Twilight awoke with a start. Her surroundings were dark and what little she could see was altogether unfamiliar. She rubbed her hooves against her temples, groaning.

‘My head hasn’t felt like this since I drank the Apple Family’s ‘Special Brew’ without realising just how ‘special’ it was...’

She cast out a soft glow from her horn, squinting slightly as she tried to get a better look at the room she was in. It was fairly large, with an exit on one side of the room. But her eyes were drawn more to the array of symbols etched into the floor.

‘Runes?’ she thought, looking at the collection of angular lines carved into the floor, ‘protection runes, channeling runes, even runes to prevent thaumic overload and arcane backflow. These are all safety runes...so...this room is used for spellcasting? And either dangerous or experimental spells, going by the level of protection...’

‘Is that what got me here? A spell of some kind? Surely there’d be somepony else around? Maybe something went wrong with the spell? I...I hope nopony was hurt! With all these precautions, it must have been quite the spell...’

She cast her eyes over herself, checking to see if there were any signs of what had happened to her. She didn’t see any injuries. Her coat, her cutie-mark, her wings, they were all intact.

‘Okay, well I seem to be okay. At least tha--’

She stopped mid-thought, as her brain caught up with her eyes.

‘Wings. I...have...WINGS?!’

She looked again, and gingerly prodded at the offending appendages with a hoof. They remained stubbornly real.

Now, Twilight was aware that she didn’t always have the greatest memory. Facts and figures were one thing, and if it was in a book or on a test, she could memorise it with a speed and accuracy that left even the brightest scholar green with envy. When it came to day to day life though, she was a little more scatter-brained. Or, as her mother liked to put it, she would forget her cutie-mark if it wasn’t stuck firmly to her rump. It was part of the reason she liked to put precise and comprehensive lists together — with a list, she could be sure to remember every detail.

Twilight was nonetheless certain that she had not previously possessed wings.

She tentatively gave the wings a small flex. It was an odd feeling, suddenly having an entirely new body part to deal with, but as she felt the slight tug on her back muscles, a memory came to her.

‘A blinding flash of light, a pulling, stretching sensation as my body changed, my limbs lengthening, the feeling of magic enveloping me, a metallic taste in my mouth, a ringing noise in my ears, and that same tugging at my back, as new appendages grew, everything is white and there’s a smell of copper and suddenly I feel the ground beneath my hooves and then —’

And then nothing. There was no more to the memory, but she was pretty sure she knew what it had been.

‘Was that what happened? Changing into this? Into...an alicorn? Was that the spell I’d been part of? I didn’t even know such a thing was possible!’

Celestia had always been very reticent about sharing information on exactly how Alicorns came about. Well, she had been reticent after a young Twilight had spent nearly a month believing her story about how she had won the wings in a race with a pegasus. Then she had met her new foalsitter Cadance, and realised that her mentor may not have been entirely honest. Yeah — immortality apparently gives you an odd sense of humour.

She strained her mind, trying to follow the thread of memory back to something useful. Unfortunately her mental efforts weren’t giving her much in the way of results. She remembered her studies, her time in Canterlot, her time in Ponyville. She remembered the library. She remembered Discord and Nightmare Moon. The Crystal Empire. She remembered her friends. There were no gaps in her memory that she could discern, it just became muddled and incoherent at the end. Flashes of events, a jumble of images and thoughts.

‘A crowd glaring at each other. Pouring rain and scorching sun in quick succession. Rainbow Dash beset by animals. Fluttershy leaving town. Sweet Apple Acres in disrepair. Carousel Boutique full of dull brown clothes, uglier than anything that had ever been seen in there before.’

Twilight gasped out loud, a degree of recollection returning to her.

“Of course! The girls, my spell! I switched their cutie marks. But what happened next? Why is it so hard to remember? Come on Twilight, think think think!” she muttered to herself.

There was a sudden scuffling noise from the other side of the room, followed by a stallion’s voice;

“Wh...who’s there? I thought this building was empty. I’m just a scavenger, I ain’t nopony important. If you’re with one of the gangs I’ll leave, I don’t want no trouble.”

What in Celestia’s name was he talking about? Gangs? Just where was she? Gangs were the purview of pulp stories and cheesy musicals, not the peaceful streets of Equestria.Her horn lit up brighter, shedding light across the room to illuminate a brown coloured earth pony standing at the entrance to the room. He was young, barely older than a colt. A dark mane fell shaggily over his back, and his hindquarters were adorned with a cutie-mark of a magnifying glass.

“Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle,” she called out to him, trying to make her voice sound as gentle as she could “I wonder if you could tell me where I am? I’m afraid I’m a little confused right now, and I could really use your help.”

She smiled at him, hoping to put him at ease. Maybe she could get some answers, and begin figuring out where she was and why she was wherever that happened to be. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case, as the colt stared at her with wide eyes, before bolting out of the room like all the demons of Tartarus were after him. Or at least some of the scarier ones.

“Wait!” she called out. “Please, I need your help!”

She ran after him, exiting the room through the doorway he’d been standing in. She galloped down the corridor, seeing only one way for him to have gone. Reaching the end, she came to a door. It had clearly been boarded up, but some of the boards had been pried loose, leaving enough room for a smaller pony to squeeze through. It didn’t take much to deduce the colt she had seen was likely the responsible party for the minor act of vandalism.

Twilight lowered her head, squeezing herself through the gap in the hopes of catching up with the fleeing brown pony. It was as she was squeezing through that she realised she’d forgotten to account for her newfound wings. The source of this realisation was a jutting nail, which left a long gash along her left wing.

“Owwww, ow ow owwww!” Twilight whimpered, her eyes watering “Stupid Twilight, stupid!”

Waiting for the pain in her wing to die down, Twilight took a moment to take stock of her situation. She was now bleeding, her left wing was likely useless to her, she had lost track of the pony she was following, she still didn’t know where she was, and she probably had tetanus. Wonderful. This was a fine mess she had gotten herself into. Or somepony else had. She still wasn’t sure what had happened on that front.

Having enumerated the many benefits of her situation in her mind, and the stinging pain having dulled to more of a throbbing pain, Twilight finished wriggling her way out of the door, giving the protruding nail a wide berth. She stood up and glanced around, vague thoughts of finding something to wrap her wing in running through her head.

These thoughts left her mind pretty quickly once she saw where she was. She was in lower Canterlot! Any elation she might have felt at this was tempered by a few key details though; the usually busy streets were empty, the buildings were boarded up, and the usual pristine white of the city was dulled and dirty, and made all the more sinister by the red sheen that bathed it.

A red sheen? Well yes, that ties into the second unsettling detail; they were reflecting the light from the shield that hung in the sky over the city. It reminded her of the one her brother, Shining Armor, had thrown up when the Changelings had attacked the city. But instead of the gentle lilac colour of his shield, this one was a harsh scarlet colour. Whatever the cause of the unsettling new security feature, it didn’t bode well in regards to whatever might be going on. Twilight was not a conceited mare — quite the opposite — but she couldn’t help feeling that whatever had befallen her was somehow tied into whatever had befallen Canterlot.

But if the shield above the city worried her, it was nothing compared to what she saw next. A simple sign, one repeated on many of the boarded up doors she could see along the street.

This building closed by order of Queen Everbright; Eternal Light of Equestria

Trespassers will be brought before the Royal Court

Author's Note

Okay, so I originally wrote this, and the next chapter in the first person (first pony?) perspective. Partway into writing the third chapter I realised that it really was not working for this story. So I've redone it in the third person, with the second chapter to follow shortly. I think it reads a heck of a lot better now, and I hope anyone who saw it prior to this will agree. Once I get the second chapter redone, we'll be on our way with the story again, so stay tuned.