The Valhalla Cascade: The Arrival

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Chapter 1  I

A fuzzy ball slowly crept towards the sleeping palace guard. Ironhide snorted in his sleep as fronds began to brush against his nose. He began to twitch as the fuzzy ball began to furiously jab at his face.  His hoof shot up to brush the assailant away and he promptly punched himself in the face with his greaves. Yelping his fell to the ground as maniacal laughter filled the room.

“Oh dear oh dear, sleeping on the job?”

“That was only funny the first 5 times Feather Duster,” Iron-hide grumbled blinking at the yellow Pegasus “Don’t you have rooms to clean? I’m too tired to put up with your shenanigans right now.”

“The palace is deserted so there’s nothing to clean up” Feather Duster giggled pulling the orange earth pony to his feet “I figured you might be lonely down here guarding the super secret thing”

“Thanks,” he sighed, it was hard to argue with his friend “Almost everypony else is out working on that debris field where Ponyville used to be.”

”Can I see it?”

“No.”

“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?!”

“No!”

“So you’re guarding it alone?”

“Shining Armour, Claymore and Myself. The other palace guards won’t come near this thing. Apart from us only two science/magic guys come down here.”

“Claymore’s your Captain right?”

“Eye, I am lassie.” A voice sounded behind Feather Duster. She turned to see a gray and black earth pony standing right behind her with the largest sword she had ever seen strapped to his back. She yelped and shot into the air smashing her head on the ceiling.

“Sorry, for disturbing....um...yeah I’ll go now.” Feather Duster spluttered whilst fluttering towards the door.

“Ah quit yeh blethering, I don’t care if you’re down here. Whatever’s in the secure chamber hasn’t moved since before they even brought it down here last week.” Claymore smiled before opening a saddle bag. Iron-hide removed a doughnut and began munching away whilst regarding the big iron door he was ‘guarding’. He had only seen the secure chamber being used once before.

After Discord had been turned into a statue for a second time the Dracquonicus had been held down here to be monitored, just in case. The Chamber was bound in countless magical spells layered atop one another for millennia.  Whatever the thing was it was really worrying the Princesses.

“Ask a stupid question,” Feather Duster said fluttering down next to Claymore, sniffing a doughnut, “But if it hasn’t moved in a week why is everyone terrified of it?

At that moment a low hissing echoed round the room growing louder and quieter at random. The edges of the pony’s visions began to blur and warp then suddenly covered in a burst of static as the world fell away into a howling void.

II

Applejack woke with a slight wince, blinking at the bright sunlight. She tried to screw her eyes shut and roll over. Not moving she struggled to move a few more times before opening her eye to see what was going on.  Stifling a yelp she looked down to discover her legs were covered in plaster and her chest heavily bandaged. After a few seconds of unrestrained panic, straining against her immobile limbs, memories began to tumble back into place;

“Ah horse feathers.” She grumbled slumping back into her hospital bed.

“You ok AJ?” Rainbow Dash called from an adjacent bed “Need a nurse or something?”

“I’m Fine RD,” she sighed “Forgot where I was for a minute.” Applejack closed her eyes again and tried to relax. Being stuck indoors this long was making her fidgety. After listing to the sounds of Pinke, Twilight and Fluttershy’s voices for a few seconds from the other side of the room she turned her head to look at her friend “See your colour schemes lookin’ better.”

Though at first glance Rainbow Dash’s colours were nothing out of the ordinary, but on inspection it became apparent that the shades of her coat and mane were just a few shades different from normal. Apart from their serious physical injuries from the previous week’s ‘incident’ all of the Mane Six had been affected by a “Chromo-Scalar De-resonance” as Twilight had dubbed the mystery effect of “whatever the hell that thing was over Ponyville”.

“Yeah, thanks!” Rainbow nodded “I think I could live with it like this, could be a lot worse.”

At an unspoken signal all eyes in the room quickly flicked round to Rarity, who despite the doctor’s best efforts was still fluorescent green.

“I feel like a giant glow stick.” Rarity grumbled glaring straight up at the ceiling.

As the group tried to suppress giggles (causing serious strain from Pinkie) there came a knock at the door. “Who is it?” Twilight called. The door to the ward opened a crack and a familiar blue mane poked through

“Can I come in Twiley?”

“Of Course Shining, we won’t bite!”

Shining Armour trotted across the room to Twilight’s bed. He was one of the few ponies brave enough to go near the ‘Creature’ locked up in the Canterlot vault. “Good morning Princess,” He grinned, rocking slightly back and forth excitedly “I have an interesting new development on the creature!”

“Really? Sorry, well progress has been slow so far.”

“Yeah well this is a solid proof discovery, Ok, ready? It has HANDS!”

“Wait................what? You mean like a ‘human’ hand?”

“Well,” Shining Armour muttered pulling a sheet of paper out of his saddle bag “There was another dimensional flux today, after the world stopped spinning we ran in there and between the four of us (oh yeah there was a maid visiting one of the guards,) we managed to get this sketch down.”

Shining passed Twilight the paper. On it was a rough charcoal sketch which did indeed show a human like hand, though not proportioned like those she had known in the ‘Mirror world’.

“I didn’t actually know that this was a ‘hand’ but on the way here I was looking at the drawing and some-pony called Lyra saw it and got very excited. It was pretty hard to drag myself away; she had a lot of interesting ideas about the Ponyville thing. She thought aliens had something to do with it.

“Who’s All-I-en?” Pinkie Pie piped up “Is it a chipmunk? Cause’ I don’t think Chipmunks would have access to that much pyrotechnics. Unless they tried to drug Celestia, which I tried once but that’s really hard and not as fun as you might think and..........”

“Um...No.” Shining interrupted gesturing to the sky. “Aliens are like, Creatures from other planets, out there.” He paused to let the group digest that nugget. “Well I should be off now. I have to go yell at the guards for being cowardly again....bunch of pansies......erm, no offence Fluttershy.”

After Shining left the room Rarity looked at the others questioningly “Correct me if I’m wrong but how can he have been studying that creature for a week and the only major development is that it has.... hands?”

“Yeah you missed that conversation.” Applejack replied “The easiest way to explain it is with another question; could you describe for us the rubble that is currently takin' up most of our homes?”

“Well erm......it’s sort of .......err, well its just rubble isn’t it? Um, roundish?”

“What colour?” Applejack pressed as Rarity continued to fluster.

“Blu-re-gree-purple?”

“Starstream, the scientist in charge of studying what’s going on said that all the stuff from that ‘splosion is jumping between our world and wherever it came from. It keeps erasing itself from ponies heads, the flux-thingies Shining mentioned are like...REALY big jumps and it sticks in our world for ah bit longer.”

Twilight was still staring intently at the piece of parchment Shining had handed her. Her wings gave a little shiver as she rolled it up and placed on a bedside table. “Hey Twilight,” Fluttershy said noticing her friends discomfort, “Do you think it’s humans that did this, from the world you visited?”

“No Fluttershy, this feels different, magically and .....Just in my heart, you know.” Twilight replied shaking her head. “I tried to scan the creature the other day, I know it’s in some kind of coma but even then, it just feels wrong somehow, dead but not dead. It frightens me Flutters, it truly does.

III

Doctor Whooves had no idea what had just happened. He had just woken up sprawled outside next to the TARDIS.

When the rift opened above Ponyville he had used the TARDIS to evacuate a good chunk of the inhabitants from the town, most of them were still camped out in the TARDIS while the cleanup operation took place, and now about 50% of them were now strewn around the forest clearing.

The clearing was a warzone, trees were uprooted and split, Big Macintosh was visible inside a small crater, Dinke Hooves lay unconscious with her coat and mane badly singed. The rest seemed to be uninjured but it was hard to tell.

“Doctor?”` A familiar voice whimpered. “Where are you?” Derpy Hooves lay near him, eyes clenched shut. The Doctor tried to pull himself up but fell down hissing in pain. His foreleg was broken and there was thin claw mark running down his chest.

Derpy’s eyes blinked open; tears welling as she stared at the Doctor. “I can’t move, Doctor.” She squeaked, voice breaking “I can’t feel my legs.”

In an instant the Doctor was by her side, carefully rolling her over he discovered five, deep, bloody puncture wounds running along her spine. Cradling Derpy the Doctor saw that some of the other had also woken up. He yelled at them to help and Derpy was carefully pulled inside the TARDIS. Something monstrous had struck at the ponies he loved most. And he had absolutely no idea what had happened.

IV

Celestia, Luna, and Cadence stared at the Mirror Portal. The science-pony called Starstream had requested to inspect the portal to the “Human Mirror World” to inspect its inter-dimensional capabilities and see if they could give any information on the rift. What he found was far more disturbing.

The mirror had been shattered, still held in its frame but cracked beyond any use the mirror had a message scrawled across in blood;

No Escape.

Do Not Interfere.

This Is Your Only Warning.

Signed: Jack

High in the rafters Jack looked down undetected at the three Princesses. He could have laughed. They thought themselves so powerful, so god like.  He briefly considered leaping down to kill them. He’d watched gods die before and relished the challenge of trying it himself.

No.... that wasn't how things worked.  He had to stick to the plan, to proper procedure. Out off all his brothers he had alone survived to serve his master not by being the most vicious, but knowing when to apply it properly. Anyway they would be far more useful to his master alive. A live specimen was always more informative than a dead one.

Jack suppressed a giggle. His master was in this castle somewhere, it was only a matter of time before he found which of the many fascinating artifacts they were using to contain him.

They were going to have so much fun here.