Planeswalker Chronicles

Twilight's lungs and muscles burned with exertion as she led the hydra away from her friends. Having previously noticed that it wasn't very bright, she galloped between its legs, smirking as its heads followed after her and tripped itself up. She couldn't help chuckling as one of its heads was crushed under its bulk.

Taking a moment to gauge her surroundings, she saw the hydra slowly recovering and ran past it toward the cliff. As she leaped toward the first rock, she felt a sharp pain in her tail. Looking back, she gasped in horror as she saw it clenched in the teeth of one of the hydra's heads.

Twilight screamed as she was tossed into the air, tears stinging her eyes as she felt gravity reassert itself and saw the hydra lunge at her with an open mouth, ready to swallow her. She looked at her horrified friends as time seemed to slow to a crawl. Pinkie's mane had gone totally flat, Applejack was holding Spike as tears flowed from their eyes, and poor Fluttershy was a total wreck, almost like she was blaming herself. Twilight blinked away some tears of her own as she gave her friends a heartfelt smile before darkness enveloped her, the hydra swallowing her whole.

"So this is how I die. Eaten by a hydra while saving my friends..." Her eyes shot open as she felt power surging within her. She didn't know what it was, but she welcomed it, letting it flow through her and turn her into a living conduit of magic. Something she hadn't experienced since the day she earned her cutie mark. As she reached the hydra's stomach, something awoke within Twilight, and she was explosively catapulted into an endless void.

Twilight's mane was blown one way, her tail another, by winds that were not winds. No source, no direction. The burning gusts of a desert, to the frigid breath of a tundra. She smelled sweet scents that did not exist on Ungula, and yet also the rancid stench of death, and scents that only the mad could comprehend.

Beneath her, the ground roiled, yet was not solid. All around her was shifting grays and black, a lack of color more than anything. Rivers of fire, lightning, liquid stone, and jagged water snaked around her. Colors unseen by mortal, and perhaps even immortal eyes, flew about, refusing to solidify. She could see this place of realities that never were, of unchosen futures never to be mourned, for what it was. A realm of raw mana. Of primordial Chaos.

She didn't know where she was going, compelled as she was by survival instinct to flee from the hydra. Nor did she know how she was intact when by all rights, she should have been rent asunder. Mind, body, and soul ripped apart and absorbed by the twisting maelstrom of amoral Chaos. How long had she been in this void? A minute? An hour? A day? A year? A century? A millennium perhaps? She couldn't tell. Time itself lost all meaning amongst the rolling waves of Chaos. To think this had happened because she was so stubborn about proving the Pinkie Sense wasn't real.

At last she saw a light before her. A sphere that grabbed her attention. A sphere of reality untouched by the Chaos around her. Willing herself forward, she approached the sphere and started pressing against it, feeling some resistance from it as she pushed past the divide between reality and Chaos. After shutting her eyes against the blinding light, she opened them when she felt wind on her face. And gasped as she noticed she was freefalling from very high in the sky toward a massive city that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Narrowing her eyes, Twilight concentrated as her horn glowed and teleported onto a deserted rooftop she noticed nearby. Of course, the fact not all of her momentum could be arrested by the teleport sent her tumbling and she barely caught herself at the edge of the roof, briefly hanging from the edge before managing to pull herself back up. After taking a minute to catch her breath and calm down, she got to her hooves and looked out over the city.

Twilight's eyes widened as she took in the city in greater detail. Not only did the metropolis go on as far as the eye could see, it was clearly rife with problems. Pollution, crime, she wouldn't have been surprised if it was having overpopulation problems. But above all else, it was quite clear that she was no longer on Ungula. As that realization sunk in, Twilight slowly began to hyperventilate. Then she let out a very loud scream that lasted a few seconds.

"Well you can certainly shriek," a voice said from behind her. Twilight whipped around, ready to blast whoever it was, and laid eyes on a bipedal creature lacking body hair except for on its head, wearing a predominantly blue ensemble with red accents. The sleeves were rolled back, it had hands with five digits on each of them, and strapped to it was a pair of gold colored devices. One on its back, the other at its waist. And they were connected by golden cables to a gauntlet on its right front limb. "Who are you? What do you want? And where am I?"

The creature held its hands up in a placating gesture with a grin on its face. "Relax, rookie. If I wanted you dead I'd have fried you while you were screaming. Name's Ral Zarek, and I'm a human. This city is called Ravnica, as is the plane itself. And I wanted to introduce myself to the newest Planeswalker and introduce her to the Multiverse."

"Planeswalker? Multiverse?" Twilight asked, still ready to blast Ral. "Start talking, Ral Zarek. What is a Planeswalker?"

"A rare breed of sapient," Ral began still grinning at Twilight. "One in a million are born with the spark, and of those, only another one in million can get it to ignite. How'd it happen for you? Mine ignited when my lab blew up. Boy was it hard explaining all that to the Firemind..." Ral looked into Twilight's eyes. "Near death experience is usually how it happens."

Twilight kept her spell ready as she looked thoughtfully at Ral. "I was eaten by a creature called a hydra. Multiple heads, massive, carnivorous. I was swallowed whole and thought I was going to die. I felt power surge through me, and didn't stop it. And then something woke in me and I was catapulted into a void of Chaos."

"The Blind Eternities," Ral noted. "The void that all planes form from, and are eventually consumed by. Only Planeswalkers can survive there, and not forever." He took a cautious step closer. "So... you strike me as the curious sort. If you can get a disguise lined up, I can introduce you to a few of my colleagues. I bet the Simic would love you."

"Simic?" Twilight asked as she slowly let her horn's glow fade. "What is that? Some sort of research organization?"

"Yup. The Simic Combine is one of Ravnica's guilds. 'Enter and comprehend the perfection of orchestrated life.' That's their motto. Biomancers mostly. I'm more of an engineer myself. So... Any way to hide what you are, Ms...."

"Twilight," Twilight introduced. "Twilight Sparkle. And yes, I believe I can disguise myself." Her horn glowed and the air around her shimmered. She vanished and was replaced by a... rather misshapen human woman. "Well? How is it?"

Ral started laughing, even in the face of Twilight's glare. "Okay first off, humans don't normally have lavender skin. Try for my complexion. Also, human women have only two breasts, right here." He gestured to his pecs in reference. After several minutes of corrections and pointers, Twilight finally had a passable veil. She had a modest appearance with fair skin, a white and blue outfit, flowing black hair, green eyes, and at Ral's suggestion, covered it in a hooded cloak with the hood down. "There we go. Now let's head off."

Twilight looked around in awe as she was led by Ral through one of Ravnica's lower market districts. There were beings of numerous races going about their business, some shadier than others. "So tell me about the guilds, Ral."

"Ten in all. The Azorius Senate makes laws. The Golgari Swarm makes food and recycles trash. The Selesnya Conclave are healers. The Cult of Rakdos are chaotic partiers. The Orzhov Syndicate is a bunch of loansharks. The Boros Legion is law enforcement. My guild, the Izzet League, are Ravnica's engineers. I already mentioned what the Simic Combine does. The Gruul Clans are a bunch of berserk raiders. And House Dimir is made of info brokers and assassins. And here we are."

He stopped walking outside a majestic looking gate. Symmetrical in design, each side having three extensions that curved upward below spiral extensions. At the top was a carving of a face with a five pronged headpiece and a serene expression. Below that was a sigil that resembled a wave. The gate was accented by blue jewels on each side, and in the inside of the arch was a pair of statues facing each other. Each held an ax out, the heads crossing each other.

"The guild hall of the Simic Combine," Ral said as he started leading Twilight into it, their progress impeded by  a group of Simic researchers blocking their path. "Gentlemen, there's no need for hostility." Ral raised his hands in a placating gesture. "I'm not here to cause trouble, I'm here as a scientist. Sure, there's always been tension between the Simic and Izzet, but surely we can put those differences aside in our mutual pursuit of knowledge."

"Like we haven't heard that line before, Zarek," one of the Simic biomancers said with a slight sneer. "We'll need good reason to trust the Firemind's closest lapdog."

Ral ignored the jab with some difficulty. "I've discovered something that can provide an enormous amount of new data to study. Something that can benefit both the Simic and the Izzet! So what say you?" Rai spread his arms as he asked. "Can the Simic and Izzet set aside their differences for the sake of science?"

Twilight looked between Ral and the Simic researchers in concern, worried that a brawl was about to start, but smiled when the Simic agreed to see what Ral had to show them. Even on such a dark world as Ravnica, friendship could overcome problems. She started following the biomancers along with Ral further into the facility, looking around at the various experiments in awe, and eyed some of the more... predatory creations with worry.

Finally, they were escorted into an unoccupied laboratory that overlooked a massive enclosure. "This laboratory is where we experiment with various evolutionary chains, strengthening the creatures we breed and preparing them for the wild," one of the researchers explained.

"Sounds fascinating,"Twilight said. "I can't wait to see what new data Ral found!" Her joy was cut off by a shock to her flank that startled her into dropping her veil and revealing what she was to the researchers. Looking behind her, she saw Ral grinning at her, his gauntlet sparking with electricity. "You... What did you..." She gasped as she was quickly restrained by several of the researchers, struggling to get free as something was injected into her bloodstream. As she felt cold spreading through her body and consciousness slipping away, she focused what little cohesion she could muster on committing Ral's face to memory. She was going to make him pay for this betrayal. That was her final thought before fading into unconsciousness.