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         Discord's Gate: The Hearth of the Matter          
                     -by elmagnifico-                      
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                        False Start                        
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False Start
Dear Princess Celestia,
Ninth day of 3rd Thunderbird, 49th year of the Fifth Era
Consciousness returned to the visitor with a jolt. There was pain, coming from everywhere at once.  A crackling noise like lightning filled her ears. Her eyes jerked open, and she began screaming, writhing, kicking, anything to get the pain to stop.
She ignored the feeling of sheets flying off, the sound of crashing pottery. All that mattered was getting away from whatever was burning at her, striking and lashing like a whip made of hot pokers.
Then, she saw it.  An amethyst glow, a sphere of light around the size of a grapefruit, dancing around her like an immaterial gadfly. Every spike of pain was accompanied by an arc between the floating, glowing orb and her body. It struck at her head again, and she shrieked in response. She tried to catch it, and then lashed out at it with a hoof, to bash it against something until it stopped.
Her efforts proved futile, like trying to catch light itself. Her hoof rushed straight through the thing, and attempts to grapple with it were similarly ineffective. The aggressor, on its part, ignored her struggles and just whipped her with another bolt of energy.
With fight failing her, she tried flight.  She did her best to put as much distance between her and the threat as she could. Her hooves caught at bedclothes, which she threw at her tormentor. The fabric passed right through the orb, but she didn't dwell on it.  Noting the immaterial nature of the aggressor was secondary to movement.
And so, she kept trying to move, flailing her limbs in a panic which launched herself from the bed and sent her tumbling to a hard wood floor, pursued by the ceaseless volley of shocks and jolts.  Once there, she took to her hooves in a stumbling parody of a normal gait.  Anything to get away from the crashing, zapping tormentor as fast as possible.  Something stopped her rush with a hard, blunt bump which was almost a relief, a different pain that was almost as good as a rest.
Another bolt struck her, and in the flash of pain she felt a shift in perspective. For an instance, she looked upon herself with the eyes of another.
There sat a sandstone-brown mare. Four legs, a mane, tail. A pony like any she'd ever known. That mare was curled defensively against a wooden wall, a slate-gray mane giving off an acrid smoke that smelled like hair afire.  Her flank was pocked with burns from the lightning, but otherwise bare.
Then, there was another crack, she felt the corresponding impact, and she was back in her own body.
There was a loud cry of frustration from across the room.  The orb crackled, glowing brighter and brighter.  Her mind groped for some appropriate last words, but inspiration escaped her.  She braced herself for the next attack, wondering how quick death by electrocution would be.
She never got to find out, as a beam of violet power struck the orb instead, dispelling it with a loud pop.
There was a second of relief.  No more shocks, whatever had been causing them was gone.  Danger had given way to safety, if not exactly familiarity.
With the attacking sprite gone, training kicked in.  She wasn't some helpless foal.  Being a Specialist for the Portal Authority meant being prepared for all sorts of situations.  She'd been taught how to deal with stress and unexpected developments.
The words of her instructor returned in a rush.
It was close to midway through her training.  The instructor was a tan mare from the Surkholt region much like herself.  Their heritage, centuries of plains-running and infighting among the scattered city-states, was written on her physique and in the determination that shone in her eyes.  Not quite a drill sergeant, not quite a life coach.  That mare's name was Fault Line Quartzmare, and her voice was firm and clipped, with a hint of gentleness lurking beneath the stoccato rhythm of her speech.  Snow crunched under the instructor's hooves, the accompanying omnipresent chill permeating the air and punctuating the instructions with small puffs of vapor.
"First Step: Calm down. Panic helps no-one. Take deep breaths."
And so the visitor did. Breath in, breath out.  Although there were no clouds to accentuate her respiration here, the action calmed the thudding in her ears and cleared her mind of the terror that had visited earlier.
"Second Step: Analyze the situation.  You can't react to what you don't know!  Also continue to not panic.  Keep taking deep breaths."
The visitor opened her eyes. Deep breaths. She was in a room, lit by light from a large round window. Deep breaths. It seemed relatively normal. Deep breaths.  A single bed, a small side table.  Everything was made out of wood, aside from the broken earthenware jug that was lying on the floor in the midst of a puddle.
There was one other pony in the room.  A female, by the proportions, and a most striking shade of lavender.  The visitor noted that, like her, this mare was respiring heavily, as though she'd just exerted herself.  Books were scattered about the floor near the other mare, some open to random pages, others haphazardly resting further afield, as though scattered in a struggle.  Had the sprite been attacking her too?  Her mane was certainly frazzled enough to warrant such conjecture.  There wasn't a burn mark on her though.  Deep breaths.
That was certainly odd, but there was something more. She concentrated on the other mare. The color didn't seem dyed, there was even a pink lock with a similar natural look. She shifted her head to look at the oddly colored mare from a different angle. The mare did the same, and that was when she realized.
The mare had a horn.
It was a small thing, no bigger than a longish pencil, tapering to a point that looked just the slightest big blunt. It was very nearly the same color as the mare's fur, which was likely why she hadn't noticed it until that point.  Deep breaths.
It didn't look fake, like some sick ornament taken from a narwhal or carved from wood.  Worse, she couldn't see any devices for holding it there.  No straps, no headband.  It might have been glued or sewn on, but what looked like ivory was the exact same color as the mare's coat, which didn't seem dyed at all.  It looked biological.  Natural, even.  Deep breaths.
That presented a problem.  She'd never heard of ponies with horns.  Moreover, her training had included a global education from the best teachers her homeworld had to offer.  If there had been horned ponies on Epona, or any of the other worlds Epona had colonized, she'd have known about it.  That horn meant this mare was from an entirely different world. A civilization that had heretofore had no interaction with her employers, her nation, or her world.  Deep breaths.
This wasn't just her meeting some generous strangers or strangely painted rescuers.
This was first contact.
Deep breaths.
There was protocol for this.  Universal greetings she needed to recite, things that would be known by any tool-using society.   Ways to conduct herself to avoid offending any hypothetical cultural taboos.  Deep breaths.
But this had never happened to her before.  Deep Breaths.
She'd never had to put those things into practice.  Deep Breaths.
Everyone knew that Eponans were the only sentient race, that through the portals lay only unsettled worlds.  Deep Breaths.
Almost fifty worlds had been discovered and mapped, and not one had contained ponies.  Or anything else that used tools or language, for that matter.  Deep Breaths.
First Contact protocols were taught as a requirement left over from the first Portal Accords, a mandatory educational formality as superfluous as it was tedious, and certainly not something a Geopathy Specialist such as herself needed to remember!
Deep breaths, deep breaths, DEEP BREATHS.
Fault Line's voice echoed in her mind again.
"STOP PANICKING COALMARE, OR CREATRIX HELP ME I WILL FEED YOU TO THE ICE WOLVES MYSELF."
Deep breaths.
Inhale, hold it.
Don't panic.
Exhale.
Coalmare looked up.
There was a pair of violet eyes staring back at her.
Great, she'd successfully creeped out the native with a hysteria attack.
Deep breaths.
The purple one was closest so Coalmare concentrated on her.
For her part, this other mare seemed to be returning the scrutiny.  They stood there for a bit, analyzing each other.
There was a feeling Shale got when around ponies more intelligent than she was.  A sense that this was a person who saw the world more completely than she did, and in different ways.  Instructor Fault Line had given her this feeling.  She could feel how the older Surkholti had studied her and taken her measure.  That gaze spoke of wisdom, experience and intelligence in great measure.  That gaze had made Shale's spine tingle.
Shale's spine was tingling again as she looked the native up and down.
A lavender coat.  There was no way that was natural, even if it looked healthy.  At the very least, they were a bathing society.  The flank tattoo was remarkable.  Purple starburst, a mark of status?
The other mare started talking. The first bit was nonsense, a string of foreign tongue Coalmare had no way of deciphering.
Foreign language training she could remember.  Specialists had to work with ponies from all over Epona on a daily basis after all, so she'd had experience pulling meaning from gibberish slung at her by co-workers too excited to speak Trakhenian.  She seized on this familiar train of thought like a drowning sailor and immediately started using it.
The horned one's lilting tongue reminded her of Epona's trade language.  The long syllables and melodious tempo were distinctly Trakhenian, but beyond that the other mare might as well have been speaking in dog or birdsong.
Hoping against hope, Shale tried replying in Trakhenian, letting the slightly-accented language roll off her tongue.  Her co-workers told her that her accent was thicker than a tub of molasses, but if this mare knew anything close to an Eponan tongue, it would make this process infinitely easier.
"Can you understand me?"
For her part, the native twitched her ears, listening to Shale's words attentively.  Once the sentence was finished, however, the other mare flattened her ears and shook her head.  Shale wasn't sure what to make of the gesture.  A side-to-side nod would have meant yes, up-to-down would have been no.  This swishing made no sense.
Instead of replying, Coalmare tilted her head to the side, one eyebrow raised.  A second too late, she hoped the gesture meant lack of understanding here, and didn't hold some deadly insult.
Instead of flying into a rage, the horned one slapped a hoof to her face, in what Coalmare interpreted as an expression of frustration or realization.
Now, it was just one phrase, repeated with gestures. A two-syllable word, followed by a different two-syllable word. Neither meant anything to Coalmare.
As the mare spoke the words, the she had a hoof pointed at her own chest. Then, the mare would point at Coalmare, and pause for a bit.
Recognition dawned behind the Coalmare's eyes.
The mare was introducing herself.
Coalmare listened.  The name meant nothing to her, but she tried to say it nonetheless.
"Twai-Lite Sparkol?"
After a few attempts, the purple one seemed satisfied, stomping her front hooves on the wooden floor to make a noise Coalmare hoped was their equivalent of clapping.  The accompanying expression certainly gleamed satisfaction to her.  She mimicked the mare's gestures, pointing first at herself and then saying her name.
“Shale Hearth Coalmare.”
The other mare seemed overjoyed that her visitor had understood.  Shale, for her part, hoped she was interpreting this bouncing and single repeated syllable correctly.
These actions continued for around a minute, the purple mare eventually making a complete circuit around Shale, her long, straight mane punctuating each bounce.  Shale followed her progress, becoming increasingly uncomfortable as the process repeated itself.  Looking back, she couldn't be sure when the amount of prancing ponies was doubled, but when another round of bouncing had occurred she noticed that her host was not alone.  Another pony, this one as flamboyantly pink as any flamingo Shale had ever seen, was keeping pace with the first native, a chaotic swirl of mane and tail contrasting sharply with the ordered hairstyle of the other.
Shale simply stood there, allowing the hopefully-just-strangely-cultured-and-not-insane mares to orbit her.  Was this a celebration dance?  It was certainly rhythmic and dynamic.
Should she join in?
On the one point, she wasn't a dancer by default.  Such rhythmic shenanigans she left up to other, more skilled ponies around the camp fires.  On the other, not joining in might be considered an insult.  On the third, if they were as freaked out by this turn of events as she was, which certainly seemed likely given the purple one's reaction and stress-frazzled mane, then they could hardly expect her to hold up to their cultural norms if there was no way to explain them.
Before she could reach a decision, there was pink.
Poofy, naturally screaming pink and curly mane-hair filled Shale's vision, centered with a pair of green eyes staring into her own.  The second native was right in her face, and seemed to be talking a mile a minute.  With nothing to gain from listening, Shale defaulted to analyzing again.  This language, now that she heard geared up to such a rapid speed, would not belong to the Trakhenian family had it been Eponan in origin, despite the pacing and cadence of her earlier sample.  At the speed this mare could apparently go it bore more resemblance to Uromanethean grammar with Trakhenian volcabulary.
Shale stood there, not wanting to cause offense by asserting her personal space, as the long stream of one-sided dialogue played out inches from her face.  She wasn't sure how long it would have continued uninterrupted, but a purple hoof intervened, clamping itself over the offending mouth and bringing the pink one around for what appeared to be a stern-talking to.
Seeing this display relaxed Shale.  This was not the behavior of diplomats or nobles, such creatures would scarcely deign to smile around lower ranks.  The implications of such vibrantly dyed commoners were quickly subdued by a desperate brain trying to preserve a shred of sanity.  If they were commoners like herself, these wouldn't be expecting her to be on her best behavior, or lop her head off if she didn't kiss their hooves, like some villain in a cheap story-scrip.
With that weight off her shoulders, the adrenalin of flight-or-flight-or-smile-as-hard-as-you-could-and-hope-the-important-pony-left-you-alone faded, and a terrible tiredness started creeping into Shale.  As the purple native continued to upbraid the pink one she felt fatigue start to eat at her limbs and thought processes, threatening to drop her then and there into the throes of sleep.
To avoid collapsing on the floor, Shale ambled back over to the bed, ignoring the thrown sheet and simply placing her head on the pillow.  The continued rant, nothing like Fault Line's, more of a lecture, likely on the perils of violating the personal space of a foreign citizen, completely failed to prevent Shale from falling back into gloriously oblivious sleep.
PORTAL AUTHORITY COMMAND LOG
Warning: Unauthorized viewing of transcripts in this file is considered a class IV felony and grounds for legal action up to and including life imprisonment and barring from portal travel.
Portal Authority Fortification Eta Rho Q, Designated Fort Quiver,
Commander Bold Charge
Command Log, Ninth day of 3rd Thunderbird, Year 49 of the Fourth Age
All quiet, no sign of pirates or beasts. The caravan from Fort Albatross isn't due for another week.
Received word from the Chalk Son Consortium prospecting expedition under Captain Hard Trail today. See Tapper Dispatch DCKQ9342. They encountered a previously unknown species, which incapacitated the expedition's Mapper, Specialist Coalmare. The trooper responsible for guarding Specialist Coalmare also had an altercation with an unidentified group of ponies, after which he retreated to where the expedition had set up camp. He's being treated for light scorch wounds, but the fact remains. The Consortium expedition was scouting a newly formed portal in Eranax down chain. A coincidence is unlikely.
It's finally happened.
We've made an extradimensional contact.