Anomalous: Stranger in a Strange Land

Prologue

It was a summer night like any other. The sky was clear, the temperature was warm. It was the perfect night for stargazing, and Twilight Sparkle intended to take full advantage of it.

"It's finally clear, Spike," the purple unicorn said to her assistant, a purple and green baby dragon, as she began adjusting her telescope. "I've been asking Rainbow Dash for clear skies the last three nights. Now I can finally update my star charts. Did you remember to bring them?"

"Right here," Spike told her, walking up to the balcony where the telescope stood. He placed several rolls of parchment with layouts of the night sky divided by the months of the year on a small table set up next to the telescope. "And your special ink well," he added, placing the ink well alongside the parchments.

"Excellent," Twilight said as she checked over the parchments. "Now I can finally update my cha-." She stopped mid-sentence. Something was missing. Spike brought the charts she needed and the special ink that she used for her charts, but there was no means to write down her findings? "Spike, did you remember to bring a quill?"

"Huh?" Spike muttered before looking up to his ears. He had placed the quill behind his right ear so that he could hold the charts and ink well in his hands. "Oh, right here." He grabbed the quill and placed it next to the ink well.

"Thank you, Spike," Twilight said. She looked into her telescope and began to observe the night sky. With no clouds to obscure her view, she thought that she could see forever into the vastness of space. After establishing where Ursa Major and Minor were, Twilight began identifying the more seasonal constellations. It didn’t take her long to find Scorpius, Sagittarius and Cygnus. “Everything looks to be in order,” Twilight said to herself. “Now to just check on how Mars is progressing, and my charts should be-”

Twilight froze. She found where Mars was supposed to be, but that whole area of the sky was caught in some sort of wavy distortion. The stars seemed to twirl around in circles. Twilight stood back from the telescope, rubbed her eyes and shook her head. Did I just see the stars dancing, she wondered to herself.

“What happened?” Spike asked. “What did you see?” Twilight wasn’t sure what it was she saw. It’s nothing, she told herself. Just a trick of the eyes. You really ought to get more sleep. She looked into the telescope expecting to see the stars staying in place, as they're supposed to. What she saw instead made her jump back and yelp.
 She sat frozen on the balcony with her mouth agape.

“What?” Spike shouted, grabbing Twilight by the shoulders to get her attention. “What did you see?” Twilight raised her hoof and pointed to the sky. Spike turned around to see what looked like a whirlpool forming in the sky, just outside of Ponyville. The vortex began to spin faster, and faster, and faster, and within that vortex a white light began shine. As the vortex spun faster, the light grew brighter, until it broke into a beam and shot into the Earth.

The strange phenomenon ended as quickly as it had started. The night sky was once again peaceful and all the stars were in their right place. Meanwhile, Twilight and Spike were still stunned by whatever it was that they had just witnessed. Twilight was the first to snap out of her stupor, running quickly down the stairs to find out what exactly the vortex shot to the ground.

Spike finally snapped to attention as Twilight made it to the ground floor of the library. “Hey, wait up,” he shouted, worrying that Twilight was going to run into trouble with whatever they just saw left behind. He ran as quickly as he could, but Twilight was faster and had a head start.

Twilight threw open her front door and ran as fast as her legs could carry her. She had to see what it was that just happened outside of town. She had never read of such an occurrence in her studies and had never witnessed one in all the time she watched the night sky. Whatever she and Spike witnessed, she knew that it had to have left something behind, and she was determined to find out exactly what that something was.

As she made it to the edge of Ponyville, Spike was half way between her and the library, still yelling to try and get her attention. While Twilight didn’t hear him, several other ponies in town did. One pony went up her window and shouted out to him “Keep it down! Some ponies are trying to sleep!” By the time Spike reached the edge of town, he was already beginning to slow down and tire out. He took a moment to catch his breath as he saw Twilight run over the next hill.

Twilight finally reached where the vortex broke. Whatever it was that she and Spike witnessed left a small crater with scorched earth surrounding it. She slowed down to a trot, needing to catch her breath and prepare herself for whatever it was that she was about to find.

When she reached the crater, she stopped and closed her eyes. After a few seconds of pumping herself up, she opened her eyes and looked into the crater. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Her body froze in place. Her jaw dropped in awe.

It didn’t take much longer for Spike to finally catch up to Twilight at the crater site. “You know,” he told Twilight, gasping for air, “you could...have just...waited for me...to catch up.” When he reached the crater’s edge, he laid his arm against Twilight for balance himself, still trying to catch his breath.

“So...what was it...that we were...in such a hurry to see?” he asked, looking into the crater for himself. He gasped and took a few steps back before falling backwards. He was just as shocked as Twilight to find a brown Earth pony lying on the bottom of the crater.