shaped object ascended from his gel-like shadow matter. It had a thin, slender chain attached to it, and once it was fully removed from the dark paw, it hung languidly. "This is for you." His face was serious, and his eyes stared directly into hers as the object dangled from his paw, swinging slightly like a little pendulum from the wind. "But what is it?" Tiala looked at it with rapt curiosity wither her glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose, not unlike the way she'd study an ancient book as if the rest of the universe no longer mattered. It looked like a small amulet though of unimaginable complexity. Wires of the most amazing degree of thin fragility ran about its interior, and though there were many of them, she could still spot a subtle pattern, as though they were capillaries in a living heart. Precious stones set in baroque filigrees dotted the flowing matrix of wires, and all about them were what looked like slight gears and springs. There were too many of them to count, like a miniature galaxy of clockwork. What more, it seemed to have a life unto itself. Though no parts moved, she felt like she could feel a pulse radiating outward from the amulet. "It is for you!" he wagged his tail again. "Dear... it's beautiful. I've never seen anything like it." Her voice echoed with wonder. "And you shan't see anything like it again as long as you live." Though he loved his jokes and regrettably most of what came out of his toothy mouth was a jeer or insult of some kind, Tiala knew he was dead serious now. "What does it... what does it do? What is it for?" She reached out for it, and the dog let it fall from his paw into her open hand. "It's not for anything in particular. Not even I know exactly why it was originally constructed, though it was most certainly a treasure of this world when it was at its height." He turned his head and let his shadowy coat soak up the wind as he gazed at the triple suns. "As for what it does: many things. It plays music, will tell you stories (Sometimes they're the same thing). It offers words of comfort when you need them. It's a heart beat when you need to feel another. I do hope you like it." He lowered his head in the closest thing to a gesture of respect he'd ever shown, and to his surprise (for once), Tiala fell to her knees, giving him a huge hug. "Oh! I love you too, Barky McEvilpants! You big, nameless, evil elder-god sweetie!" A happy tear fell from her eye to become the first water that had touched the surface of Agdra'sen-Ya in unknown ages. "Please, oh pleeeaaase, never call me that again!" he huffed and looked away. "Then take a different form, silly!" she released her embrace, much to the dark god's happiness. "Be a cat sometime!" she giggled. "What do I look like? Your little plaything? The forbidden, cosmic horrors that I could release upon your weak, timid brain..." "Yeah, yeah, madness and existential terror the likes of which could tear galaxies asunder; I've heard it all before." She laughed a bit and gazed at the magical rune embroidered into the sleeve of her robe, using it to conjure a happy little fireball in her palm, absent-mindedly playing with it. "Anyway, I've had enough of this place. Let's go on another adventure. Ooh! let's find a library! My tush is killing me from all this walking, and I just want to sit and read." "There were more tombs I'd wanted to plunder today, but I suppose your brittle mortal coil ruins everything again. Come now!" Then with that, he conjured the shining trapezohedron that they used to move through the stars like a needle travels through fabric, and they were gone. An epoch-old temple hidden amidst lifeless, oceanic sands that shone with the reflected fire of three suns sat alone and silent once more, solar winds gently gusting to recreate their serpentine, desert artwork and wipe away the two sets of footprints, making the planet serene, stark, and perfect once again.
