“Interesting...” Elsif said, looking over the book of sorceries with the eye of a hawk. The writing was far from good, and was nearly impossible to read. Elsif closed the book and stood up, his cloak and hood flowing softly in the summer breeze. He took a deep inhale and smelled the fruit of his wife's labor. Flowers surrounded him, and even Elsif the Battle Born found peace in the garden. His longsword sat sheathed on his back with a small buckler attacked to his gauntlets. He also bore three rings. One being the ring to signify his devotion to his love, the other to his king, and the third, the third signaled no devotion. The third was a ring retrieved when he had found two girls sleeping in nothing but the flesh out in the woods. One girl had a rainbow pattern to her hair and the other was deep purple. Strange, looking at them they were certainly not man nor elves, and too tall to be dwarves or half-folk. Elsif carried them back and now they would be resting on two cots in the living space. The ring though, the ring was strange. It had a little mechanism to it, and when Elsif was able to pop it open he was shown a shining crystal. The crystal was square and seemed to emanate a bright light. Then there was the book of sorceries he was reading. In that book the ring was called a channeling mechanism and nothing else. In the book it claimed that it could give any creature the power to control magic. The book also contained many spells of varying degrees of power.
“Elsif!” Cried a woman from inside the house. This woman was his wife of ten years Alandria. She was the sweetest young lass and was only thirty years to her husband's forty. She would commonly wear a white dress and keep her blonde hair up in a bun.
“Yes?” Elsif answered, looking back at his home.
“The two are awake!” She said, sounding rather worried. Alandria always had a rather shrill voice but when she sounded fearful or worried it would become even more so.
Elsif walked in and instantly took in the smell of his wife's cooking. She was preparing a lamb before the two had woken up. The two girls were laid out on the cots in the living area where had had left them. For the sake of decency he also made sure to wrap them in his long gone daughter’s old robes that she had left behind when she joined the Red Legion.
The Red Legion was simply the army of the king in the land of Halmna, the land in which Elsif called home. He once fought for the Red Legion, and he fought well, but after years of war he simply wanted to stop, so now his blade is only put to work defending his home on the rare occasion that man or beast wishes to cause his property, whether his home or his wife, harm. His daughter wished to be just like her father and signed up, being one of the only women allowed into the legion. Elsif prayed to the gods everyday for her safe return.
The two were barely coming to, and still lay on the cots that were set out for them. The one with the rainbow hair looked about, her eyes darting from object to object before they met his own.
“Who are you?” She asked in a weak tone, clearly exhausted from her injuries and any journey that had left her here.
“I am Elsif the Battle-born, and I’m the one who you girls out in the woods, and brought you to my little piece of paradise”
“Ahem!” Elsif’s wife said from the kitchen.
“Oh yes how could I forget? That was my lovely wife Alandria, she watched over you two while I was out looking through a few of your more concerning belongings.” Elsif handed over the ring and book to the rainbow haired girl who looked rather concerned by this whole situation to say the least.
“Why were you looking through all of that?” The purple haired girl asked, slowly sitting up and holding her bruised sides.
“Some of it looked rather suspicious. A book of sorceries finding itself in Halmna isn’t exactly common. Typically those kind of books are kept by elves or by the colleges, not being held on to by two young girls. I honestly thought of burning the thing, but my curiosity got the better of me and started reading it. It’s just some mostly harmless magics.”
“I know...I wrote it…” The purple haired girl said, sitting up and throwing her legs over the side of the cot. The robes she wore were loose around her as she couldn’t have been larger than a child just entering fourteen, but her face showed an older age. Her hair was cleaned and shined softly in the lighting of the home. She moved over to her friend who was still laying there and took the book and the ring from her.
“A woman, let alone a girl, writing a book as detailed as this?” A smile crossed Elsif’s face as he sat down in a chair perpendicular to the purple haired girl. “Pardon me, but I doubt that is the case. It must’ve been your father, or perhaps an elder?”
“I could recite the entire book verbatim, would that prove that I am the author?” The purple haired girl stood up and stretched, clearly still bruised and cut from whatever had happened to her. She showed no signs of pain though, which was rather strange.
“Could you?” Elsif asked, leaning back in his chair.
“I could try…” The purple haired girl said, suddenly sounding a whole lot less confident.
Elsif smiled and then suddenly started laughing, as did the rainbow haired girl, still laying down just near the purple haired one. Elsif stood up and approached the purple haired girl, and looked down at her. He stood well above her, at about six inches taller.
“So,” He said, “You claim to have written it, so how about you prove it, cast any spell from the book.” Elsif motioned for the purple haired girl to follow him and walked outside into the field that sat north of the house. Butterflies were out, as were many species of flowers and other flora. It was a beautiful day all around.
“I uhh, can’t…” She said looking down at her bare feet.
“So you claim to have written this book and you can not cast a single spell from its pages?” He asked with a hint of sarcasm lingering in his voice.
“I need a channeling mechanism, like...my horn..” She said “my horn” rather quietly, as if she really wanted Elsif to dismiss those words.
“Like the horn of a dragon?” Elsif asked, confused by her statement.
“No, like my horn, before I passed through limbo from Equestria and ended up here I was a unicorn.”
“Equestria?” Elsif began by asking, “I fear I have not heard of this place.”
“It’s a country from another planet, at least that’s my guess, and if it is here then it is very far away…” The purple haired girl said with a melancholy tone, “There, I was a princess, part of the triumvirate of Princess Luna, Celestia, and I. Me and my friends defended that place from any evil that tried to lay waste to it, but it seems those days are over. Rainbow Dash and I were at my house testing out a few spells that I had been recording in this book, some of them were brand new spells that I had crafted myself. One of them was a planar transport spell and well it took us here...but not directly. It took us through Limbo, the plane of chaos first, changing us into these bipeds. I’d heard stories of creatures turning to gemstones in there and gemstones being turned to ghosts and then into half-ponies and literally anything that you could think of, and probably a lot of things you couldn’t think of. Honestly Rainbow Dash and I are lucky that we ended up as we are.”
“I’ve seen the entrance to Limbo and it is not a place that I would like to enter. I do have a few more questions though.”
“What are they?” She asked, still speaking in that melancholy way. She sat down on the warm grass and tried breathing but all she could think of was her old body and her friends back home.
“What’s your name, and what was that ring you had on your person?”
“I’m Twilight Sparkle, and that ring was a channeling mechanism I had built so that ponies other than just unicorns could use magic. It worked a little bit, and allowed Rainbow Dash to use some basic telekinesis but testing was cut short on account of well...you know.” She tried smiling but it was a bit fake, although she did seem to take solace in that she wasn’t the only of her kind here. “Honestly though, I completely forgot about the ring until you brought it up. Twilight stood back up and put the ring on her finger. With the ring on her finger she muttered a few words, words that Elsif had never heard before and instantly the air around her turned to water and then ice, and then ice shards capable of piercing armor. Then, with a slight flick of the wrist she shot the gruesome ice picks into a tree, carving it up.
“Hmm, impressive, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl with magical prowess like that. Then again most girls and women aren’t taught at the colleges so I probably wouldn’t have. I know I have just met you, but considering your predicament I think I can offer you those two cots and some spots in the attic. It’s the least I can do.” Elsif smiled at the girl who smiled back weakly.
“Okay.” She agreed before sitting back down and staring at the sun.
“Dinner will be ready soon.” Elsif said, “We should go inside.”
