The One in Which The Story Begins
What a lovely day! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping! On days like today, I just want to- Is that train going... up?
Honestly, Sheogorath was surprised he had managed to last long at all within this realm before the absolute monotonous nature of the land curdled the milk in his stomach. The first thing he noticed was the stark contrast between his little slice of chaos and the now pastel landscape spread out before him. He also found it troublesome that their ground did not coincide with his own, leading to an almost comedic drop of his taxi, quite akin to a rock. He grumbled to himself, writing that joke down as a "Maybe" in his little black imaginative book for later, filing it away for ignoring at a later date. He taps his cane on the shoulder of his cab driver, a delightful fellow by the name of Paul. "Have you noticed our current trajectory? It is most definitely not in the direction of forward! It is more of an oblong, at most." Paul turns to regard his Master silently, an unnatural grin splitting his face nearly into separate horizontal halves. After a moment, he turns forward, then the car simply alights upon the green grass below, as if it seamless transitioned from one scene to another.
"I knew I could count upon you, Paul! It's why I haven't dismembered you, yet." He says merrily, his voice gravely, yet also meriting a somewhat jovial tone to accompany said base. Overall, the madman was dressed in the finest clothes he could conceive- literally, he gave a simple thought and suddenly: BLAM! Clothes- a set of purple and red finery, trimmed in intricate yet disorganized patterns laced with golden edges. The collar came up around his neck like a crescent wreath of cloth. Each side of the suit was modeled after his Isles' two districts: Mania and Dementia.
"Take me to the nearest abode for whatever calls this place home, Paul!" He says, yelling the servant's name with glee. Paul was such a fun name to say! Of course, Paul never questioned his orders, only aiming to complete them as quickly as possible to please the old God. With a goal now in mind, the two head in the direction of the nearest inhabited village, a quaint little shanty on the edge of the Everfree Forest.
Twilight Sparkle rose from her bed, an act which was vastly more difficult than it should seem, even if the action lasted mere seconds. She had endured a rather rigorous study session the night prior, trying to discover a way to reverse-engineer one of Star Swirl the Bearded's most ingenious failed spells, the Space-Time Manipulation Vortex. After reading a few pages out of the nigh on seven hundred that existed from the old stallion, she had come to a conclusion. Time magic hurt, ow my brain, oh my bed feels great. In that order. Now, however, was the time for her to be awake once more, each of her joints popping rhythmically as she stretched her stiff limbs.
Now out of bed, the frazzled alicorn leisurely trots over to her bedside table, levitating a purple manebrush from its surface, simultaneously preening her sore wings while straightening her mane with the floating object. This was done in tandem with her moving from bedroom to bath, picking more objects up in her purple aura- toothbrush and complementing paste. It does not take her much longer to finish these simple faculties before exciting the immaculate room, now looking as pristine as she could get without an entire spa visit.
Magic is so wonderful... She muses to herself, wondering down the crystallized halls of her castle. After a few branching paths and one flight of stairs, she arrives at the kitchen area, intent on making herself a much needed bowl of cereal. Just as she was beginning to get her favorite brand out, her magic alerted her to a visitor waiting on the castle's front porch. Sighing, she quickly put on a friendly face, teleporting herself straight to the door, so as not to be rude to the guest.
After a brief glint from her horn, the door magically swung open, allowing her to greet the pony standing there. "Hello, may I-" After a blink, she realizes that nopony is there. Taking the scene in more fully, she notices a small note on the ground outside. Lifting it up for her to see, she reads it to herself.
I suggest new curtains.
...Uh. What? She ponders, slowly closing the door once she was sure nopony was going to come forth as the writer. She walks back to kitchen, too absorbed in the note to bother teleporting. Once she has her food, Twilight teleports with it to her bedroom, setting it down on her dresser. Then she realizes that she seemed to have misjudged the distance, as the bowl almost slams into the crystal flooring after loosening her grasp on it. Thankfully, she catches it, moving it to where the dresser actually-
.....What. For the second time, Twilight found herself confuzzled. Instead of her normal dresser, it was now inside out. More specifically, the dresser was made of clothes, and the drawers inside were filled with wood. Aside from the physically impossible implications this presented, Twilight found it most confusing how such a thing even happened in the first place. It had been fine when she first got out of bed-
As she turned to follow her own train of thought, she notices the bed has also undergone a type of change. Instead of being the normal feather mattress outfitted with satin sheets and a plethora of comfortable pillows, it was now a set of twin doors inlaid in the floor. Even more strange was the fact that said doors even possessed an accompanying doorbell on the right side of them.
Simply following with the trend of hapless events, she reaches out with her magic to depress the button, which sounds of a muffle bell from the door's position on the floor. After a few moments, they open inward, leading into an almost identical room as the one she was currently in, only ninety degrees off kilter. Standing in the door was a strange bipedal creature with a slicked back white mane and purple and red clothing, clutching a simple ball-tipped cane.
"Ah, so good of you to drop by! I was just fixing up the funishings, would you happen to have any spare nutmeg I could borrow? Paul seems to have forgotten all of mine in my dungeon!" The salt-and-pepper bearded male asks her, as was now evident by his voice.
....WHAT.
