Twilight stood behind the desk in her study, reading the letters that Princes Celestia sent her through Spike this morning.
"My faithful student! I know that the date of your birthday is drawing near, so
i've prepared a special gift for you in advance. I know how much you love your big brother and Princess Cadence, but due to the considerable distance between Ponyville and Crystall empire you were unable to visit them as often as you would like. I present you with a solution - a new teleportation spell i've been working secretly for the past three months. It creates a permanent teleportation corridor between two glyphs the image of which you can find below. One of this glyphs had already been drawn in your apartment in the Crystall Tower. Once the second one is drawn, the connection will be estabilished. Choose wisely where to put it. I wish you all the best things and all your dreams become true. Happy Birthday!
- your mentor and caring friend, Princess Celestia."
At the bottom of the letter, just as Princess said, was an image of a glyph. The glyph was not one of the sophisticated variety, mostly consisting of straight lines and simple angular shapes encased in a circle. Although, some precision with angles was required for it to work properly. Decided not to wait any longer, Twilight quickly searched through her room for the neccessary tools. Crayons, a meter long ruler and a protractor were found relatively easy. Armed with this tools she began to carefully copy the magical sigil from the letter on the wall in her room. It was a good place to put it. In case she did not want anypony to come through she would just move the wardrobe so it will cover the portal completely. Every portal spell - and the ones made by the Celestia herself especially - has a certain amount of safeguards that would not allow teleportation if there is not enough space at the receiving end for the user to emerge in. After an hour or so, the portal was ready. She quickly told Spike where she was about to depart to and for how long. With this very last thing done, she took a deep breath and pressed her hoof against the glyph. It bursted with violet light( that was the colour of the crayon Twilight used), the lines now glowing and large oval shape appearing in the middle. After half a minute that shape had spread enough for a full grown mare to step through easily. The portal was open. With yet another deep breath, Twilight walked through...
She felt as if she was gently dragged through a body of water, warm sensation spreading all over her skin. It was getting warmer and warmer, light around her becoming brighter and brighter as she moved through. She began to sweat. Was it that hot in the Crystall City last time she went there? No, it was not...
In the mist she was flying through certain shapes began to form, becoming sharper and more detailed with every second. Finally, she felt that teleportation ended.
The hot sensation, though, did not vanish. Now it was complimented by her skin feeling as if it was wrapped in a red-hot steel foil. She looked around, and gasped in shock. The place she ended up in was clearly nowhere near the Crystall Empire. It was a vast desert, the sea of sand spreading around with no end of it to be seen. Not a single cloud was present and sunbeams scorched like lasers. Regular claps of thunder came from somewhere near. She was standing at the cliff that was a part of some larger rocky formation
Couple of passages through the hard wall of the mountain started here, a familiar yellow mare clad in a veird costume sat in the shadow inside of one of them. She looked at Twilight with a mixed expression of disbelief, shock, and a little bit of joy. A kind of expression one would assume if a difficult and unpleasant task they were bothered with just solved itself through the completely accidental way.
"F...F... Fluttershy?!" Twilight yelped. The mare indeed was stunningly similar looking to Fluttershy. She had the same coat colour as Fluttershy did, the same hue and style of the mane and her eyes was of the same shape. But one thing was off - her eyes were coloured entirely in blue. On the light blue of sclera a circle of a slightly darker blue indicated the iris. Another, even smaller and darker blue circle was present where the pupil is expected to be. Also, she was dressed in a tight grey costume covering most of her body. A flexible tube made of unknown material runned across her face and through the weird device fixated on her nostrils. At the notice of her name she raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"H-how do you know my name?" she asked.
"Fluttershy, are you feeling all right?" Twilight frowned "It is me, Twilight! Your friend!"
"None of my friends has such a name..."
"What?!" Tilight yelped, "Wait a sec, let me check you up. This heat did a trick on you, it appears. And while i am doing so would you be so kind and explain where we are? I was kinda heading other way..." Twilight trotted to Fluttershy. When the distance between them shortened to a half of a meter Twilight suddenly stopped and backed off a little.
"Ew..." she frowned covering her nose with her hoof "Fluttershy, when was the last time you took a shover?"
"What?" Fluttershy looked a little bit dumbfounded.
"Nevermind..." Twilight rolled her eyes.
"Um..." fluttershy looked at the ground and fidgetted a little "ah! of course!" she cleared her throat and shouted at the top of her lungs "I WILL TAKE YOUR WATER!"
"All you need to do is ask, Fluttershy. No need to yell," Twilight said in confusion "I would gladly share with you if i had any. But alas, i have none."
"Um... not true," Fluttershy disagreed quietly "you have at least seventeen liters of water in your body. I'll take that. If that's okay with you... Or regardless..."
"Erm, Flutte..." Twilight didn't finish. With a rapid motion of her head Fluttershy grabbed the handle of the knife that was resting in the scabbards clipped to her side with her teeth and swung it in a wide ark both pulling it out of its resting place and cutting Twilight's throat open.
Thwilight fell on the ground, choking on her own blood. She pressed her forehooves against the cut trying to stop the bleeding but to no success.
"Hrh... blght..." she tried to say while convulsing.
Rapid hoovesteps indicated aprroach of somepony else. A large unicorn stallion with white coat and blue mane emerged from the corner. He had the same type of costume on him and the same blue to his eyes.
"Shmng Rmr!" Fluttershy beamed with joy. Then she looked at her blade that she still held in her mouth and put it back into its place. "Shining Armor!" she said again, beaming with joy. "Look what i've got!"
At the mention of Shining Armor new portion of adrenaline was ingected into Twilight's bloodstream giving her some strenght to move. She turned her head and looked at the newcomer, still drowning in her own blood.
"Well, well..." Shining cooed trotting to her, "A fresh watersack!" he came closer and nuzzled Fluttershy "That's my girl..."
Twilight outstreched her hoof in his direction, eyes full of despair, pain and plead for help.
"But you know, there is no reason to leave her like that. Why must she suffer?"
With that said Shining drawed his own blade with his magic. Thwilight's eyes grew wide with shock and disbelief.
"Hhrghrmr..." she shook her head rapidly and tried to shield herself from the inevitable with her hooves. Powered by Shining's telekinesis, the blade pierced her meek defence and struck right through her eye and into her brain. Her body twitched furiously for a moment and then gone numb...
"Now, let us go and squeeze everything from this thing!" Shining said while returning his blade. Then he levitated Twilight's corpse on his back and they trotted away.
...
Fluttershy sat in her chamber, tinkering with the cofee set. She turned the fire down a little bit when a rustling sound came from behind.
"Hey, Shiny..." she said softly, adding spice into the brew. Magestic aroma spread througth the room.
"You know, my love..." Shining said. He walked to Fluttershy and took a seat beside her. "Sometimes i have certain doubts as for who is who in our family," a thick string tied into a loop with thirty six water rings on it moved in front of Shining, "Take for example these things," the string bobbed in the air a little, "according to the custom, wife carries these around for her husband. But for some reason you have ignored the water extraction ceremony and now i must fetch these for you and endure lousy jokes about it," String moved over Fluttershy's head, spread into circle and fell down, now resting on her neck like a necklace. She chuckled and played a little with it.
"Eighteen liters?" she sounded slightly surprised.
"Yep," Shining confirmed nonchalantly, "one hell of a watersack you've hunted there. Should be proud of yourself."
"I am." Fluttershy said. She turned off the fire and poured cofee into two cups. One of them she gave to Shining and took the other. "But how proud should i be?"
"I dunno," Shining shrugged. He took a sip from his cup, wave of delight rolled through his body, "Mmmm..."
"Like it?" Fluttershy asked, grinning.
"Hm." he smirked and took another sip "Eighteen liters of pride, heh..." he chuckled.
"You know," he spoke again after a few minutes "This waterbag reminded of my sister that lives in Ponysietch. She was almost her copy. Need to visit her sometime."
"I would love to meet her," Fluttershy said, finishing off her coffee.
"Yeah," Shining nodded, "you will become good friends with her, i bet..."