When you mess with fire...
I woke up to the taste of dirt in my mouth. Seriously I woke up face-down on the ground. Ok probably should back up here a second. I'm Joshua Starflame, legendary pyromancer and a student at Ravenwood... Least I think I'm still a student, probably was expelled for over 1500 years worth of missed classes. And don't get me started on my name. Don't exactly like it as it's gotten me a bit of grief at the school. I was sent to Equestria by my headmaster Merle Ambrose to try to set up relations with Wizard City but things got out of control. Didn't realize that there was no wizards circle and the spells I used went out of control. To make matters worse they were all fire based spells and this got the attention of the rulers of Equestria. Yeah worst idea ever because they basically have the powers of gods while not being actual deities. I wound up running for my life into one of the forests nearby Ponyville, though at the time Ponyville was a pile of ashes(I blame the Heck Hound), and came into contact with a cockatrice. Didn't exactly realize it until it was waaaaay too late.
I started pushing myself up and off the ground, spitting dirt out of my mouth as I did so. As I managed to get to a sitting position I realized a couple of things. One, the ground around me was charred black. Probably a fire spell of some sort that helped me get free from the petrification, I'd have to get access to a spellbook to see if that's actually possible. Two, this wasn't the forest. As I looked around the new area, things started to shift into mind. This was one of those statue gardens, probably for the castle nearby. Over to the left there was a statue of three fillies all playing together. Then a bit further there was a statue of a pony holding a flag and just behind that... Ok that creature I didn''t know what it was. I could recognize the parts of it, like say the head of a pony, tail of a dragon, even a lion's paw(funnily enough, no human parts). But I didn't know what it was species-wise. It was somewhat easy to see in the moon-light, Equestria tended to have better nighttime lighting than Wizard City or even Marleybone, but even with what I saw I didn't recognize the place. But things must've changed during the time I was petrified. I wouldn't have noticed because I was a giant paperweight.
I started checking around to see what I still had and what I had to find. I knew my spellbook and wand were missing but as for the rest of the stuff. I started looking through the magic backpack that every wizard had to see what was there. Still had my treasure cards, still had most of my clothing inventory. Ooh still had my swiftshadow wings. I decided to keep those off for now just in case I needed an extra escape route. Had a broom as well but I hadn't used it in a while. I'm not actually sure if it was still functional. Now then. It was time to figure out where I was and how I got there. From what I remembered last, Sunbutt had gotten me to run into the forest and her sister was actually lying in wait. Gotta hand it to em, it was clever. From that I guessed they had grabbed my statue and set it up here. But where was "here?" As I started thinking again I heard hoofsteps and realized one simple thing. If this was a statue garden for that castle and a fire spell had been used to unbind me, obviously the guards are going to hear. And if my memory was right, they were going to poke me with their pointy spears. Time to run!
Almost five seconds after I got into hiding further in the statue garden, close to the hedge maze, I heard the hoofsteps enter the garden as well as two male voices.
"Where did that fire come from..." the first one asked.
Fire? Huh guess my magic must've overflowed the instant I was freed. For that matter how'd I get out? No matter I'll figure it out later. Got guards to avoid again.
"Never mind that. Where did one of the statues go?" His partner asked with a trace of panic in his voice
I heard the hoofsteps start moving quickly towards where I was originally and I took this moment to start sneaking behind different statues to try to get away.
"This is bad. This is very bad. We're gonna lose our jobs for this."
"In a way it could be worse right?"
"How?"
"You've heard the rumors right? About some of these statues housing long captured villains? It's a good thing that one isn't true."
Must resist the urge... Must resist the urge to scare the living scheisse out of them.
"Do not scare me like that," I heard the first guard respond. "Come on, whoever took that statue can't have gone far. We know they didn't go past us. You head to the hedge maze. I'll go further in. We'll go a full circuit and regroup back here."
"Got it."
I risked peeking out from behind the statue where I was currently at to see the armored form of one of the pegasi go into the hedge maze. The other turned around to head back to the entrance, I'm guessing to start from there and make sure that nopony went past him. Well nopony probably would've been able to get around him. But what about a wizard who delights in sneaking past foes on the streets of the spiral? Yeah this wasn't my best idea especially considering I still didn't have my wand or my spellbook.
I continued moving behind the statues getting closer and closer to the guard who had started moving his way around the garden, carefully checking each statue. Somehow I made it past him and got to the entrance of the garden and one of the ways into the castle. As I was about to enter, my nose started itching.
"No not now! Not Murphy's Law again!" I thought. This would not be the first time this had happened but it probably would be the most disastrous. I pushed open the door slightly to squeeze through it... and wound up letting loose a loud sneeze. It got the guard's attention that's for certain and it got me in a lot of trouble again.
"Hey! Who's there!" the guard's voice called out and as per the usual, I decided to ignore stealth and pushed open the door to make a beeline out of there not caring if I was actually seen. Then it hit me. If this was where the two princesses moved me, maybe my wand and spellbook were here. I had to find them before I left. I took a hard left down one of the hallways, trying to gain extra time to think where they would be. Course if I ran into another pony I could always ask... Right? Oh I crack myself up sometimes. I took another right and skidded straight to a halt. I just had an idea. Now where was the library...
"Nope. Nada. Seriously where is it?" I flipped through some of the books tossing them behind me as I searched for my spellbook. I'd been doing this for the past fifteen minutes but I still had no luck. "Fine then. Didn't wanna go this route but I guess I gotta do this." With that, I snapped my fingers and started focusing. I didn't wait long as one of the books instantly caught fire; a little locating method I'd planted should I ever lose it. "There you are." I said as I walked over there to pick it up. At my touch the fire dissipated and I was able to pick it up without much difficulty. The problem? Well the fire was spreading and it was going to the other books quickly. Knew I forgot to set something in that spell. I scratched my head sheepishly, only able to say one thing. "Oops."
I turned around and started walking towards the door only to see that it was open. Standing there was a lavender unicorn with a violet and pink mane, oh and she appeared to be in shock. Not at me though, her gaze was fixed directly on the books.
"Er. Twi?" a female southern voice called out, "Ya mind lettin' us through?"
"Ooh ooh! Maybe she's in shock because there's a huuuuge fire burning all the books!" a high-pitched voice responded.
"Yeah right! She's probably just in awe of all the books again like usual." a third snarky voice said.
I turned around again and started tiptoeing towards the window when I heard a newer female voice this time. It started out menacing then changed to... confused?
"You... Wait.. what are you?" she asked. Well if she'd never seen a human before this might be a chance for some fun. I whirled around and gave a mocking bow before saying, "I am a human. Wizard Joshua, Legendary pyromancer." I straightened up with a smirk then started backing away again. Didn't use my last name because, as I stated, I didn't exactly like it. I started seeing the mental cogs turning. It looked like she was putting the pieces together. I began backing up slowly as I felt I might need to run. Very very soon. Almost ten seconds after she began thinking, I saw a snap in her facial features as she finally guessed it.
"You...." she growled, her horn beginning to light up with magic.
"Aw come on..." I felt a fight coming on that I really didn't want to do.
"You set the archives on fire!?"
"It was an accident!" I protested, "Can't we just settle this over a pint?" I reached into the backpack quickly and pulled out a small piece of furniture that I'd never set in my house, a mug.
"Why you...." at that she began firing the magic at me, taking the form of lasers. A few grazed me and one connected with my right arm causing me to yelp with pain and also drop the mug. I'd been hit there before with more durable projectiles, namely arrows(seriously those things stick for awhile and hurt), but these were a lot more painful. Think having three arrows in the same shot for the price of one and you get the picture. I narrowed my eyes; if she was out for blood, time for the real fun to start.
See, with my spellbook I could now start casting real spells but any bonuses that would've been given with my wand wouldn't appear until I retrieved it. I opened it up and flipped to the page with one of my spells that I'd trained awhile back. funnily enough I'd failed to train any Ice spells so I couldn't douse the blaze, no Storm spells either. Wait check that, I do have one and it's one of the treasure cards. I rolled to the side trying to dodge a laser, it grazed my side, and quickly held out my hand. A gold card descended into it and I looked at it. "Tower shield, not what I wanted." I drew the sigil for Ice in the air in front of me and touched the card to it. In a flash of light-blue light, the card vanished and a white shield appeared around me.
"What?!" the lavender unicorn had stopped, "What was that magic?"
"You think I'll tell you after you attempted to kill me?" I responded harshly as I held out my hand for the second time for another gold card to descend into it. Each time I did this, I gave up usage of one of my spells in my deck to cast one of the treasure card spells. But it would all reset once I had a chance to rest.
"You started a fire! That is not cool!" the voice that I'd initially called snarky rang out again and this time I was able to see the voice's owner. A cyan pegasus with a mane of rainbow. Heck she even had a cloud with a rainbow lightning bolt on her flank. Come to think of it, I'd never asked why the ponies had those marks in the first place but when you're chased around you really aren't able to ask this.
"If there were any other way of recovering my spellbook I would've done so. Rest assured I never actively attempt to start fi- OOF" I was cut off as the pegasus slammed right into me with near mach speeds. The shield shattered and I felt the protective energies weaken the blow. As I flew back I touched the ground and flipped to land neatly on my feet and skid to a halt.
"What? How is that thing still standing?" I heard the pegasus's voice cry out. She probably never guessed that the shield may have, oh I don't know, shielded me from part of the blow? Nevertheless, that hurt. Probably would be bruised later. Well better than actually being knocked out with every bone in my body shattered. Actually that has happened before. Very painful.
My turn now. With an edge to my voice I said, "Ok that's it. Ladies it's time to learn a very important lesson." I quickly looked around to see if any other ponies had entered the burning room. Seeing no other entrants, not even the other voices I'd heard before, I turned back to the two who looked ready to charge again. "When you mess with fire..." I flipped up one of the non-creature spells I enjoyed using, Meteor strike, "you're gonna get burned." I drew the sigil for fire magic in the air and slammed the card into it again. This time a silvery aura appeared around me and I felt the spell's magic exponentially increase.
"Huh? Whaddya mean by tha-"
"Rainbow get down!"
Right as the lavender unicorn tackled the pegasus to the ground, four meteors crashed into the archives. None actually hit the two ponies, instead it created a giant hole in the wall that I leaped out of. As I fell I activated the Swiftshadow wings and started flying away silently. I loved the fact that I could do that here because back home I'd never been able to, a magic field blocked you from flying higher than about a story high when you had the wings. As I got further away from the castle, I heard an inarticulate scream of rage as that unicorn realized that the creature who burned the books had just hoodwinked her.
"Now then. How to get home when there's no world door," I started musing then thought of something, "Wait... What was the treasure card I drew?" I took a moment to look at it and flinched, holding back an expletive, settling for grumbling instead. It was the card that actually could've stopped that blaze, Tempest.
As my irritated mumbling continued I didn't notice how fast I was going nor where I was headed. My mind was on other matters until I heard an alarm clock noise in my ear. I felt my face pale as I remembered a few things:
1. These wings were timed upon activation.
2. I first used them to actually get to the forest where I wound up running into the cockatrice and they must've been suspended along with me.
3. That time had just run out.
I took a chance to look on my back and saw nothing there. Apparently cartoon physics were alive and well in this world because as I saw this I instantly looked down and saw a forest below me(looked familiar). Before falling I looked straight ahead and muttered, "God my luck sucks," and wound up falling into the forest, screaming like a little girl the whole way down.
Author's Note
Right... this is literally the first time I tried writing with the mane 6 so if you guys have any ideas on how to improve let me know.
Hope you enjoy my first attempt at a Wizard101 crossover!
Talking Trees... Eh I've seen stranger(revised)
I'm not too fond of falling but then again I'm guessing no one is unless you're a skydiver or you love pulling off risky stunts in midair that involve falling a great distance then pulling yourself out of it. I'm none of the above and seeing as I was falling from a pretty great height I thought for certain I was gonna either die or get knocked out.
Instead I crashed headfirst right into a tree and amazingly enough it didn't snap. However my head got stuck in the trunk just like a cartoon. Really painful getting stuck and it hurt even more getting it out. Now I know what you're thinking. Why not just light it on fire? Couple of reasons. One despite being a fire wizard I'm not actually immune to fire. Just a bit of resistance to it from my clothing and small accessories. I can still be burned with the rest of them. And two... Think about where I was. I didn't exactly want to start another massive fire on my first day back.
Getting my head out wasn't just my doing though. I swore I heard a spitting sound and wound up backfirst on the ground staring into the sky or what was visible of it. I could see the tinge of light coloring the darkness and I guessed that sunrise wasn't that far off. Nothing abnormal here I thought. And then I sat up.
The tree was staring at me. No I'm not joking, the tree had a face on it and it was staring directly at me. Not a scary face either but one that mirrored human emotions other than rage. As of now it wore a questioning look and if I didn't know better I'd say it was twisting its trunk to better insinuate its curiosity. The amount of detail on it was staggering. I could clearly make out the little leaves on the top of it and it actually looked like it could be found in my world if not for the fact that tree faces were better there and didn't have eight roots in the cardinal directions. They also didn't have the shadow of bark that he had being a lightish brown. Can't really describe it better. And to top it all off, it spoke... As in formed coherent sentences that were actually intelligent, something I didn't expect outside in this world.
"Who are you?" It asked in a deep and drawn out voice. It sounded old and if I listened closely I heard some creaking in there.
"I could ask the same question. I've only seen any sort of animated tree on Mooshu and none of my little foes that I've faced ever came here." I responded and felt a little surge of amusement as he actually did tilt this time but had to quickly undo that as his bark started to splinter.
"Mooshu? What is that place. I've not heard of it even in my old home."
"Old home? Wait you're not from here? Eh you know now that I think about it, I don't think the trees here normally have that much detail. Not to mention the fact that when the trees in this forest get a face it's usually meant to scare ponies," I responded with a bit of a cheeky grin. As to how I knew the little forest face thing? Hey I had to run through this multiple times on my first visit... Mostly running from my own creatures. No Wizard Circle means that next to none of my creatures will actually listen to me. Only ones that did are a couple Life healers and my faithful Heck Hound plus one or two other Fire creatures.
"Indeed I am not from here. I come from a place where I had a friend in a round pink bouncy ball," the tree responded, "and am I to assume you are from this Mooshu?"
"Nope. I'm from a place called Wizard City. Nice place and very friendly people. Meant to train wizards in order to help restore order through the Spiral... and this is all going over your head isn't it. Or more accurately your leaves."
"Admittedly I do not know what you speak of. But it is of no consequence."
I breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes comments on intelligence could come back to bite and I seemed to have a habit of pulling those off. "Good to hear Mister... Well I never caught your name did I?"
"My name is Whispy Woods. And now if I may request yours in return?"
"Joshua Sta- er... scratch that. Just Legendary Pyromancer Joshua." Didn't know if he'd heard of any tales of what I'd done but I didn't want to risk it.
"Pyromancer... As in fire?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"You dare bring fire to this sacred wood? Feel the pain of your insolence!"
Whispy's face turned incredibly angry and the trunk itself doubled in area. To add to that, the leaves swelled up until they easily blocked out the entire clearing's sky view. The tree didn't even speak and instead opened fire. How you ask? Well he started breaking even more laws and as I started dodging, he began raining apples down on my head. Have you ever had an apple hit your head? Hurts a little bit. Now imagine when that apple is actually flung down at you. Hurts more. Now add about fifty extra apples to dodge and your hopes start to dim. Yeah I was not happy and certainly regretting my choice in revealing my school.
I ducked and weaved through the storm of apples digging out my spellbook to see what Treasure Cards I could use against him when something smacked me in the back. I looked up at him and groaned in disbelief. Apart from his apples he was now actually sending gusts of wind at me. The tree had immense lung capacity for not even appearing to have lungs!
I finally dug out my spellbook as the tree started to pull something else and both of us were stopped instantly by a loud voice.
"Alright you two that's enough." The voice sounded like it was my age but it had more of an authority air than I could ever muster. I turned to see who was talking and saw a unicorn. He had light-grey fur, a black mane and the mark on his rear looked like a ton of random magic sigils. "Now what started all this?" He asked in a stern voice. I had no trouble believing that he'd be excellent at keeping kids in line.
"Well I might have been stupid enough to bring fire spell- hold up... You're not at all fazed by a human and a talking tree that hits like a truck?" I asked, confused by all this.
"Not one bit," he replied, "Whispy. We've talked about this."
"I might have also been hurled straight into his mouth by my timed wings vanishing. I need to keep better tabs on those things," I muttered. He heard me of course. I keep forgetting that ponies possess significantly better hearing than humans do... and a ton better hearing than trees because this one didn't hear what I muttered even though any human could've picked it up easily.
"Just follow me. And Whispy, no more flinging apples at the farmers who live outside the forest. I don't even know how you managed to hit them from that distance and I don't want to, I'm just tired of getting complaints," the pony snapped at the tree. Before I could wonder why he was called Whispy, the pony picked me up in a levitation field, it was colored black and actually made me wonder if he was using dark magic, and started carrying me away from the tree.
"My apologies," he said, "Whispy is notoriously easy to trick and he's got a bit of a nasty temper. He claimed to be friends with a pink bouncy ball? Well he didn't tell you that on numerous occasions he attacked said ball."
"Is this really necessary?" I asked while considering what he said. Would make a lot of sense that an intelligence insult would hit hard with him I guess.
Normally I could break out of this but a lot of my magic ability was in my wand. It was only with that that I could mess with existing magic fields or even stand a chance of sensing other magic. There was a reason why my wand had the strongest locating spell on it.
"Given that I have no doubts you'd actually run, yes it is," he responded.
After about 15 minutes of walking, he dropped me on the ground and turned to look at me. "I must say when I arrived in Canterlot for the first time, I never thought I'd see you in a statue let alone hear about what you did when I tried to look up what landed you there."
Wait... "Why would you be surprised to see me in a statue form? Didn't exactly make many pony friends before today and none of them were exactly immortal," I responded. Hey only immortal ones were the princesses then and... well we weren't exactly friends.
"That is because I wasn't a pony before. Right now you may call me Spellbook and for the record I do know you, but not in the way you'd expect."
"What do you mea-," I started right before he cut me off.
"Your real name is Joshua Starflame. You are a Legendary Pyromancer ranked at level 64. You have multiple pets but the one you kept out before this was a Helephant named Duke Ruby. You specialize in fire magic mainly but you trained life as a secondary school and prefer to work alone. Before arriving here you were sent to Zafaria after going to Celestia and before Celestia you were sent to Dragonspyre to put an end to Malistaire. Am I missing anything?" He said all this in a matter-of-fact voice but my jaw dropped at this.
"Hold up... Just... How do you know all this?" I asked. I was mentally preparing to fight and it was shown by the way my spellbook was starting to float by my side. I didn't know who he was and I didn't know what he wanted. But if he was a threat I'd show no mercy, I'd fight for my life.
He waved down the threatening gesture and stared right into my eyes. "It's simple. I know all this because I created you."
The Spiral
Wizard city
"Where did I put it!" a wizard in green robes yelled running about his small cottage, The library will never forgive me if I lost that book."
A small unicorn was woken from his nap and yawned seeing his master run about frantically.
A knocking could be heard at the door. With a distinct voice behind it, "Lifewriter answer this door, I have a message from Headmaster Ambrose."
This was Gamma, Headmaster Ambrose's owl and confidant. He sometimes served as a messenger but only for dire emergencies
"The book can wait," Lifewriter said running to the door, "Stay here Prince."
He stepped outside and breathed in the islands air before quickly saying, "What is it?"
"Ambrose needs to see you in private at his office. NOW!!" The owl ordered then forced a teleport on Lifewriter to send him straight to the Headmasters office.
"Sorry for the nature of this summoning, Lifewriter. But there is an urgent matter to attend to," A voice said from the corner of the dimly lit room.
His eyes strained with the dim lighting of the room, yet Lifewriter still made out the figure of the Headmaster.
"Well, if it is as urgent as I think it is tell me what to do."
"Have you heard of the missing student Joshua Starflame?" Ambrose asked.
"Isn't he the Pyromancer that almost burned down wizard city with a Fire Elf?"
"The same person, Yet I fear that something terrible is going to happen with the balance magic there that will destroy the..." Ambrose paused as if he knew something yet didn't know how to say it.
"Balance magic across one of the islands," I continued his sentence.
"Where Starflame has been for the past years cannot be accessed with a normal world door," He then motioned Lifewriter with his staff to follow him to the back door.
Opening the door was a long dark hallway that seemed to lead nowhere, the walls of this hallway were enchanted with a space altering enchantment that made the hallway longer.
The headmaster started to walk into the hallway, crystal balls lining the walls glowing blue as he passed them.
As he started to walk into the hall to go where ever it leads I only took two steps in before reaching the other side with the headmaster. Glancing back he could see that this was just a small illusion to deter thieves.
Opening the next door revealed something similar to the wizard city world door room except there were wires and tubes glowing with mana each one connecting to the world door.
"You are lucky young wizard, Besides Joshua and myself You are the third person to step through the alpha world door," He then turned to me and looked into Lifewriter's eyes, "Yet the world you are going to enter even I have not explored. So be careful. Find Starflame and bring him home."
"I will not let you down headmaster," he said looking at the Alpha world door.
This is it. No turning back now, He thought as he stepped into the swirling colors of the world door.
Equestria
Everfree Forest
"Wh-what?" I stammered.
He'd just told me his crazy tale. Claiming I was not only his creation but an avatar he made within an online game called Wizard101. I didn't want to believe it and if I had any option I wouldn't. But I was kind of at a loss for words. He'd picked apart my past and even some more private details that no one but me knew. Given all this I said something that I normally wouldn't say.
"You can't make me believe this... This very strange story. You have no evidence!"
"I do... Just not here. But I guess there's no other way then. Get ready kid. You'll believe it, even if I have to knock some sense into you," He said again and even without my wand I felt the outpouring of magic from him. But then, wouldn't you know it... Another crazy event happened. I guess that's the norm for Equestria.
We both heard a sound far above us and looked up. A symbol with three leaves and a circle formed in the air and I saw a line quickly being drawn from it and hurtling down towards the ground. I squinted trying to make out what it was and saw a tiny dot. It wasn't a line but someone falling and leaving a trail of smoke behind.
"It's... headed towards Ponyville. I swear that town is a magnet for trouble," Spellbook said and would've facehooved, if not for the fact that when he smacked his hoof against his face he gave himself a concussion.
"You weren't kidding when you said you weren't from here..." I said.
"Shaddup and let me recover from this."
Author's Note
So... yeah it's back. Seriously if you're gonna say something rude in comments please have it be constructive criticism.
The part in Wizard City was written by Adaptroug and Lifewriter is his creation. So with that I'm opening up something. If you want your wizard in this story send me a PM. I'll only accept one wizard of each school and there are a few requirements to submissions(sorry but I've seen a ton of bad ones in other areas and I'd just like to avoid that).
First make sure to get the personality down. Second, the school. This is important as without it you will not even be considered. If there's a secondary school feel free to let me know. What the deck consists of and Treasure cards if any are available. Make sure to also include gear spells and pet spells. Thanks for reading the chapter and I'll see you all next time.
