Chapters
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Nathan couldn’t believe what he was hearing.Everything Ashley said made perfect sense. Sure, the girl was a little awkward about the way she said it, and much more “conspiracy theory” than when she gave less interesting presentations about using machine learning to write stories, or other such nonsense. But Nathan didn’t care.He sat in one of the top rows of the campus brony club, where he always sat. It was nearest one of the upper exit doors, ready for him to quietly slip out when the meetings…-
33.8 K •
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Julian woke trapped. He was inside something, wrapped up in slime and something like silk. There was nothing but darkness all around him, constricting his movements. He called out, but his voice was drowned in some kind of slime that surrounded him. It rushed down his throat, starting to suffocate him.He began to kick, and he felt his containment give a little. He focused there with both of his hind legs, shoving as hard as he could. Something tore. Fluid poured out from the opening, and he realized he was…-
43.4 K •
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Julian took a long time to decide—maybe longer than he should have. Weeks passed, and he ignored the desire to return to the front and help his world expand. That was important, but the danger of the giants was too great. At least so far, diplomacy was going well. Interacting with their own changed former-passengers helped, as they were able to see the fairies who had attacked them more as fellow victims than some evil force that lurked in the woods.He stayed close just in case, though he wasn’t sure…
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43.4 K •
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Julian woke much earlier than Avery—well, this one. Having such varied schedules was actually an advantage for Julian, it meant that he could spend his time with more than one of the pieces of his best friend. It would’ve been much simpler to think that only Avery was the same person and that all the others were clones—but that worldview had not survived evidence. The truth was that every little piece was something he recognized, and every one of them cared about him in her own way.So he took…
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43.4 K •
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“Hold on,” Avery muttered, her horn glowing for a second. There was a brief flash, a moment of disorientation, and suddenly they were on the bottom floor of the lab.I’ll never get used to that, Julian thought, pawing at the ground and trying to get the frost off his coat. Teleportation wasn’t so bad when he was “big,” but the cold was much harder on a small body. He shivered for a few seconds and could see Avery was shivering too. You shouldn’t be so afraid of flying you freeze yourself…
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43.4 K •
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Julian knew he shouldn’t play favorites. Every single one of the surviving ten breezies that had been Avery wanted time with him, and they all got it in various capacities. It had been worse during the first few years, when they argued over time with him (behind his back) like children, but didn’t seem terribly interested in his own feelings on the matter.But there had always been one exception—one Avery that wasn’t like the others. She was easy to tell apart, both by her magic and the way she…
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43.4 K •
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“Alright, umm… I know this might be a little weird, but I’m gonna need you all to split up.” Julian was in constant motion—every few seconds he felt the need to twitch, to move, to make sure that he was indeed cured.The last two weeks had been an increasingly nascent haze, crowding in upon his mind until he couldn’t even get out of bed and relied on Avery for his survival. That reliance, as it turned out, had been well-founded. And it only cost her entire existence to survive. He couldn’t…
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43.4 K •
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Avery felt… less.For a long time it was all she could manage to lay in bed and try to figure out what was different. Except her bed didn’t feel like a bed at all, but like a slab of something rough and rigid, grating against her coat. She belonged somewhere else, but she couldn’t name the where.I tried the ritual last night. I agreed to pay… something… for Julian. He should be cured. What had the night matron said? “I will take away your hoofprints from fate, so you can slip through its…
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43.4 K •
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They read through most of the night. They read until the fire burned down and the sun filled the top floor of their shelter with creamy light. By the time Avery even remembered there was food to eat, the pot of beans had been completely ruined. But she didn’t feel hungry anymore, and the limits of their food supply no longer made her apprehensive. There were far bigger things to worry about now.The books told the same, troubling story. They told the story not of the two of them transported to an alien…
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43.4 K •
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The first thing Avery felt was the dashboard as she smacked into it. Her seatbelt had somehow slipped off her arms, though it held her more firmly around her legs. If it wasn’t for that, she might’ve gone through the windshield. She could smell the fuel after that, hear the persistent siren in the car as it wailed.She must’ve hit damn hard, because nothing felt right. Her extremities had gone numb, and her head throbbed in a way worse than any of her migraines.After an indeterminate length of time,…
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43.4 K •
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