The Tale of Contrast

by ConsciousHaze196

Rating: teen
Tags: Sad, Adventure
Length: 2124

Ponies living in the dark meets ponies from the outer world

Somewhere deep in the woods, there exists a place that keeps three ponies within its magical territory. But dark secrets need to be uncovered sometimes. How can it happen for somepony who always lived under magic spell?

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2013-09-04 13:56:32 UTC

Life behind the veil

Once upon a time, in the evening, Twilight Sparkle returned to her library after Pinkie's party. Since she had planned some spell practice for that day and she didn't get anything done, she searched for a book called "Low-energy alternatives for ubiquitous spells", and she cast the Transactional teleporting spell that should have carried her to Fluttershy's house. The difference between that spell and the normal one was that it sent multiple pieces of the pony to the destination, then checked that the process ended successfully, and unlocked the copy. And then she really felt weak. She thought that she made a mistake, and it made her sad. She read and cast the next spell, Particle Painter, that made some purple circular spots on shelves, and later, the Gravity Layer spell that sent her to the ceiling, where she fell asleep.

She should have known that she creates another pony by using that spell. That pony would actually be content, because she would have known that the spell succeeded. If only she had appeared anywhere but the Everfree forest, in a marshmallow area.

Since she was tired and she still needed to go somewhere more safe, she started to walk in direction that most resembled south-east, according to the sun, inattentively observing the area. It wasn't a familiar area, and she couldn't associate it with a place on any maps of Everfree or local forests she had. The trees were tall and had leaves only at the top, something shined from behind the clouds, it was somewhat dark, and beneath her was something similar to slime and green velvet at the same time. It smelled like dirty cloth, too. It seemed that it consisted of layers of goo and something dry. She tried to avoid sleep while going through that goo, which was everywhere. Some time passed, and she found something made of rock there. It was a stack of big circular stones standing on some poles. She climbed to a closest stone, and just went to sleep there.

When Spike returned from Rarity and found Twilight sleeping at the ceiling, he was surprised.

The next morning, Library Twilight awoke. In the morning, things don't tend to surprise ponies too much.

"Everything is upside down. Spike, where are you?" -she started.

Spike's answer came from above. "I'm here. On the floor."

She thought for a moment. What have I done yesterday?..

And then she looked at the shelves.

"What have I done?!" - she shouted.

She went to the shelf, while still being on the ceiling. She raised a book from one of the purple areas using telekinesis, and saw that all the pages were uniformly purple.

"This can't be. Library books just got destroyed by me. I'll have to write a damage report now. That's a calamity!"

She went into the alcove in the wall, and dispelled the gravity layer. She made the ladder that stood in the other side of the room fall to the floor, then raised it to her part of the shelf. She just wanted to save her mood by raising the percentage of successful spells, so Spike knew he had to let Twilight do his job for at least a day.

And she had to scan the entire library for the books that were present, to find which books were erased. She wondered if she could do that. She was to.

The other Twilight was awoken near midnight by a forest monster that didn't bother attacking her, but was croaking like a crow nearby. It was big and heavy and looked like a bird. The creature ran away when Twilight tried to drive it away with a lighting spell, but seemed to stay in the distance, and tried to return some minutes later.

"Stupid swamp."

She frozen the bird in place and trotted away.

A hour later, she approached an area with drier ground, with reeds, and the swamp ended, the following area had another type of trees that were less tall, and had wobbling green tentacles coming out of them. Also, there were stone knolls on the floor, like craters, some of them constantly erupted green or bright white fire, and some emitted water sprays. There were also some dark green tentacle flowers in the grass, and later, more flowers, colored white, red and light green, and four-winged white bugs flying over them, whose wings were spinning around them like windmills. Berries also grew there, they were yellow and bright blue.

This shouldn't even exist. Well if that spell brought me here, there is a way out. Only I'm not trying that magic today.

Sounds were coming from above, mostly of chirping insects and something like owls, but there was also a more sinister sound from the front, like a threatening cry - "ahhrhhhhh!". Though, it sounded like the source was far. At least, there was no more smell, even from craters.

Eventually, she decided to stop, if not to sleep, then to stare at strange, ominous looking, unknown plants. And staying there for half an hour let her get used to the background, and notice some more unusual bits of magic going on above. She didn't want to scan them, she was too tired.

Another hour later, she thought she heard voices. The distant shouting voice sounded like... Fluttershy. Hallucinations maybe, she thought, got to get going. That beast is probably asleep... She rose, and started going away, when she heard a noise really close. She prepared to attack the monsters, going back and then to the side, head still turned to the source. The rustling of grass ran into her, and something invisible attacked her. "Spectre!" - a different voice shouted near her. "Green!"

Under these same trees where Twilight was waiting, there was an anomaly. Three black earth ponies were living there, the camp made of four strong tents (they had a fifth one that was used as a curtain) was built long ago by their ancestors. For them, the outside world never had the sun, and they saw their usual flowers and trees that were already filled with the odd magic, as always glowing, usually red, green, or blue. The magic gave things new colors, depending on their nature. They didn't see most of the the tree tops - the dome of magic intersected their area. The dome was black, and nebulae were seen on it when the winds blew. The inhabitants had an interleaving fire and steam crater that gave them water and heat, were gathering yellowberries and forest grass for food, and never left the dome. Their names were High Contrast, Green Highlight, and Droplet. To distinguish them from each other, they picked glowing flowers that grew in heaps like gladiolus and kept them in their manes until they fade about a day later, sometimes they could grind the flowers in the water and soak their hair in the solution, for them to glow for some hours. Their eyes also had those colors, but that wasn't visible under the dome. They were seeing them as black. Contrast carried red flowers, Green had green and Droplet had blue. Droplet's usual role was water keeper, she had a lower voice that was hard to hear, she talked in fragmented sentences. Highlight was their leader, her voice was high and loud, and she used to stretch the sentence to put the emphasis. Contrast was very quiet, and when she needed to talk, she spoke sentences quietly and in a hurry. She and Highlight gathered the food for the camp and defended it from outside monsters that were usually origami hogs, ostrich ravens, and giant anteater lizards. They all came from afar, and thence were invisible to those who were inside, and could enter or leave the area freely.

Probably convicts living in the woods, Twilight reasoned, between performing defence spells, with invisibility for attack purposes. Let's pass this test... some tricks... She tried to apply the force to the area where someone was running, searching for her, while retreating back towards trees to increase possible spell radius, and got the pony in her grasp. "Green! Save me! Help!" Twilight could now just speak. "Found you." "What - err, release me!" - Contrast said, confused.

Twilight was holding her in the air. "Show yourself, who are you?" - she said. "I can't see you either!" - response was.

"Count" - someone shouted, coming into the area, -"Where are you". "Not a word", - Twilight said, "before I know what this place is". "The world?" - Contrast responded quietly, while background shouts continued. "I'm from the world, too," - Twilight said... "No! You came from where they come from," - Contrast answered quietly. Droplet saw her then, making Twilight lower Contrast and cast a shield.

"What is?.. I heard you there... Green sleeping... happened?" - Droplet spoke.

"She's there - someone from beyond, ...she's invisible, like all of them... she can magic. We should offer peace," -Contrast said with fear.

"We let someone... side I... don't know," - answer was, -"tell her... ...let her,... I'll prepare the,". That made Twilight worry even more. Prepare the what, what good can be prepared in a ghost town?

Please don't be evil, - she thought, Princess Luna save us.

Droplet came to the camp before others, and awoke Green, who was sleeping in this time of day.

"Uh What's going? Has anything happened?" - she stood in the tent.

"Contrast she... met magical... strange and... going here..."

"Whaat? Then let's go see, magical that." - she started going, with optimistic smile.

They met near the tents. Twilight saw there nothing but areas without grass, that wasn't a good sign. Invisible surprises.

"Whaat did ya meet? Tell us," - Highlight began.

"I'm Twilight Sparkle. I met them there ...where we came from. I got lost in the forest, and seek for a way to any pony town" - she tried to report quickly, "You appeared suddenly ..."

"Wait, getting i-interesting, you've been outside the forest? Well we haven't. There is no-o way out from here that I know, we had our parents trying to leave ages ago. And they did! We've been expecting for them to, you know, come back, and tell us a story..." -she finished with silence.

"So you're not ghosts, then?"

"Who would know? You tell us."

"There is just... that ages... a pony did magic... protect us. Outside. Then you said... are ponies... beyond."

"I'm sorry.  There is something magical indeed here, let's say I'll try to research that later today? I'm tired."

"Can you pleease, say just what is there? We wanted to know for sooo long."

"I think that depends on where in the world I am... but there's supposed to be pony cities, rivers... farms..."

"City... big settlement?.." -Droplet asked, not believing.

"Very big," - Twilight noted.

"Right then, this is enough,"- Green said, unsure, turning to others, as if to ask, "no more questions?"

"I'll go to sleep too, if you don't mind" - Contrast said.

She went into the tent. Droplet and Green returned to duties, Twilight was looking at the sky for some time.

Contrast went through the odd area among the dark, curvy trees with branches thickening towards the top and concealing the sky with a dense web of thin moving curved threads of color that was blue, but also red. Her mane wasn't giving the red light. In the lack of sounds, she was going forward to find the red light of familiar flowers, that she knew was there, as all the trees were located in the way that always reminded her of the routes to the camp. Then, the sky started dropping purple liquid of rain to the ground, she was kind of startled by that, and she thought she heard a voice from behind the rain, and later saw a pony with horn standing in the distance and saying, "Hello. Is anyone there?", directly looking at her. More magenta shapes came from the dark purple, saying these worlds, "What was that?", and started moving towards her, lowering their horns with angry expression. The farthest of them began shooting purple particles at her, which didn't reach her, condensing on the aura around her. The flashes became more frequent, and soon she was surrounded by the opaque purple sphere, which then changed its curvature and became a wall in front of her, then curved further and became a ball with purple unicorn's face, which rotated to the forest while most of the dark trees went to the sides, and spoke with voice of Twilight Sparkle: "Follow me. I know where is the route."

And then there was, I don't know, something else.