I think I’m in hell. “What?” you ask. How could I not know whether I landed in the world of the damned? Well, it is rather complicated. There’s no fire and brimstone. I don’t see any frozen wastelands. There is not a damned soul in sight, other than me, of course. In fact, I don’t even know if I’m dead.
Had I arrived hours earlier or later, I would have called this place purgatory. The thing is, “here” is not actually one location; it’s two. Strange, is it not?
I jump out of the way of a car and land in a river. At least the river doesn't make me any wetter than I was before now. The river melts away and I’m on a sidewalk, though I can still hear the river over the noise of the city. Birds chirp and the wind blows through the trees while pedestrians avoid my soaking wet form. I stand in the middle of the sidewalk through the woods. I’m in a city and a forest at the same time. Skyscrapers and dense jungle overlay one another. The juxtaposition is surreal.
Perhaps I should back up. The end is a good place to start. See, I was camping in the middle of the woods. My food had run out while I was hiking last night, almost twenty hours ago. However, I was close enough to camp at the time that I could hike to my car before the hunger got dangerous. Of course, nature just had to mess with me. The pouring rain didn’t help. Tripping and falling into a skunk’s burrow, well, stank. By the time I got back to my car, I was quite miserable; I was tired, hungry, wet, cold, stinky, out of breath, and I had to pee really badly.
Then I had to be blown up by a purple unicorn.
What, you think I’m making this up? I’ve prayed to every deity that exists by now, wishing that I were.
The manticore roared at me while flaring his wings. I think I will call him fluffy. Oh, it seems that fluffy doesn’t like me. Do you think it’s my smell?
I calmly walk past his forest cave and step in to the gun store on this particular city block. The owner of the store is startled by my presence. Is it my smell, or is it the fact that he can see through me and into the forest, that he can hear the manticore’s roar reverberate through my body? Who knows?
I walk forwards, passing through the counter as if it wasn’t even there. For me, it wasn’t there if I didn't wish it so. I grab a gun off of the shelf, twist it through space and time, and shoot the manticore at point-blank range.
The bullet, once separated from the gun I’m holding, lasts only for a second in Equestria, before dropping back to the gun store floor on Earth. Still, a second is an awfully long time for a flying bullet, and a half-solid bullet going faster than sound retains the ability to… debate physics… with a manticore’s skull.
You see, in another universe, at the same time and in the corresponding location, one Twilight Sparkle was attempting some dimensional-something-or-other spell. She was attempting to bring an object from another universe into hers. Do you know where I was standing? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.
The thing about our respective realities is this: if something wants to move between them, that object has to pay the toll on the way out of our universe and on the way in to their universe. Now we have Twilight, naive Twilight. In her attempt to pull me out of my universe, she only calculated the amount of magical energy needed to get me out of my universe and completely neglected to gather the energy to pull me into her world.
So here I am. This place is the world-between-the-worlds. It’s a place outside of time and space. At least there are metaphorical windows in my prison walls. Since I am not quite either here or there, I’m both in both worlds and not in either world. Are you confused? I would hug you if you were not; you would know what in the world is happening to me.
I find that space and time don’t quite match up one-to-one across universes. So while Twilight’s Library matches up with the forests of the Appalachian Mountains, Fluttershy’s cottage shares its space with the padded room of an insane asylum, nearly sixteen years before I was even born. Jonathan is quite fun when he is calm enough to think as rationally as is possible for him. Fluttershy is nice, too. She thinks of us as sick animals, which is sort of true. I’m chronically depressed, though I have my happier moments. Jonathan is a hyper-aggressive schizophrenic who is convinced we are more of his delusions, but entertains us on occasion because he does not want to be a, “bad host.” By touching both of them, I can temporarily drag my two friends to the middle. There, we chat for seemingly hours on end.
The first time the hospital staff saw us, they freaked out. Their patient was translucent, some other see-through man had managed to break in to a locked room, and we were talking to a third person that the staff could not see or hear. I’m glad to report that the staff now accepts my presence. I got to show off Fluttershy, who now helps with the other patients, and I get counseling for my depression.
Let me paint you a picture of what I see. I see the land of Equestria, full of colorful ponies. Simultaneously, I see Earth, full of human beings. The two images are superimposed one over the other. Sometimes Earth is clearer than Equestria to the point where the ponies are ghosts on the edge of perception. Then it flips, and the humans are the ones I can barely see. With a little effort, I can choose which world I see. When I relax, my sight tends to balance half way between the two.
Of course, it is more complicated than that. It is not my sight that is changing, but my position. When I focus on one world, I become more solid and opaque there while less solid and more transparent in the other. At the halfway point, I can hold lightweight objects from either universe at the same time and I look like a ghost in both. I cannot use any vehicle of any kind, as a lapse in concentration would mean I fall through the vehicle or, worse, slam into an obstacle in the other universe. Don’t worry, though, it doesn’t hurt.
The first time I took the Canterlot express, I lost my focus when the city came into sight. I became completely embedded in Michelangelo’s David, in Italy, with my face superimposing the statue’s own. Enough said.
That reminds me, apparently I am an Eternal. Those are Twilights words, not mine. She’s a sweet mare, really. I still hate what she did to me, but I cannot bring myself to hate her personally. Pony-ally?
Where was I? Oh, that’s right. So, an Eternal is someone who got themselves knocked out of their own time stream. The Equestrian princesses are Eternals that just so happen to be moving alongside Equestria’s timeline.
As for me, I’m caught in an time eddy. I move back and forth over roughly the same two year time period; it is not like groundhogs day, but more like rewinding a VCR tape. Sometimes I go further trough time than before. A few times, I managed to watch myself be hit with that spell. I even stopped it once. It didn’t help. Eternals are a fact of space-time. They never die and can never change as they are completely indestructible. Eternals can remember everything, even if they change history. They are immune to paradox. They are eternal in every sense of the word.
I can make time go forwards and backwards. I can make time go in slow motion.
Have you ever tried to blow yourself up, fail, and try again and again and again with the same explosion? I have. In the end, I just decided to record slow-motion action scenes for Rainbow Dash.
This brings me to why I think I’m in hell. See, I was frozen in time the moment that curse hit me. Do you remember me telling you how I was right before I was trapped between the worlds? I was tired, hungry, wet, cold, stinky, out of breath, and I had to pee really badly. Well, that stuck, too. Twilight calls my Eternal existence a, “quantum-locked, closed-system construct animated by a living soul.” In short, nothing will ever enter or leave my body again. I cannot speak, for my empty lungs can breathe no air. I cannot eat, for, though food can pass my lips, moving to the other world does not bring the contents of my stomach with me. I stink; the stench will cling to me for the remainder of eternity. I’m tired, but I cannot sleep ever again. Though I’m cold, no flame will warm me. I will never be dry again, nor can I take off my wet clothing. Worst of all, my bladder, though it demands to be emptied, will never feel relief.
For close to six thousand years, I have existed in this miserable state. Had I been comfortable at the time of my curse, I would have called this place purgatory. But no, this is my hell.
I just want to die.
Author's Note
So why does failing something so incomprehensibly complex as magic always give Twilight Sparkle a human? Plot armor and all its trope-y friends.
How do you like my drawing? I made it myself! :)
