The Black Flames

First Steps

“Baby, Baby, Baby, Ohhhh…”

Shut up

“Baby, Baby, Baby, Ohhhh…”

That’s it you asked for it.

I grabbed the radio alarm and threw it across the room, finding sweet relief in the sharp sound of breaking plastic. I slowly rose from my cheap bed setting my feet on the floor of my single dorm. I had been lucky enough to get the room before all the other seniors took it. That didn’t stop my lousy friends from putting Bieber trash in my alarm clock. I vowed that I would get my revenge on them with the most unforgivable of tortures. Nothing was worse than a poison ivy rash in the nether regions.

I grabbed my i-phone and checked the date. April 1st, 2012. That explained the horror in the alarm. It will also justify the leafy punishment in somebody’s underpants. I took a peek at my schedule for the day. All of my classes weren’t till much later. I, David Martinez, a Hispanic 23 year-old college senior, was stuck with no classes to do. I took a look at the clock to see exactly how much time I had left till my first class, at least where it used to stand that is. I face-palmed (hard) and checked on my phone instead. It was six o’clock which meant I had seven hours till my first class would start. Seven-hours to kill was more like it. I logged into Steam and began the long delve into teams and fortresses.

About an hour into my session I remembered that I hadn’t watched the most recent episode of My Little Pony, my newest obsession. The show made me forget all about the bad things in the world. Too bad it wasn’t a longer show, but I know that kids’ attention spans were super small. You can’t expect them to watch an hour long show. This episode was about the good’ol CMC and there media adventure as “Gabby Gums”.  It was hilarious. I laughed so much that I nearly puked.  Little things like that brightened my day.

After watching the show I went back to my games. Another couple hours had passed when a strange noise filled my ears. It was the buzzing noise that comes with live electricity. I turned to see a floating pink ball of light, lightning bolts bouncing off the surface. I reached out absent-mindedly to the pink sun. The moment my fingers came into contact with its surface I was hit with a wave of shock and blacked out. The last thing I remembered was a single thought, Ouch.



My dreams were filled with the power of shouts and dragons raining fire and death upon unsuspecting villagers. I slowly returned to the world of the living. My whole body was heavy. I couldn’t even open my eyes. I heard voices. Familiar voices.

“What if it’s dangerous?” this voice sounded like it belonged to a small boy. He seemed worried about me.

“Relax Spike,” another voice said, “it doesn’t look very dangerous, just big.” This voice was female and had the superior tone of someone with education.

“I’ve looked it over a couple times and it has no spines, claws, or even an abundance of sharp teeth. Its skin is soft and squishy and it has little fur. Its lack of hereditary traits for survival must mean it lives in a place with little predators.”

A part of me was impressed by her deduction for how humans live from just my unconscious body. Another part of me was a little hurt on her other comments. I was tall and naturally muscular. A football player since birth. I loved to flex my muscles and marvel at the hard lump it created. Being called squishy hurt my manly pride, big time. I tried to give this chick a piece of my mind, but all that came out was incoherent mumbling.

“Look! It’s waking up!”

I forced my heavy leaden eyes open. Shortly after seeing what I saw, I shut them again. There was no way I had seen a purple horse. No Way. I began to panic, mumbling to myself that I was still asleep. That my friends had drugged me and I was still in my dorm. This was all a loopy dream and that I wasn’t seeing talking animals. Apparently my ranting was recognizable enough for the horse to understand.

“I am not an animal!” she said, “Since your species is intelligent enough to know how to speak, I would assume you know the difference between wild animals and sentient, logical beings.”

“Holy crap, the horse is trying to reason with me.”

“I am a unicorn, not a horse!”She said frustration clear in her voice.

At this point I was pinching myself in hopes that it would wake me up with little success. It hit me that I wasn’t dreaming and that what I was seeing was either real or a vivid hallucination.

“Who are you? Where am I? How did I get here?” I ramble out. I picked myself up from the floor. I was in some wooden house but there were no planks or beams. The house seemed to be carved from a block of wood. The room was circular, bookshelves cut from the walls lined with thick tomes.

It was all so familiar, but my mind was still clouded from the shock.  I couldn’t see why it was so familiar. It just was.

“Well my name is Twilight Sparkle and this is the Ponyville library…and…um...”Twilight started.

Then it clicked. Where I was and who I was talking to. As I thought this over Twilight finished what she was saying.

“…I may have accidently summoned you while trying out some spells from the Starswirl the Bearded wing of the library with mo way back.” She said sheepishly.

All I could say was, “The shit, I’m in Ponyville.”