Through the Rabbit Hole

Chapters

Chapter 2 - Mondays
Chapter 4 - Getting in Deep
Chapter 5 - Risen
Interlude - Alex's Notes
Chapter 1 - Wonderland
Chapter 3 - Twilight's Hunt for Truth

Chapter 2 - Mondays

Bzzzrrt!

Bzzzr-Thump!

Crack!

“Uuugghh…”

Alex pried his eyes open. Still half asleep, he sat up in his and groaned to himself. Once he had collected his brain properly, he peered over the side of bed to the ground. Apparently, he had miscalculated his hand’s force while reaching to silence his alarm clock, accidentally sending it tumbling off his bed stand to its gravity-induced demise.

“I hate Mondays…” he grumbled to himself. With a sigh, he reluctantly pulled himself from his sinfully comforting covers. The sleep-deprived man reached down to pick up the fallen device. A tired smile grew on his face as Alex tenderly caressed the newest fracture on the digital clock’s display, which somehow still managed to display the time – six-thirty. “You win again old friend,” he said nostalgically. “I swear, I’ll beat you one of these days.

Replacing the device that had tirelessly roused Alex nearly every morning since his university days, he commenced his weekday routine.

Brush teeth – check.

Shower – not applicable; not a shower day.

Work clothes – check.

Check email – check.

Make breakfast – check.

Halfway through his habitual checklist, Alex found himself sitting at his living room table before his rather nice morning meal, five minutes ahead of schedule. French toast and orange juice, instead of the usual milk and bland cereal with ‘bran’ in its title. He always made sure to put the extra effort into his Monday and Friday meals.

Alex took a moment’s respite to appreciate his fine work before bringing his first fork-full of maple syrup-laden French toast to his awaiting lips. But before get a bite of his favourite breakfast into his mouth, the phone rang.

With a grumble, Alex quickly made his way to where he had left phone on the kitchen counter to answer it, and cringed at the caller I.D. He briefly considered just letting it ring, before deciding that ignoring the call would only lead to more problems than answering it. So, with a calming breath to dampen the dark dread deep in his gut, he tapped the ‘voice only’ button.

…

“But mom, I-“

“Don’t talk back to me, Alex. You may have gotten some fancy science job across the pond, but I’m still your mother,” Alex’s mother reprimanded.

“I’m sorry. I’m just saying that I’m not sure that I can accommodate that right now.”

“You’re not sure that- Your father and I haven’t seen you since August, and your brother’s finally finished college. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you again.” Her tone was gaining force. The thought of sharing a living space with his twin brother again put Alex into a panic.

“Oh, no… You know how much Josh… hates… airline food,” he struggled to come up with something. “And what about Daisy? I seriously doubt that she’d agree to come.”

“Daisy’s old enough to be alone for a couple weeks,” she replied, a hint of doubt in her voice. “I don’t want to hear any more excuses. You’ve been delaying this since spring. We’ve already booked the flights. We’ll arrive at-“ Alex heard the shuffling of papers, “-Berlin Tegel Airport this Friday at ten p.m. You have a guest room, don’t you?” Alex sighed at the prospect of clearing the room of all the equipment he kept in it.

“As a matter o’fact, I do. Is there any more of my privacy you’d like to intrude upon?”

“Don’t act like a child, boy,” she chastised sternly. “It’s just a little family visit. We’ll stay with you for a week in Germany for your birthday, then go off to see the rest of Europe. It’s been so long since I’ve been to Paris.” The scientist knew he had been defeated. He exhaled in frustration.

“Very well, mother. If that is all, then I will have to depart for work in a few minutes to conduct groundbreaking research for the Terran Union that benefits all Mankind,” Alex stated, feeling quite perturbed.

It’s not that he disliked his family; in fact, he loved them quite a lot. It’s just that the physicist couldn’t afford distraction at the moment, as his work was nearing completion – the culmination of nearly a decade of international research and trillions of credits.

“No, I think we’re done for now. You can go play with your scientist friends and your quanta-thingies.” Alex nearly face-palmed. “Wait- hold on, your brother wants to talk to you.”

“I really should get go-“

“Gooten tawg, mine brooder! Comment ça va?” Alex started rubbing his temple with his free hand.

“Good morning, Josh,” he replied testily, when something occurred to him. “Wait, isn’t it, like, one o’clock over there? What are you doing awake?”

“Me? I’m testing dad’s new game. It’s fucking awesome,” Josh said like a hyperactive child, which he was on some level. “As for mom, you know her. She got up specifically to call you in the morning so you’d be thinking about this little visit of ours all day.” Alex could just hear the smirk on his face. Of course she did.

“Listen Josh, I have to go to work now.”

“Alrightee then. Hey, remember to pick up dad’s game. It comes out in a couple weeks.”

“You know I always do.”

“And you know that I’m always better at them than you.”

“Goodbye, Josh.”

“Say Alex, have you gotten another girlfriend yet? I hear Germany’s got some pretty fine-”

Alex hung up on his infuriating twin. He could hardly believe that they were composed of virtually identical genetic material. Alexander Weaver, a world-class quantum physicist employed by the Unified Terran Space Programme, and his brother Josh, who had taken six years to finish community college, and known by most as the town womanizer. The worst part was that Alex knew his brother could be better if he tried. Josh may have had less academic conviction than Alex, but had a mathematical intuition rivalling, and even surpassing that of the physicist’s (though it pained him to admit it).

Alex tore himself away from those previously explored thoughts and turned his concentration to the task at hand; namely getting out the door before he was late for work. He grimaced as he looked back to his forgotten breakfast. Alex hated wasting good food. He took his keys from their spot hanging on the wall next to his house’s front door, and made his way out to the drive way.

The early-morning sun was shining, warming the crisp, German autumn air. Squirrels frolicked on the physicist’s pristine lawn, and a jet flew past over the suburban terrace from the nearby military base.

“Eichhörnchen. Düsenflugzeug. Rasen,“ Alex muttered to himself, acclimating his brain for speaking German for the rest of the day, even as he focused on not thinking about all the things that could still go wrong with his work. He sighed.

Well, my day’s already ruined. It’s not like it could get much worse, he thought to himself as he approached his car.

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

“Power con?”

“Mana flow nominal.”

“Control con?”

“All control runes functioning and calibrated.”

“Targeting con?”

“Near-Equus body telemetry triangulated from Manehattan, Vanhoover, and Appleloosa observatories.”

“Manipulation surface?”

“Translocation sigil is responding as predicted.”

Deep in the Canterlot Caverns, a large, dark chamber sat, illuminated only by a series of glowing, intricate symbols carved into the stone floor. In the centre of the ceiling, a green crystal about a metre in length hung suspended by a thick chain and several wires and cables interfacing with it. The vault itself was circular in shape, approximately fifty metres in diameter. A smaller, brightly lit control room connected to the chamber, separated by three inches of magically reinforced glass.

Twilight Sparkle, along with several researchers wielding quills and clipboards, stood gazing into the vault. A dozen unicorn technicians manned mechanical consoles, controlling and monitoring different parts of the hidden mechanism via needle gauges and plotter readouts. The two alicorn sisters stood close to the entrance opposite to the observation window, looking expectantly to Twilight.

Princess Celestia sat on her haunches, trying to maintain focus, despite the noticeable bags forming under her eyes. Princess Luna, however, was leaning forward on all four hooves and appeared to be brimming with anticipation, a giddy excitement in her eyes.

“Then begin the countdown again,” Twilight ordered with a hint of frustration, “And this time, let’s make sure the tracking system doesn’t lose power before transport.”

“Starting five minute countdown to translocation sigil initiation.”

“Capture manifold charging normally.”

“Remembering to activate tracking system power regulator.”

The technicians sounded off from around the control room in sequence, the last a little sheepishly.

Satisfied with the reports, Twilight turned from the observation window to head back toward the other princesses. The sound of her hooves’ clopping on the concrete floor mixed with the steadily increasing pitch of the hum emanating from the now-pulsating crystal on the other side of the glass.

“Don’t worry, princesses. I’m sure it will work this time. Eighteenth time’s the charm, right?” The violet alicorn asked hopefully. Luna nodded enthusiastically, while Celestia smiled kindly and placed a gilded hoof on her former pupil’s shoulder.

“Twilight, I still stand by what I said when I agreed that your idea of capturing a meteoroid was a wonderful idea, and you have done a wonderful job planning the project. And in only two months, as well. But a good administrator should know when to cease.” Twilight moved to object, but the solar princess cut her off. “Just for tonight. We’ve been at it for over five hours, and it’s nearly two in the morning. We can try again in the morning.” She tried not to let her growing exasperation show. Twilight only continued with her objection.

“But Luna’s alignment spell won’t last much longer! We might not have until morning!” She blurted out. She stopped herself before accidentally going on a rant, so Princess Luna came to her defence while the young alicorn recomposed herself.

“’Tis true. I can sense the enchantment degrading. Once it fails, the meteoroid will move out of the machine’s targeting range.”

“And we won’t get another chance like this for months,” Twilight said far more calmly, though still urgently. “If we can capture this body, it could tell us so much about the Universe, and even our own world. It could even be the first step for ponies to leave our atmosphere into the Ether!” Celestia gave a small sigh, though still wore a soft smile.

“Two minutes until transport, your Highness.”

“Yes, Twilight, I was present at your powerpoint. Believe me, I am just as fascinated with the idea of studying a heavenly body as everypony else. Well…” she glanced beside her to Luna, who was appeared rather distraught by the notion of giving up their effort. “In any case, even if we lose this opportunity, there will be others. A year is practically no time at all to wait for a project like this. And we can always go with ‘Plan B’ and get the trebuchet out of storage to launch some boulders. We never did get to give our new machine here a proper field test.”

“I suppose…”

“And speaking of the machine, it looks like it could use a break as well.” Twilight turned around to observe the sigil chamber. Instead of the steady hum it had been producing at the beginning of the night, it was now erratic, its pitch occasionally dropping and wobbling before continuing its climb. The light from the crystal, too, seemed to flicker every few seconds. “We wouldn’t want to break Luna’s new favourite toy, now, would we?” the Solar Princess smiled, and Luna’s expression grew concerned once again.

“One minute, your Highness.”

“Twilight, please promise me that this will be our last attempt for tonight.” Celestia concluded her speech. The lavender princess looked around the room. The ponies manning the consoles did look quite fatigued from their long night of work, though she knew none would dare complain. A good many of them had tasted her ire the time it had taken them a week to weed out a problem in the machine’s power distributer.

“Alright, I promise. But we’re getting up as early as possible to get started again.”

“Thirty seconds.”

Celestia nodded curtly. Their conversation over, Twilight resigned herself to stand beside the sisters, facing the observation window to see if their arduous work would finally pay off. The humming had become nearly too high to hear, while a new tone began to vibrate the observation room, a bass drone. The cluster of crystal hanging from the ceiling began casting a green aura over the centre of the floor in the vault, while the carved symbols began phasing through a rainbow of colours, flooding the once murky chamber with a thick blend of lights.

“Ten…”

“Nine…”

“Eight…”

An engineer began the final countdown. Everypony in the control room was tense. They were moments away from possibly making some of the greatest achievements in pony history; a triumph of arcane engineering and the direct study of a minor celestial body, untouched by the atmosphere.

“Seven…”

“Six…”

”Five…”

”Four…”

”Three-”

POP!

“LET’S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!”

“Abort! Cut the power!” Twilight shouted as a white flash and a bang occurred inside the chamber. The room gently rumbled from the excess power being dumped into the ground. The noise and light from the crystal dimmed to nothing, and the engraved symbols on the ground shifted to a dull red. Twilight could start to make out a serpentine figure standing right in the middle of it all, underneath the now dead crystal.

The purple alicorn marched toward the window and the startled researchers to see Discord standing in her machine. Now standing right up against the window, muzzle pressed to glass, she took in the sight of the Spirit of Chaos himself. He seemed to he wearing a strange hat and a white shirt, partially covered by suspenders that were keeping up a pair of green shorts that his elongated body somehow fit into. In his paw, he held some form of accordion with far too many keys, too slim for even the daintiest of hooves to use to any effect.

He chooses now to ruin everything? To take away my last chance at making the greatest set of discoveries since the time of Starswirl? Twilight thought to herself as she glared through the glass at the offending draconequus. The young princess felt her anger start to flow through her blood.

“Discord! What are you doing?!” she yelled through the glass. Noticing his audience, he turned to face the window from the other side. As he took in his surroundings, his previously ecstatic expression soured into disappointment.

“I’m asking myself the same question. This isn’t Oktoberfest…” Twilight had become so enraged that she didn’t even question how they were conversing through the thick glass.

“I-I-I can’t even- Do you know what you- Why would you- What in Tartarus is- No. You know what? Just leave. Leave, so we can… do... s-something.” The combined effect of so many lost hours of sleep for the sake of this project and the sudden appearance of Twilight’s arguably most infuriating friend had finally drained her. She felt the dreaded feeling of failure in the pit of her stomach, the thought of everything she had been working to accomplish had been doomed to fail from the start. After all, why should anything go her way? Just because you work your flank off for the good of all ponykind doesn’t give you a free pass from misfortune.

“Oh, my thoughts exactly, Twilight. Believe me, the last thing I would want to do is get in the way of you ogling your precious space-things. I know how much you love space-things,” Discord said with his usual sarcasm-laden tone. He batted his suddenly overly-long eyelashes and played a suggestive set of chords on his strange accordion. Twilight just stood in the adjacent room, her head hung in self-pity, crying silent tears of defeat. She’d always dreamt of reaching the Heavens, and this was supposed to be her chance to touch something that had.

“Come now, dear Twilight, things aren’t so bad, are they? Think of it this way; you’ve still got your health!” the master of chaos said while leaning his elbow against the window, still wearing the silly getup. The lavender alicorn looked up slightly to lock eyes with the draconequus, her glare screaming, ’What’s the fastest way to wipe that smug smile off your damn face?’ “Alright, alright, I can see that this must be a bad time for you. I can tell when I’m not wanted.” He turned away from the watching ponies, assuming a faux melancholy posture as he slumped back towards the centre of the chamber.

“Well, didn’t he catch on quickly?” one of the researcher ponies beside Twilight mumbled to himself, also very upset about their lost scientific opportunity.

“Yes, I’ll get out of your manes now. But since we’re such good friends, I’ll even do you lot a little favour. I’ll turn your little super-duper interplanetary fishing net back on.” Before his statement could sink in, Discord departed in a flash, suspenders and all. But instead of the flash of light instantly dispersing like usual, it lingered after his body had vanished, then arced to the deactivated crystal above. The chaos magic filled the machine’s conduits with power, bending them to its will.

“All systems are coming back online!”

“Targeting’s fried! I can’t see what it’s doing!”

“Power levels are over 1000... 5000... 9000... Power levels are off the scale!”

The engineers all called out their various permutations of “Things are hitting the fan!” The vault across from them quickly began filling with violently bright light. All of the machine’s noises came back tenfold, shaking the mountain they sat under. Twilight and the researchers had to shield their eyes, even through the window’s enchantment designed to protect them from harmful levels of radiation. Celestia’s concern grew into panic at the thought of Equestria’s top minds, not to mention all three princesses, could very well die hundreds of feet below the ground. Cadence would kill her if she had to inherit another throne.

“Shut it down, now!” The sun princess shouted over the wailing of alarms, while preparing a shield spell and group teleport.

“Too late-“ somepony managed to yell before the crystal exploded, its shards putting cracks in the ‘unbreakable’ window.

Then everything went white.

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

♫You can’t always get what you want...♫

Alex smiled as let his car drive him down the highway, gently bobbing his head to the beat of his music. Golden leaves fluttered down from nearby trees, swept around by the airstreams of cars in the morning work rush. However, the road was definitely less congested than usual, due to the local festivities.

The physicist didn’t normally enjoy more modern music, but he always kept some handy on his trusty phone for whenever the mood struck him. Well, relatively modern compared to his usual fare; his great grandfather had probably thought this particular song to be dated. Alex chuckled to himself, imagining his grandpa rolling around on a skateboard, blaring a boom box while licking a puddin’ pop. Ah, the past!

Alex was in a far better mood than when he had left his house ten minutes earlier. Driving, especially in the autumn, had a calming effect on him. One of his many misgivings about moving to Europe was having to adapt to new weather patterns, but was pleasantly surprised to find Germany’s seasons not too different from what he was used to. Autumn especially reminded him of home; colourful displays of leaves, overcast skies, and a nice chill in the air, just the way he liked it. He took hold of the wheel, and turned off the highway at his exit ramp. He was about ten kilometres west of Berlin, his home, nearing his workplace and making excellent time due to the lack of traffic.

“Crap, the drink,” Alex cursed himself as he remembered the refreshment he was randomly selected to procure for an employee’s birthday that day. He scanned the street for the nearest convenience store, eventually finding one and pulling into it.

What’s this guy’s name again? Ah yes, Jerry, that new French intern, Alex recalled as he perused the selection of carbonated drinks. As the project leader, he tried to remember the names of all the staff under him. He had only been given the position several months earlier, as staff and assets had to be “reallocated” for Project ANTLRE, leaving his department understaffed. Not that Alex knew of Project ANTLRE. He had no way of knowing about such government secrets. Certainly not.

So here he was, on shopping trip for Human Resources to buy some non-alcoholic beverage for some guy’s birthday. They had been quite specific about the non-alcoholic part. Wouldn’t want to incite any incidents in a laboratory where high-power lasers were as accessible as screwdrivers, especially during Oktoberfest.

The physicist finally decided on a three-litre bottle of ‘Irn Bru’, and took it to the front counter. Since I have no way of knowing what Birthday Boy likes, may as well get what I know I like. A dejected-looking teenager stood at the register, who probably drew the short straw on who’d get the shift during the festivities in the city. Her face took on a polite smile as Alex approached.

“Good morning, sir,” she said, taking Alex’s drink to pass it under the barcode scanner.

“Good morning,” he replied in decent German.

“Will that be all?” She put the drink in a plastic bag with the store’s logo on it.

“Yes, thank you.”

“That will be two point five credits.” Alex passed his left hand over the RFID reader and typed in his bank code to transfer the credits, and took the bag. “Have a nice day, sir.”

“Thanks, you too.” Alex never liked the verbal exchange between the shopper and cashier, even in his native English. It was always awkward, in a variety of ways. He would be happier if the transaction took place in silence. Then again, Alex had learned long ago that his way wasn’t always (almost never) the best way when it came to these things. Reconsidering his opinion, he supposed that just staring at each other wordlessly would lend itself to a whole new range of awkwardness. He should just buy all his food online.

His party contribution purchased, Alex returned to his car in the small parking lot. He set the drink on the passenger seat beside him, and chose to drive manually the rest of the way. He spent the remaining minutes getting to his workplace in silence, with only the hum of the electric engine and his own thoughts to occupy his mind.

…

A drone buzzed overhead as Alex treaded along the Berlin United Terran Space Centre building, where he had worked for the last five years of his life. It was an old building, made mostly of glass and concrete from the time before Unification. Still, it served its purpose. It had offices, several research labs, a fabrication bay, and even a small launch pad, though it saw little use. The entire complex was situated in a large field surrounded by trees.

Alex curiously looked over to an adjacent storage building a small distance away. A team of people wearing reflective gear guided a hook being lowered from a hovercraft to a large storage container labeled ‘Top Secret’. Once hitched, the container was hauled up, and the hovercraft’s engines fired up to accommodate the new burdon, and departed into the sky.

As he neared the front doors to the main building, Alex grimaced as he spied a couple engineers loitering against the wall and laughing. He paused in his walk to look down at them

“Why aren’t you working?” He asked sternly, internally amused by how harsh German could sound. The young engineers looked up from their conversation to their superior, suddenly quite worried.

“Eh, sorry sir. We were just talking and, uh… must have lost track of time,” one said apologetically. Alex simply raised an eyebrow, then turned and began walking again, responding without even looking at them.

“You’re not paid to talk. Don’t let it happen again.”

“Of course. Sorry, Doctor.”

Alex could hear them quietly curse him as he walked through the automatic doors. He really did hate getting in other people’s business, even if they were doing something wrong. He preferred to just ignore others and focus on what he was doing, but that was the nature of his new job as project leader. He had more responsibilities than when he was just a research scientist, and also had to deal with staff a lot more than he was comfortable.

The office was much emptier than usual, likely due to the Oktoberfest celebrations leaving many with hangovers. Just as well. Alex enjoyed slow days as much as anyone else.

As Alex made his way to his office, he noticed a group of female interns crowded around a water cooler, giggling amongst each other and occasionally glancing at him in unison. Alex was about to ignore then when one of the girls broke off from the group and made towards him. Immediately, the tittering ceased, and the interns all looked away, some making themselves scarce.

The girl approaching Alex was quite young, not much older than twenty. He recognized her as one of the department’s new intakes for accounting. He sighed and stopped walking as she began to introduce herself.

“Good morning, Doctor Weaver. I’m-”

“Miss Michelle Ackermann. Welcome to accounting. You have an expenditures spreadsheet due today. I expect it my inbox no later than quarter-to-eleven.” The intern stood stunned by the curt interruption. While she was still processing what had just happened, Alex took the opportunity to step around her and continue on. As he left, he could hear laughs from behind him as the girl rejoined her comrades.

“Told you.”

“I can’t believe you actually did that.”

“You see the look on his face?”

Rolling his eyes at their childish banter, Alex entered his manger office. It wasn’t exactly huge, but that didn’t bother him. He kept it as tidy as possible, all his books sitting neatly in their shelves, his computer setup managed properly, and his whiteboard standing out of the way in the room’s corner, left blank over the weekend and ready to be covered with math.

Alex sighed as he took a seat at his desk and booted the computer.

He despised the administrative portion of his job, but it had to be done, so he didn’t make a fuss about it. Especially when there were so many other thing to make a fuss about.

He just had to make it to lunch, when he could don his lab coat and do what he was hired in the first place to do.

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

Twilight tentatively cracked one eye open. Everypony still seemed to be alive.

The control room appeared to be structurally stable, despite the heavily cracked observation glass, and several smoking consoles. The conn ponies had dropped to the ground and covered their faces in a protective position, and many of the scientists doing the same. The princesses just stood stunned, Celestia with a half-charged mass teleport spell on her horn. Everything was safe.

“Is everypony alright?” Celestia asked as she discharged her horn. The ponies slowly got off the ground, shaking off their shock and confirming their safety.

As the room recovered from the scare, Twilight slowly approached the observation window. She raised a hoof to place against the glass, but decided against it for fear of damaging it further.

“...teleportation stream snapped mid-transport. The numbers suggest the matter was dumped about three hundred kilometres north of here...”

“...targeting’s still down…”

“...take weeks to get this back together…”

Twilight scarcely listened to the engineers’ chatter. She was feeling so many emotions, she found it impossible to express a single one.

So many hours spent, so much work. Dozens of ponies, billions of bits.

Twilight recalled how, when she had begun to isolate herself, trying to solve the plethora of problems with the machine’s design, all her friends came to cheer her and encourage her. They had even temporarily moved to Canterlot a few weeks ago so that she could spend what little free time she had with friends. They had all been so supportive of her efforts to make Equestria a better place by furthering ponykind’s knowledge of the Universe.

Suddenly, the emergency lights flickered on in the vault across from her, somewhat illuminating the dark expanse. In the middle of the floor, she could make out a large, ovalish mass sitting in the middle of the floor. As her eyes adjusted, she could see that a boulder-like object had indeed appeared on the teleportation pad.

Twilight’s ears pricked up, but dropped when a moment later, the asteroid’s surface ripped open like a month-old melon and grey sludge erupted forth, indicating a faulty teleport.

Twilight simply exhaled, then turned and headed for the exit slowly, her face blank of any emotion. It wasn’t as if her soul could be any more crushed.

Luna attempted to engage Twilight as she passed to reassure her, but Celestia put her hoof on the lunar princess’ shoulder, shaking her head.

Twilght took the elevator up from the depth of the Canterlot Mountain, then made her way back to the palace from the outdoor shaft entrance. When she finally got back to her suite, Spike was fast asleep. Without making a sound, she dragged herself to bed and tucked herself in.

Gods, she hated crying herself to sleep.

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

Twelve-thirty rolled around, and Alex was heading away from the cafeteria after his lunch. This time, he took an elevator down to the subterranean laboratories. When the door folded open, the halls were profoundly different to the ones several levels above, which could be mistaken for any office building or university. These halls had cold steel floors and grey ceramic walls, illuminated by oppressively bright LEDs. The ceiling was adorned with security cameras and alarm lights every few metres.

At the end of the corridor Alex was stopped by a pair of armour-clad guards in front of a heavy door with a card reader instead of a doorknob. He presented his laminated ID, for them to inspected. One nodded and pressed a button on their wrist armour. Alex rolled his eyes as he inserted his ID into the reader and slipping through the door as it was pulled open by hydraulic pistons.

Alex really thought all this security to be a bit much, but then, none of the higher-ups ever listened to his suggestions.

A couple of Alex’s coworkers were in the locker room when he entered to get his lab gear. As he removed his lab coat and began sliding his arms in, the others noticed and called out to him.

“Hey Alex. Have a nice Oktoberfest?” asked Alexander McCormick, an Irish experimental physicist, in English.

“Don’t call me that, McCormick. And my weekend was rather uneventful.” Alex responded in German, annoyed. He disliked anyone but family using his name’s abbreviation. The fact that his coworker’s name was also Alexander didn’t help the issue.

“How typical of you. I swear, the day you ever go and have some fun is the day the cold-fusion guys on level five have a breakthrough. Seriously, it’s always ‘we’re five years away’ with those guys.” McCormick switched to German

“Are you just going to stand there judging my lifestyle? I imagine I could find a few criticisms about you, myself.”

“Actually,” Charlotte Kruger, a middle aged scientist, interjected, “I have something you might find worthy of note. I saw that you have a visitor waiting in your lab.”

“Riveting” he responded petulantly as he dug through his safety equipment. Charlotte’s voice dropped as she continued.

“It’s Commander McKay- or Reynolds now, I suppose…” Alex nearly dropped the goggles he was holding. His mood immediately went sombre. He stood in silence for a few moments. “Alexander? Are you… going to be okay?” He snapped out of his funk a second later.

“Uh, yes… I’m sure I’ll survive. ...Well, if that’s all, I shan’t keep the commander waiting.” Alex finished buttoning his lab coat, picked up a small duffle bag and made for the exit without looking back.

...

Sure enough, after making his way through the facility corridors, the sliding glass doors to his lab opened to reveal Commander Carly Reynolds née McKay. She was dressed in civilian clothing with an access badge around her neck.

Alex’s lab coat fluttered like a cape as he stormed into the lab, a scornful scowl on his face. He barely looked at Carly, who looked apologetic. He came to a stop a few metres from her and looked down at the woman, his eyes boring into hers.

“Yes?” he questioned dryly.

“Sorry for dropping in like this…” When Alex didn’t comment, she continued. “I’m just in the Berlin area for a few days while I oversee some cargo being picked up from here.”

“Ah, so you’re the one stealing our resources.” She grimaced at the accusation.

“Don’t be like that. A government project just needs some more staff while we’re in the final stages of completion. You’ll get them back soon.”

“Well, my project is also nearing completion. I’m not going to pretend to know what this ANTLRE is about, but do you have any idea how sensitive that thing is? Any misstep could set me back months!” Alex pointed to an object sitting in the cleanroom on the other side of an observation window. He just shook his head and turned to set his duffle bag on a nearby table and began to root through it. Momentarily confused, he pulled out the bottle of ‘Irn Bru’ he had bought for the party scheduled later that day. He must have accidentally brought it. No matter.

Putting it in his large coat pocket, he went over to the airlock to the cleanroom. As the first pressure door opened, he turned back to Carly.

“If you’re here to talk, you’ll have to do it while I work. I’m very busy. As you can see, this lab has a distinct lack of assistants,” He indicated to the lifeless room. She nodded and joined him in the airlock. After decontamination, they stepped into the cleanroom. The surfaces were alabaster white and polished stainless steel.

In the middle of the room was a metal table. On the table was an large, elongate octahedron, about a metre long. Its edges were a metal frame, with faces made of reinforced glass. Inside the transparent prism could be seen a long, sliver-like crystal, glowing a gentle purple. Cables that hung from the ceiling and snaked along the ground interfaced with the object at several points.

Carly looked around cautiously.

“Shouldn’t we be wearing masks and gloves.” Alex was beelining for a row of holographic computer monitors on a long desk along the far wall of the room and sat down as he switched one on.

“No. This is just a Class-D cleanroom. It’s just for keeping out dust.”

“Ah.” Carly looked around awkwardly as Alex proceeded to ignore her. “So… this is that quantum antenna that’s going to Jupiter Station?”

“Yes, and it’s likely also the single most valuable object on the planet, so the Terran Union and I would appreciate you being careful around it.” He glared over his shoulder until she stepped away from the table. “So. How’s the husband.”

That one hurt. Both of them.

“Christopher’s fine.” She couldn’t lose face here. “Listen, I can see you’re busy. I thought we could just talk like old times, but if you want me to leave-” Alex suddenly stood with enough force to topple the stool he had been sitting on.

“Well I can tell you right now, we certainly can’t talk ‘like old times’! You made sure as hell of that!” He seethed at her. He then noticed what she had holstered around her waist, and it only served to feed his ire. “And what makes you think you can just tote around a gun in a secure area like that?”

“I have clearance for it. It’s also one of the reasons I’m here. It’s a new model of the standard issue one. This facility designs them. I’m just here to pick up the prototype.” Alex scowled at the offending device before approaching Carly. He held out his hand, requesting to hold the weapon.

Carly Hesitated for a moment before giving it to him. She would never have even considered handing it over if she didn’t know that Alex would be responsible with it.

Alex looked over the gun, frowning. Neither noticed a slight hum coming from the quantum antenna.

“You know, I really don’t appreciate all this militarism in the government,” he said. Carly scoffed.

“Oh really? You didn’t seem to have a problem with it a few years ago.”

“I’m serious. It’s not necessary. For fighting terrorist cells, I understand, but on common enforcers?”

Purple arcs of electricity began to leap from the antenna, licking the table and attached cables.

“Believe it or not, crime still exists, and we still need to keep the upper hand on it. Besides, energy weapons are far more efficient than ballistics.”

“And that’s another thing-” Alex pointed the gun’s grip at Carly accusingly, but before before he could continue, he was interrupted by a mighty crack and flash of light from behind him.

CR~ACK!

Carly was thrown back by an explosive force, bracing herself as she impacted with the observation window. It held.

When she regained control of her overwhelmed senses, Carly looked up from her bruised arm. Her jaw dropped when she saw the metal table the antenna had been resting on was rent in two, and Alex was nowhere to be seen. Alarms were going off, and she could hear running outside the lab. She sat on the ground where she landed in shock for what seemed like eternity, before reacting.

“What the fuck?”

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

Alex stared for a good long while at his surroundings. What had once been his beloved lab was now a blanket of snow for as far as the eye could see. One minute, he was making an excellent point against the use of lethal weapons in law enforcement to his ex girlfriend, the next, he was in the same position, knee-high in a snow drift. Wind was howling in his ear, and the moon and stars shone down on him.

At his feet was the quantum antenna. This priceless feat of human engineering, capable of the instantaneous transmission of information, now lay partially shattered in the snow, along with some stray sheets of paper scattering in the wind.

Alex’s befuddled mind tried to come up with something to put this in a positive light. At least I don’t have to go to that birthday party. He exhaled a foggy breath.

“I really hate Mondays.”

Chapter 4 - Getting in Deep

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Chapter 5 - Risen

Cold.

Cold was all Alex could feel. From skin to bone, the only discernable sensation was that of icey blood struggling through his veins.

His mind flickered every now and again with memories; his lab, speaking with someone, and suddenly feeling lost. He recalled a strange creature, and the desire to keep them both alive.

Then, darkness.

After some time, he managed to crawl his way into consciousness, only to find the countenance of another one of the creatures. In his reduced state, he lacked the faculty to object when the creature began removing his clothes and performed various actions.

After it left, he wavered to and from consciousness, his body demanding all his strength to correct whatever malady had befallen it.

Cold.

And yet, warmth.

Warmth, that had previously fled his body, eventually reversed course, starting to slam against the gates of his body, demanding entrance. Little by little, it began to seep in, bringing with it his lost strength and awareness.

He heard a door open and close — the scraping of metal, the clopping of hooves on stone — sound once again had meaning.

He felt a presence outside his personal bubble of warmth, and peeked out to observe. Before him appeared the figure of another creature, larger than the last. It made sounds that held the virtue of language, but he failed to infer its meaning.

Red light pierced the darkness as the creature’s horn lit, and he began to feel pressure mounting against his head. In a moment, the pressure turned to pain, and caused him to forget how to think. The painful light lasted only a moment, but he had not yet remembered how to feel time.

The creature turned away to do something outside vision, exposing its side. He noticed through the once-more dim light an image of a star upon its side; it reminded him of the memory of the creature he had encountered in the snow, and how it was hurt because of him. Perhaps it was his delirious state, but he couldn’t help but feel attached to that biblical beast, and felt sorry he had caused it injury.

At that moment, he vowed to see to the health and recovery of his strange friend, and should it be that it had not survived, he would make every effort to offer atonement in any way necessary.

His self-rightious fever was interrupted when he was presented with a paper and pencil. He intinctevly took them and drew the first thing in his mind, the creature from the snow. The purple one (colour once again had meaning) left abruptly, and he could only hope his message was was understood; he wasn’t sure he did himself.

Time moved on, heat and strength slowly returned to his body, and his faculties switched back on one by one. Eventually, a thought entered his head; an ancient urge that had plagued every being since the dawn of time — a thought that drove invention and toppled empires:

“I need to take a piss…”

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

Twilight sighed as she observed the Crystal Capital from her vantage, slouched over a window of the grand crystal spire. The clock had marched well into the afternoon since her odd morning, and the earlier blizzard had calmed significantly. She had come up here from the dungeon to clear her head, but thoughts and worries still managed to cling; her world had been thoroughly shaken up, and it was only the first day.

The First Day.

The first day of what? The first day of the rest of time, she supposed. Things would never be as they were; for eons, this day would be remembered as the day the universe became unimaginably huge; as the day ponies, and all Equus’ races, began thinking of things outside the context of Equus. Life existed elsewhere in the Universe, and it was within walking distance of her at that very moment! So many possibilities; magical and technological wonders beyond description, beautiful mathematical description of the Universe, new ideas and ways of thinking.

And it was her duty to make sure that all could happen. She would work harder than she had ever worked on anything before, in the effort of fostering peace and friendship between their two races.

As Twilight pondered how exactly she was meant to become friends with something she couldn’t talk to, she heard a pony coming up behind her. She turned to see her old friend, Seer Stone.

“There you are, Twilight. I was sent to come find you — you’ve been gone nearly an hour.”

“Has it been that long already? Oh well, I suppose I’m ready to go back. I hope I didn’t miss anything.”

The two ponies began trotting back in the direction of the dungeon, the halls of the castle now devoid of staff and guests, and only the occasional guard. As they moved, Twilight was urged to ask the battlemage for her advice.

“Seer?”

“Yes, Twilight?”

“What do you think I should do? About the alien, I mean.” Twilight was a little embarrassed to be asking for advice; she was a princess, and it was her job to know what to do.

“Well, it’s not my place to tell you how to do your job, but if you want my opinion, I would urge you to make every effort to find a peaceful route. I was still young during the Skirmishes of 1049; everypony was sure a war with the gryphons would break out. We were lucky that the gryphons’ interests moved elsewhere — let’s try to have more than luck this time, hmm? Not that take you for much of a warmonger, Twilight. You were always pretty bad at those strategy games I had you play with me.”

Twilight scoffed. “Yeah, because you always cheated.”

“And that’s why you’ll never be a general.” The pair shared a chuckle, and continued to the dungeon in silence.

Once they had descended the spiral staircase and came into the antechamber, Seer frowned.

“Strange… the Praetorian should be standing guard here.”

“Maybe Princess Cadence summoned him?” Twilight wondered aloud, but gasped when she opened the door to the dungeon proper. At the end of the hall stood Edge and Doctor Sharp peeking through the door to their workroom. Twilight and Seer shared a look of concern, before breaking into full gallop down the hall.

“What happened?” Twilight demanded when she reached her colleagues. The two turned away from trying to spy through the ajar door to face her, their faces expressing a mix of shock and fear. Edge responded first.

“We’ve got a big problem — apparently, the battle-mage’s enchantments work for crap against aliens, ‘cause it just opened the door without a hitch. You’d better get in there.” Without hesitation, both Twilight and Seer charged their horns and threw the door open. They froze in surprise upon seeing the doorway across the room wide open, and filled with a tall, straight figure wrapped in a white blanket like some sort of pillar. Atop the body was a head she couldn’t make heads nor tails of, but she immediately recognized the ice-blue eyes from earlier. The creature was more than twice the height of the guards currently leveling their weapons at it. The two scouts were shakily wielding spears, while the Praetorian brandished a sword between his teeth, calm as ever.

The alien itself was slightly leaning against the door frame, all its limbs hidden within its blanket. Its eyes were squinted from the room’s bright light compared to what it had been adjusted to. If Twilight had to interpret its facial expression, she say it looked dazed and confused — if it had any fear of the guards’ weapons, she couldn’t see it.

“Drop your weapons, now!” Twilight shouted. She wasn’t about to have their first contact be initiated at spear-point. The praetorian immediately dropped his sword and pulled back; the guards took a few seconds to glance between each other, the alien, and Twilight, before backing away, though still keeping their spears crooked in their elbows.

The alien’s piercing eyes were now fully open and locked on Twilight.

Well, it knows I’m in charge now, she thought to herself as Edge and Doctor Sharp slowly came to stand on either side of her, subconsciously agreeing that the safest place in the castle was as close to the alicorn and battle-mage as possible.

Silence ensued, both parties just staring at each other. Twilight took this time to notice that the alien was actually taller than the door frame, causing her to wonder how it had looked so small while lying on the cot earlier.

After what must have been several minutes of awkward silence, the alien made a sound like clearing one’s throat, and proceeded to speak. Its voice was deep and raspy, and its words incomprehensible.

“ɪz... ðɛr ə ˈwɑˌʃrum hir aɪ kəd juz?”

Twilight gulped, “I’m sorry, we don’t understand.” She needed to remain calm and in control of the situation if things were to have any hope of succeeding. After some more silence, the alien suddenly began exhaling and swaying side to side, making Twilight afraid the giant creature was about to topple over. Instead, its flat face contorted into a grimace while continuing to breath heavily. She could only tilt her head in confusion.

Eventually, a limb tipped with the alien hand emerged from the blanket encasing the creature, causing the guards to tense up, but it only pointed urgently toward its covered midsection.

“aɪ ˈrɪli nid tə juz ðə ˈwɑˌʃrum raɪt naʊ.”

“Uh, princess,” Doctor Sharp whispered to Twilight, “I believe he is requesting to relieve himself…”

“Oh.” Twilight realized that made sense, considering. She looked back to the alien and nodded, pointing toward another door in the room that Edge had informed her was a washroom. The alien nodded back and slowly began towards the door, the blanket dragging across the floor and hiding its legs, creating the illusion of it gliding across the room.

Suddenly, it stopped and swivelled its head around, landing on the pile of clothes that Sharp had removed from it earlier. It changed course and scooped the entire pile up with a long limb, before continuing to the washroom, and closing the door behind it.

“Do… you want us to…” one of the guards stuttered and gestured to the washroom door.

“No. Let’s assume they value privacy as much as we do.” Twilight said.

The entire team just stood still for a moment, trying not to think about what was going on behind that door as the sound of the toilet flushing and a shower starting could be heard. Edge was the first to speak up.

“Well, that just happened.” He took a seat on the floor, pulled out his note book and began to write.

A nasty thought popped up in Twilight’s head. “Um, Edge? Where does the plumbing lead to from that washroom?” She couldn’t imagine what might happen if the alien’s waste got out into the environment.

“Relax, I hooked all the outgoing water lines into a void-pipe as soon as I got here — the quarantine orders were quite strict. The enchantment will last a few days,” Edge said, though his mind was clearly on bigger things.

“Oh yes, I forgot you were a plumber.”

“You’re a plumber?” laughed Sharp.

“You laugh, but that apprenticeship paid for my degree.”

Their banter died down as the sound of flowing water ceased and rustling noises could be heard from within the washroom. Everypony stood and readied themselves for their second encounter with their guest.

The door opened, and a veil of steam broke forth, slowly revealing the alien.

Twilight, now able to observe its figure clearly, began furiously taking in all she saw. The alien, now wearing the garments it had retrieved, was impressively tall — upwards of fifteen hooves. Just like Doctor Sharp had mentioned, it was bipedal, but not in the manner of a minotaur; rather than a bulky, top-heavy frame built for high-speed charging, this creature was far more elegant in shape, apparently more suited for balance.

The alien’s face was the most puzzling to Twilight; lacking a muzzle, it bore only a pair of modest lips, a small pointed nose, and two small, piercing eyes. The rest was a smooth, pale cream colour that, combined with the odd lack of feature, eerily reminded Twilight of a skull.

As Twilight and the others stared in awe, the alien began walking. Twilight instinctively stepped forward with intent to catch the alien when it began teetering precariously from its high vantage, but it managed to right itself, and let out a pained groan. With one hand grasping the wall and the other its head, it began shuffling its way back toward its room, closely shadowed by the guards.

Midway through its journey, it paused and looked up, observing its surroundings for the first time. Twilight was about to say something, when it frowned and changed course to the table of artifacts, surprising her with its speed.

Twilight tilted her head to figure out what it was doing, but her ears shot up in panic when she realized it had grasped the blue-fireball device. Her colleagues picked up on this as well, and began backing up as Twilight and Seer Stone charged their horns in preparation for a possible attack. The tension in the air had suddenly grown so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

If the alien could sense the fear of the ponies around it, it didn’t show it. It simply held the device to inspect the device, then turned its head to regard the ponies with an odd expression. After a moment, the alien turned back to the device and prodded it somewhere with its finger producing a ‘beep’, then replaced the device on the table. The creature then casually made its way back toward its room, unphased by the pair of spearheads following inches from its neck as it reentered its room, leaving the door open.

Possible crisis averted, Twilight breathed a sigh of relieve and immediately cast her most powerful shield spell around the device, making a mental note to disallow ponies from leaving lethal alien weapons lying around.

“Oh, I bet he’s hungry!” Doctor Sharp declared cheerfully and left for the staircase, as if she didn’t notice that the alien could have reduce any one of them to pile of ash, should it have chosen to do so.

Your move, Twilight thought to herself. “Edge, watch that thing, and tell me if it does something weird.” Edge nodded and seated himself beside the table, fixing his eyes to the device. She then turned and made to enter the alien’s room, once again flanked by her guards. If the alien was awake, now would be the time to solidify its intentions.

Once inside, Twilight cast a lighting spell to gently illuminate the room. She found the alien back underneath the covers of its cot, again curled into a ball. Twilight felt quite anxious, forcing herself to carry on while she still had the nerve. She cleared her throat.

The alien’s head emerged from the blanket to look at them. After a moment, it took in a deep breath and let out a guttural groan. It cast of the blanket and began a series of complex movements, from uncurling itself to standing. Twilight watched in amazement moved from the size of a pony to being over twice her height. The creature approached her, and stopped a good distance away as they observed each other.

Having a strange creature loom so high above her instilled a primal fear in her, a feeling that urged Twilight to flee. Pushing away such bestial thoughts, she took a deep breath and put on a smile befitting a politician. She levitated over a pair of cushions. Taking a seat on one, she gestured for the alien to do the same. It followed suite without much hesitation.

The two just looked at each other for several seconds, before Twilight decided it was time to speak. “Hello.”

“Hhéloö,” the alien mimicked, struggling to form the word. Whether or not it understood, Twilight decided that she would need to start with a simpler concept than greeting — perhaps names. Surely, the alien would understand names? She pointed to herself and said her name.

“Twilight Sparkle.”

“Twelint Spél-ka.” Close enough.

She then pointed to her guards, who quickly caught on.

“Steely Gaze.”

“Flash Sentry.”

The alien made its best attempt to pronounce their names, but did not make further action. Now let’s see if it understands. He… Twilight corrected herself. She would have to recognize this being as a person if she was to make a good impression.

She pointed her hoof at the alien, hoping he knew what she was trying to do.

“ˈdɑktər æləgˈzændər ˈwivər,” he replied without hesitation. Twilight smiled, confident he understood they were exchanging names. She attempted to repeat his complex name, with little success; it contained several foreign sounds not used in Equestrian.

Seeing her struggle with the name, he amended, “ˈæləks.”

“Älak-çe?” The alien nodded, accepting her attempt. Twilight couldn’t wait for that linguist to arrive.

She continued for a while to try and make some progress in deciphering the alien’s intentions, but little was made.

After some time, Doctor Sharp returned, joining Twilight and the alien bearing two trays, one with several dishes of food and a jug of water, the other’s contents hidden by a silver cover. She took a seat at Twilight’s side and lowered the platters between them and the alien. Edge, not wanting to miss an opportunity to study their guest, observed safely from the door.

“The kitchen was abandoned, so I grabbed as many varieties of raw vegetables and fruit as possible, along with some grains and other plants. I made sure to only take unprocessed food, so he can better identify what it is. To drink, I just got water — wouldn’t want to start off our guest with Gryphon rum, would we?” Sharp smiled, quite pleased with herself.

“What’s under the cover? Something for us, I hope,” Edge said as he came to join the rest of the team.

“Tell you what, Doctor Edge, you can have our friend’s left-overs.” Edge made rolled his eyes and smiled.

“His name’s Alek, by the way. Abbreviated, at least.” Twilight informed the two ponies, hoping leaving off the difficult syllables wouldn’t offend him. Sharp turned and smiled politely at Alex, and raised her foreleg as to shake his ‘hoof’.

“Hello, Alek. My name is Doctor Sharp Reflex.” He nodded, but stared blankly at her outstretched hoof, unsure what to do. “Like this,” she said as she turned to Twilight, who took the doctor’s hoof and shook it to demonstrate. The princess was interested to see what Alex would do.

Once again presented with her hoof, Alex hesitantly reached out and curled his spindly fingers into a ball to emulate a hoof and gently touched it to Sharp’s. They held together for a moment before relaxing. She gave a light laugh and returned to the food platters. Twilight marvelled at how jovial Doctor Sharp was, in spite of the situation.

Alex leaned back in surprise when a bowl of vegetables was levitated in front of him. He eyed the offering suspiciously, clearly reluctant to eat it.

“Don’t worry. It’s just food,” Sharp said encouragingly, and demonstrated by levitating a salad leaf into her mouth. Alex nodded, but was still glaring at the food. He poked at the hovering dish, muttering something in his alien language.

“I think it doesn’t like your magic, Sharp,” Straight Edge commented.

“I think you’re right,” she agreed, lowering the plate to the ground. Alex gingerly gripped the bowl between his thumb and middle fingers. Apparently feeling nothing amiss, he raised it again and sniffed its contents.

Twilight noted his aversion to Doctor Sharp’s magic. She would have to look into that at a later time; now, she was intently observing Alex manipulate the bowl and food with amazing dexterity, inspecting the various vegetables, cautiously nibbling them, and either eating or returning them once judged. All the while, Sharp filled page after page of her notebook, presumably on what Alex did and did not consume.

After nearly half an hour of this slow, piece-by-piece inspection and consumption of the food, Alex had finally completed the first platter, leaving only the hay, the dessert flowers, and some assorted grains and seeds.

“Heh, he left all the good stuff. Can I have his flowers?” Edge said.

“Of course. Just wait for our guest to finish,” Doctor Sharp responded as she uncovered the second platter. Twilight felt her stomach twist when the smell of cooked meat filled the room.

“Doctor Sharp, what is that?” she asked while trying not to breath through her nose.

“An experiment. I brought two legs of poultry, one raw and one cooked. Let’s see what he does.

“You know, on second thought, you can have the flowers,” Edge said, earning a sly smile from Sharp.

When Alex saw the meat, he raised an eyebrow at the ponies, before grasping the cooked leg by the bone. He picked a small strand of flesh off and tasted it. Deciding it was to his liking, he placed it between his teeth (that Twilight could now see were quite sharp) and sheared off half the meat with quick jerk of his long neck.

As he proceeded to systematically excorticate flesh from bone, Twilight couldn’t help but feel uneasy, but not for fear of this creature trying to eat her; she felt confident in her and her guards’ ability to keep him under control. Her concern was that the only other politically-relevant species on Equus that regularly ate meat was the Gryphons. Throughout history, there was nary an instance when there wasn’t some tension between Ponies and Gryphons, not to mention the dozen-or-so wars they had throughout history. Even now, the fragments of the Old Gryphon Empire were riled up by Equestria’s vassalization of the city-state of Griffonstone, their old capital.

This history of bad blood was usually put up to them being predators, that herbivores and carnivores simply couldn’t coexist peacefully. Twilight didn’t know if this was true, but she truly hoped it wasn’t at this moment; a race of super-advanced, warmongering aliens could prove problematic.

Finished his meal, Alex put the cleaned bone with the rest of the uneaten food, then proceeded to lean back on his arms to observe the ponies. Sharp gathered the dishes and moved them off to the side.

“Fascinating. He barely even looked at the uncooked meat. Even a Gryphon would eat it out of politeness.” She said.

“Either way, I hope you don’t expect us to take turns feeding him.” Edge said, wearily glancing at the bone. Sharp walked over to the platters to pick them up, and responded,

“Don’t worry, I don’t want him eating anything without my supervision. I’ll be keeping a close eye on his diet; it won’t do to have us accidentally poison him. I going to go put these dishes in a secure container — would you please monitor him for any adverse reactions?” Twilight nodded as the doctor exited the room with the dishes.

“Well, I suppose that means it’s my turn…” Edge was out the door before Twilight could ask, but she inferred he had something for Alex. She now found herself alone facing the alien, her guards standing aside. In his sitting position, with his long legs folded together, he was still slightly taller that her.

Twilight, not wanting it to become awkward, moved closer to Alex. He straightened his torso upon her movement.

“Hello.”

“Héllö.”

His pronunciation had gotten better. Perhaps they wouldn’t even need a linguist, she pondered.

She looked up as he scooted closer, gazing intently down at her. The guards bristled, but Twilight gestured that it was alright.

With his hand, the alien extended a finger and tapped it to the top of his head several times. Twilight cocked her head, not understanding what Alex was doing. Seeing her confusion, he instead pointed to her horn, then continuing with a series of incomprehensible gestures and speech.

“Oh, my horn?” she asked, tapping the cranial protrusion.

“Myahöirne?”

“Horn.”

“Höirne…. höirn... horn.” Alex repeated the word until his pronunciation was down.

“Yes, horn.” Twilight got the feeling that she was going to enjoy teaching this being all about ponies. She continued to speak, despite knowing he couldn’t understand, “It’s how unicorns focus their magic — like this…” She demonstrated by grabbing a quill from nearby desk and twirled it effortlessly in front of her. She knew it was silly, but it was difficult for her not to be proud of her magic, especially since Alex seemed to be rather interested. His eyes were wide as he observed the floating quill, and even bent down onto his hands to look at it from beneath.

Slowly, Alex reached a hand towards the quill, gently feeling the magic aura around it — receiving no harm, he grasped the object and plucked it from the air. Twilight was a little surprised by how easily he took the quill from her grasp, but was more interested in his curiosity to her magic, now closely examining the object, as if he had never seen such a thing before.

During this exchange, the door opened, Edge returning. He carried with him a box, along with his notebook. Joining them, he set his items on the floor.

“Likes quills, does he?” he commented, Alex still scrutinizing the instrument. “Well, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’d like a turn with our new friend.”

“Of course, Edge. What did you want?” Twilight nodded.

“Well, I had hoped to give you a full briefing on the recovered artifacts before involving the alien, but this thing is just too interesting to wait.” He opened the box and produced a small, black object. Twilight frowned.

“You really think that’s a good idea? Especially after the last incident…”

“I think the alien has proven he has no malicious intentions by not trying to attack us when he had the opportunity. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?” he said with a grin.

“Oh, I don’t know, the aliens could come and exterminate all life on Equus? We could all be enslaved and bred to be their pets? It’s kind of subjective.” Despite her dark humor, Twilight couldn’t deny that she too wanted to see some of this alien race’s technology in action. “Well, let’s give it a shot,” she sighed, levitating the object up.

Upon inspection, it was a small rectangle about the size of her hoof, one side glossy black, the other a smooth grey. Apparently made of metal and glass, she could make out no distinct features that might suggest a function. Taking notice to the ponies, Alex ceased his fiddling with the quill to see what they were doing.

“Here’s the interesting part,” Edge said as he tapped a spot on the glossy side, depressing a previously unnoticed button. Almost immediately, a luminous image appeared on the glass — a rectangle, partially filled in red on one side. Instantly captivated by the image, Twilight bent in close to eye the hovering object.

“Oh, that’s amazing! It’s some sort of picture-display? I wonder how it-” Before she could finish her thought, the rectangle was swiped from her magic hold by Alex next to her; his intense glare at the piece of metal, accompanied by growling something in his tongue, indicated that something was not to his pleasure. He began turning the object over, looking at it from all angles for something.

“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked him, hoping the context of the question would be enough. His alien eye moved back and forth between her and the object, as if contemplating whether to answer or keep examining the device. Finally, he pressed the same hidden button Edge had, and presented the same resulting image to the ponies, leaving them equally as clueless as before. “I’m sorry, that doesn’t mean anything to us,” she said shaking her head.

“It’s probably a symbol indicating something. Maybe it’s a scanning device,” Edge though aloud.

“Whatever it means, Alek doesn’t seem to like it.” Alex twitched at the mention of his name, then picked the quill back up and mimicked a writing motion. Twilight, inferring his desire to draw an explanation, levitated over some paper and passed it to him. He started running lines with the quill, but sighed when he noticed no ink was being dispensed, the well dry. Twilight started to bring over an ink pot, but stopped when she noticed him set the quill down and pull a little black stick out one of the many pockets covering his garments.

“You didn’t check the pockets?” she raised an eyebrow at her comrade.

“Uhh…” Edge blanched, realizing his oversight — small mistakes like that could easily prove costly, should things take a turn for the worse.

Their attention moved back the Alex as he touched the stick to the paper, producing sharp lines as it moved. Every so often, he would flip the stick upside-down and rub a pearly-white nub on an unwanted line, erasing it.

“Ah. Just a pencil, then. No need to panic,” he chuckled sheepishly. Twilight sighed, making another mental note to compile a list of safety practices for her team, before looking back to the series of drawings Alex had just completed. The ponies looked over the paper:

The top half of the paper showed two bipedal stick-figure representations of what were presumably other members of the alien species, both holding rectangles. One stick-figure had a speech bubble (containing illegible alien text), and an arrow led from the bubble to the other stick figure’s rectangle, which displayed identical text. Next to this was a scene of the figures doing the same only while standing on opposite ends of a circle covered in random shapes. Twilight took this to represent a planet.

The bottom of the page showed a more detailed sketch of the rectangle, including the symbol it had displayed earlier. An arrow to the right pointed to the next scene, a dark cloud and a lightning bolt striking the rectangle, and a depiction of the red-filled section of the symbol progressively growing until full. Another arrow pointed to a final scene, one of the rectangular device displaying considerably more symbols.

“So… it’s a communication device? It looks like the little aliens are talking through it…”

“I think so. Look — I think that’s a planet; can that thing work over any distance?”

“That would be truly marvellous.”

“Down here… it’s that symbol again. Is it… being hit by lightning?”

“That might make sense. Lightning possess large amounts of energy; they might use electrical energy to power their technology. And here, the little bar is gets bigger, like it’s filling up.”

“That would explain the total lack of magic aura I’ve felt from Alek and the devices! Could it be that they don’t use magic as a primary power source? But I can’t even imagine how a modern civilization could exist without utilizing it…”

The two academic ponies exchanged thoughts as they interpreted the (rather crudely drawn) diagrams, and Alex went back to grumbling at the device, now presumed to be some form of communicator. After some time, a knock at the door was heard, and Seer Stone’s voice called,

“Your Highness, we have some ponies here to be briefed. And from the sound of things in there, just in time, too.”

Twilight sighed and excused herself to get up from her spot next to this alien enigma of hers to head out, praying that their language expert had arrived. In her absence, Edge moved closer to Alex and pointed to his alien writing instrument,

“Say, could I have a look at that?”

“Edge, can you make sure to wrap things up with our friend here? I want us to get settled in here for the night before it gets too late — we’ve got a long day tomorrow.” Edge nodded absently as Alex showed off the latest and greatest in alien graphite technology. Her mood today had been more fluctuant than a mare ten months pregnant; the day’s events would have reduced the most stalwart of ponies to blabbering fools. Despite this, Twilight was feeling great anticipation and giddiness for a bright future.

“How in Tartarus did you make the lead that thin?!” Twilight shut the door behind her to silence Edge sudden outburst, and prepared to meet her new guests.

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

Rats scurried around floating piles of accumulated refuse; the dark, malodorous sewer they called their home was well suited to them. Knee-deep sewage flowed down the tunnel, collecting the Crystal Capital’s waste for disposal. It was dirty work to maintain, but such systems staved off pestilence, allowing the early Crystal Empire to flourish. And, well built as they were, rarely required maintenance, eliminating the need for monitoring. After all, why would somepony want to be there in the first place?

Hoofsteps splashed and rats scattered. By light of rune, a masked figure trudged north through the cesspool; if the atrocious stench bothered him, it did not show. He had travelled like this for hours, and would be travelling for hours still before reaching his destination.

The Crystal Castle.

Author's Note

♫Seasons change, time passes by...♫

Seriously, if procrastinating is a sin, then I'd have earned an eternity in Hell's penthouse at this point.

This took longer to get out than mentioned in my blog post because of a side project thing I'm working on. Who knows -- maybe I'll even publish it. I'll give you a hint -- it starts with 'C' and rhymes with 'plop-tic'. You guessed it: chopstick

Interlude - Alex's Notes

Journal Entry 1

Date and Time Unknown

If anyone is reading this, then I, Doctor Alexander Gabriel Weaver, am likely dead. This journal will be a collection of my experiences regarding this predicament I find myself in — namely, the fact that I appear to have been transported to a different world. This should not surprise anyone reading this.

I currently recall little of the hours leading up to and following my arrival, though certain details persist. I recall cold and snow, possibly some sort of tundra, as well as not being able to recognise the sky (though this might have been the result of stress or shock). However, I distinctly remember firing upon and maiming what I had believed to be a wolf, but was in fact a quadrupedal creature I did not recognise. It wore cold-weather clothing and had a horn on its head. The rest of the encounter escapes me, though I do recall it speaking in an unrecognisable language. Normally, I would again attribute this to shock, but my current experiences prove that unlikely.

Several hours ago, I awoke in a small stone room, and discovered myself to be in the “care” of a group of creatures like the one I recall harming, presumably having found us in the snow and treating my (thankfully minor) case of hypothermia. They express language and emotion, fully displaying sapient behaviours — one in particular appears to be in a role of leadership. In the time I have spent interacting with them, only further questions have been generated, owing to this frustrating — though equally fascinating — language barrier (see external writings for language organiser). I have set myself a goal to learn this language if at all possible, so as to hopefully learn more about this place, and how I might get back. So far, I have mostly been able to communicate through body-language and contextual speech, and am fairly confident that I have learned a small number of words in their language.

As for the creatures themselves, I have taken to referring to them as ‘ponies’ due to their diminutive stature (usually less than a metre in height) and their resemblance to said animal, though the taxonomists might beg to differ. Ponies seem to display a wide range of exotic hair pigments (dye?), as well as horns, wings, both, or neither. It is unclear whether these represent sexual morphism, some other biological distinction, or perhaps separate species entirely. They also bear different symbols on their ‘flanks’, presumably some form of identification or distinction. However, these details are eclipsed by the most inexplicable phenomenon I have witnessed here, or anywhere for that matter: the leader pony displayed to me the ability to levitate and move objects with a fine degree of control, as if by magic. My current hypotheses involve either localised, high-power electromagnetism or gravity manipulation, but such forces being produced biologically is baffling. I will describe this phenomenon further in my research notes once I’ve had a chance to examine it further.

The ponies also seem interested in studying me: they have attempted several times to communicate and learn about me. They even brought in my phone and had me attempt to explain it pictographically. I would have simply shown them its function; however, the battery has inexplicably died. The phone is quite old (nearly a decade), but has never had any issues such as this before; this leads me to believe either being exposed to the cold somehow caused the old lithium cells to die, or that the same process that brought me here also caused the battery to discharge. There is no physical damage visible.

Otherwise, the ponies have yet to show aggression or cause me harm, and have endevoured to keep me comfortable. They even brought a variety of food for me to eat, while one pony recorded my choosings. The foods brought were palatable enough, if quite alien, and my digestive system currently shows no signs of rejection, now several hours later. I would like to have run tests on the food, but given that I lack even the most basic of equipment (there is a clock, though it runs on the ponies’ time-system), I will have to set aside caution for my survival. Hopefully, the my and the ponies’ microbiomes and immune systems are sufficiently different so that we pose no microbial threat to each other.

Interestingly, I have seen no evidence of any technology more advanced than common clockwork: my guards carry only spears and swords with bronze armour, they use candles for illumination, and seem to use quills and inkwells for writing. I will avoid making conclusions until I’ve seen more of this world, but if this sample is representative of this civilization's level of material advancement, then I have found myself in the interesting position of technological superiority. Considering the implications, perhaps it would be wise to withhold my knowledge to avoid contaminating the ponies’ culture. On the other hand, it gives me the option to ‘buy’ my security with technology. Since I will be here for the foreseeable future, perhaps I should seek patronage from their government.

Given all this, I must prioritize learning all I can about the ponies and this world. I do not even know if I am on another planet, in some sort of unknown part of Earth, or a different realm of existence entirely. The different sky and moon, as well as the apparent laws of physics remaining (withholding the earlier mentioned levitation phenomenon), lead me to believe that I am still in the known universe, likely on an alien planet.

Personal Thoughts:

Well fuck me, I guess. This is what I get for doing over-time. Should have just stayed home. Now I’m probably going to die here, wherever to hell I am, being experimented on by magical alien horse-things.

Though, it’s not all bad I suppose. I’ll finally have some peace and quiet. Maybe I’ll write book.

I haven’t found anything about that pony I shot out in the snow yet, but I’ve only been awake here for a day. I’ll try to find out more once I get out of this room. Unless this is a jail cell, and I’m being held for harming one of them. In which case, I’d better get on with learning their language to see what they want from me. The honourable thing to do would be to take whatever punishment they think I deserve. Here’s hoping that pony isn’t dead, and the evidence is on my side. And I suppose even if they do kill me, at least I’ll have accomplished something — first person to be convicted of murder by aliens.

In all seriousness though, I’m going try to remain positive; this is a golden opportunity to fulfill my boyhood dreams of exploring other worlds and new life. If I can successfully integrate with the ponies, there will be so much I can learn — their “magic” abilities alone suggest new science in nearly every field. And the ponies have only been trying to communicate with me so far, so hopefully they think they same way about me. I wonder if I can convince them that I’m a god?

Either way, aggressive or not, there is much work to be done, so I’ll get on with it and stop wasting time writing shit nobody will ever read.

If any human actually is reading this, then I suppose I will have to ask you to relay my last will and testament to the relevant authorities:

Give my beloved piano to my brother, Joshua Weaver or any of his descendants. He was always jealous of that thing, the bastard.

Liquidate my assets and distribute it among my remaining family members. If I have no remaining family members, use it to throw a party for the Queen’s University physics department.

Destroy all my computers’ hard drives. All my work-related files should be on a government server.

There is a letter in my safe; if she is still alive, give it to Carly Reynolds née McKay. Otherwise, burn it.

This paper will list and describe the creatures I have come to call ‘ponies’. Despite having learned some of their names, I have assigned them unique identifications by combining their fur colour with an aspect of their flank markings, as I have not yet decided on how to transliterate the sounds of the ponies’ language. Each entry is also tagged with the pony’s apparent occupation.

White Shield (Royalty?):
White fur, blue mane; Marking - six-pointed star over a blue shield; Horn; Personality traits unknown; Health status unknown

Purple Star (Leader):
Lavender fur, dark purple mane with pink stripe section; Marking - pink, six-pointed star overtop smaller white star, surrounded by five even smaller white stars (possibly related somehow to White Shield?); Wings and horn; Actively expresses curiosity towards me; Has been active in attempting to establish communication; Has a pretty smile Seems to enjoy his or her time studying me.

Brown Slide-Rule(?) (Researcher 1):
Light brown fur, dark grey mane; Marking - what appears to be a slide-rule or similar device; No wings or horn; Positive personality; Interested in my possessions, particularly the mechanical ones.

Grey Scalpel (Researcher 2):
Light grey fur, light blue mane; Marking - likely a scalpel; Horn; Calm and authoritative attitude; In charge of my diet and health.

Crystal Eye (Guard 1):
Unique crystalline fur, light blue in colour; Marking - a pony eye; No wings or horn; Neutral attitude.

Orange Shield (Guard 2):
Orange fur, deep blue mane; Marking - lighting bolt over top blue shield; Wings; Seems untrusting of me; Behaves nervously around Purple Star; Pointed a spear at me several times.

Silent Armour (Guard 3):
Fur, mane, and marking obscured by full-body armour; Wings; Silent and intense demeanor.

Guard 4:
Only observed once; Unable to recall details due to tense contact.

Author's Note

[generic_hiatus_apology_01]

Chapter 1 - Wonderland

Stinging needles of ice whipped across the frozen landscape. The howling wind seemed to blow from all directions. Despite the chilling weather, the sky was clear, a full moon casting its light across the tundra, imbuing the land with an eerie gleam.

A small crater, hardly a metre in diameter, adorned the side of a snowdrift. Leading away from the crater was a set of boot prints, clearly indicating someone recently trudging through the knee-high snow. The tracks led on for nearly a kilometre, occasionally swerving for no reason, or even circling back on themselves. Eventually, they stopped, their owner standing still, cross-armed for warmth. His light-grey lab coat rendered him nearly invisible against the snowy landscape.

After several minutes of just standing there, staring off into the stormy distance, the figure fell to his knees in defeat. The cold was harsh, but he had bigger worries.

“…Just don’t understand it, don’t understand it…” the man muttered to himself, under the howling wind. He closed his eyes for a few moments while huddling for warmth before reopening them with a newfound vigour. “No, stop it! We are not dead. If the Universe thinks She can kill Alexander Weaver with a bit of snow, She’s got another thing coming!”

Rising back to his full height, he filled himself with determination.

“Right. First things first. Survival. What did my Scout manual say about that again?”

The Tundra is the worst place to have to survive. The absolutely bitter cold mixed with little life in any form creates a unique landscape that is nearly impossible to survive in…

“You know what? Screw the Scouts. Never taught me anything useful anyway. Okay, let’s see… Body heat! Need to keep my body heat. Let’s keep moving.”

Alex recommenced his laboured ploughing through the snow. He pulled his arms into his lab coat and held them against his core and the bottle of pop he was keeping under his shirt to help store heat.

“Next up: shelter.”

Alex began to survey his surroundings. In the distance, he spotted the jagged outline of rock formations though the blinding snow. Even further, he imagined he could just make out the faintest glow of light on the horizon, perhaps of some town. Dismissing it as a trick of the moonlight, he turned back towards the large rocks.

“That’ll do, I suppose. If I’m lucky, maybe there’ll be a cave o-of some s-sort.” At this point, Alex’s teeth were beginning to chatter.

Like a ghost in the wind, the sorrowful howl of a wolf echoed across the tundra. Alex gulped. He pulled a large gun from his pocket and brought it back in under his coat, his numb index finger firmly set on the trigger.

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

“You’ve gone and done it this time, Shining,” Shining Armor lamented to himself as he trotted across the surface of the snow on his snowshoes. “’It’s just one night out with some friends, Cadence,’ ‘Nothing could possibly happen, Cadence,’ ‘I just need some time to myself, Cadence’.” Shining paused for a moment to adjust his hiking saddlebags over his winter parka. “Well, seems like you’ve got quite a bit of time to yourself now.”

After convincing his wife to let him use his hard-earned day off, Shining had somehow managed to lose sight of his hiking buddies while admiring the dazzling display of stars in the clear night sky. The unicorn had apparently gazed for longer than he had intended, and by the time he had turned to re-join his friends, they had vanished into the snow. He had now spent the better part of an hour calling out for them, and at one point had sworn that he could hear them doing the same. But eventually his strength left him, and he had resigned to moving as best he could back towards the city.

That is, until the storm had come.

Now, at least two hours later, the unicorn prince squinted through his snow goggles as he struggled to keep walking in a straight line through the screaming wind. He had lost sight of the Crystal Capital to the storm long ago, and the stars weren’t precise enough to lead him. At this point, he had accepted that he wouldn’t make it back that night, as the cold would surely take him if he tried to hike through the night.

The group had planned to set up camp at Raven Ridge, so he wouldn’t be missed for the night back home. If things got dire, he could fire off a magical flare, since the sky was clear above the snow cloud that was being whipped up from the ground. The reason he refrained from doing so in the first place was because he knew the Crystal Guard was relatively untrained, and forcing them to come out into a harsh storm to retrieve him would be putting ponies in unnecessary risk. After all, he was a soldier by trade, and had endured worse with fewer supplies during his career.

Also, seeing Cadence’s ‘I told you so’ face may have had something to do with it.

As Shining considered how selfish it was to leave his pregnant wife to go camping, a group of rocks in the distance peeked out from the haze of blinding snow, and so he started towards them.

An ounce of shame crept through Shining as he realised that if he died out here, not only would he be leaving Cadence to rule the Crystal Empire alone, but also to raise their child without a father. Not that he was likely to die; he knew that the wolves rarely wandered too close to the city. Still, even with all his training, he still harboured his natural fear of predators. And as if to spit in the face of his common sense, an ominous howl sounded across the icescape.

Swallowing his growing agitation, Shining continued towards his prospective shelter. He carried on pushing through the biting wind, until he noticed a figure though the haze in his peripheral vision. It was also moving

He stopped, and the figure immediately halted as well. Fearing the imminent attack of some hungry wolf looking for a meal, Shining readied a thunderclap spell to scare it off. However, upon closer inspection, he found that, whatever it was, it couldn’t be wolf, due to its height and frame.

A silhouette against the moonlight, the figure was stock-still. Had he imagined it moving? Was it simply an odd tree swaying in the wind? It was only about ten metres away, and it certainly wasn’t moving now.

“Some weird tree. How’d a tree get all the way out here, anyway?” Shining started to walk towards it to investigate, but froze in surprise as a “branch” rose towards him, and its end began to glow a brilliant blue.

Before he could reign in his wits and scamper back, a bolt of the blue light lanced across the space between them and cut across his side. The last sense he could recognise before blacking out from pain was the smell of burning flesh.

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

As Alexander neared the group of boulders, his ears picked up something other than his own feet shuffling over the ever-present moaning of the wind. He turned to his right and froze as he made out the figure of a wolf about ten metres away. Its coat was dark brown, and it looked rather muscular.

It stopped when it noticed that Alex had spotted it, seemed to stare directly at him.

Alex’s body filled with adrenalin, preparing him to throw a punch or to run like hell. After a small eternity of just looking at him, it growled, and started towards him.

Alex took a sharp breath of chilling air, pushed his firearm out from under his lab coat, and pushed out the forstock to engage the weapon’s plasma chamber. As the compressed gas within the gun rose to ionization temperatures, the blue light emitted from the sides of the barrel formed a corona in the flying snow, giving the impression that his hand was alight with a blue flame.

Before he could come to know the bone-breaking bite of a wolf, Alex instinctually aimed the weapon as best he could and fired.

At first, he had only intended to fire a warning shot to scare the animal off, but apparently, the shot glanced across the beast and exploded in a puff of steam and glowing rock several metres behind. The figure collapsed to the ground, and Alex breathed a foggy sigh of relief. Alex was about to hurry away for fear of the rest of the pack, when an unpleasant thought crossed his mind: I’m going to need food…

The man glanced back and forth between the rocks and the body of his late friend. He shivered for a few moments of indecision before giving a groan and trudging towards the carcass. Alex began wondering how he was going to drag around fifty kilos of wolf at least a hundred metres, but paused when the creature came into focus. He frowned at the mass lying in the snow. This was no wolf.

Now standing within arm’s reach of the creature, Alex could see that what he had mistaken for muscle was actually a pair of canvas satchels on either side of its torso, and what at first glance looked like brown fur was a hooded coat made of some sort of fabric. The most disturbing part, however, were the four hooved legs attached to wooden snowshoes.

Alex momentarily forgot the cold as he stared at this queer sight. Who goes to the trouble of giving an animal snowshoes? Or custom-tailoring winter clothes, for that matter? Out of curiosity, he reached down and pulled up the hood to reveal the creature’s face. Alex’s jaw dropped at what he saw.

The muzzle was vaguely equine, though not nearly as protruded. Its eyes were rather large, set nearly, though not quite, forward facing below its forehead, which held the most bemusing feature of the already odd animal face. A horn, of the same snow-white colour as the thin layer of fur covering the rest of the visible skin. The perplexing protrusion brought up a single word in Alex’s mind.

Unicorn

After several more moments of dumbfounded staring, Alex closed his eyes and slowly shook his head in disbelief.

“Start the day with a call from my mother, then a surprise visit from my ex at work, then zapped from my lab to the middle of an arctic wasteland. Now I’ve shot a fashion-conscious unicorn. Why am I even surprised? What’s next, aliens?”

At that moment, a tiny puff of condensation escaped the alleged unicorn’s mouth –Muzzle? Maw? …Why do all those words start with ‘m’?– as a barely audible group of what could only be described as syllables reached Alex’s ears. Their meaning was lost to Alex, but the implications were clear.

“And it can talk. Maybe even intelligent. Things just keep getting better and better.”

The unfortunate scientist sat crouched in the snow next to the body of this scientific impossibility, trying to keep the absurdity of the situation from going to his head, when a realisation hit him that filled the man with panic anew.

“It’s alive,” he muttered to himself. “I shot it… and it’s still alive!”

Alex scanned the clothed unicorn’s body, fixing on the terrible gash streaking from shoulder to hip. Blackened cloth and flesh surrounded the dire wound, giving him flashbacks of several cremated Thanksgiving turkeys in his youth. The wound was at least three centimetres deep. Horrifyingly, exposed bone could be seen among the charred tissues, some of which had apparently evaporated from the blast of plasma.

The chest itself was barely moving, the creature’s respiration clearly impaired. If Alex had to guess, it wasn’t getting any better.

Alex racked his brain for any medical course of action to attempt to save the poor beast, but he was no medic (or veterinarian, as it were). The physicist’s knowledge of first aid extended to stopping bleeding and splinting broken bones; here, there was no bleeding to stop from the cauterised gash, and any damaged bone had vaporised!

Then, a particularly harsh gust of wind ripped Alex’s lab coat open of his grip, causing him to lose any warmth he was managing to keep. After getting the unsuited garment back under control, he stood up once again and began wringing his hands, trying to keep himself from panicking further

“Nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed. Still need shelter. Still need warmth.”

Alex took a deep breath of freezing-cold air to calm himself and spared a glance to the night sky. As the scientist studied the once-familiar face of the moon, he began to feel dreadfully sick to his stomach with dread. He had not noticed it earlier, but the moon was slightly too large, and slightly too yellow. Worse still, he could recognize none of the craters or seas he had grown familiar with through many nights of stargazing.

Desperately scanning the night sky, he found that he couldn’t make out any of the constellations, northern or southern. And to top it all off, he also saw a star cluster that he knew for a fact couldn’t be seen from anywhere on Earth. With the last of his hope of finding a way home crushed, he let his tears freeze on his cheeks as stared hopelessly at the alien sky.

“Where am I?”

After a few moments of silence, another frigid wind called Alex’s attention back to the situation at hand. With another deep breath, he flushed his mind of any thoughts not to do with survival and turned back to the dying alien.

Wasting no more of his precious time, Alex hoisted his new furry friend up into a fireman’s carry, careful of its injury, and headed for what he hoped to be an adequate rock-shelter.

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

It had taken Alex nearly half an hour to reach the rocks with the alien pony over his shoulders. After he had finally made it, he was quite relieved to find that the formation could in fact provide shelter. A large overhang created a nice area free from snow and blocked a good deal of the torturous wind. It was no cave, but it would do nicely.

After finding a suitable spot, Alex carefully lowered the wounded alien onto the permafrost and removed its saddlebags. Attached, there was a sleeping bag, and inside, he found several items of interest.

First, some packaged food and drink labelled with alien writing. Alex wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to eat it, but at this point, he was willing to try anything. Next was a fine wooden box containing basic survival supplies such as blankets, matches and what appeared to be a first aid kit. He would attempt to dress his friend’s wounds as best he could, but he wouldn’t risk making it worse by applying ointment that he couldn’t read. As for the matches, it wasn’t like there was any wood around.

The last thing he found was a photograph, framed in highly ornamental silver. The photograph itself showed the smiling face of another pony alien. Its fur was pink, and it had a mane of various colours. Atop the mane sat a crown or tiara of some sort.

“The wife, I suppose. Or husband. Who knows? And a crown? Did I shoot a prince or something? Great. Now my cold, dead corpse’ll be charged with regicide.”

Finished looting the alien’s bags, Alex picked up one of the food pouches to inspect it. It opened like a bag of chips, and what the man found inside pleased him. It seemed to be some type of trail mix, only with dried flower petals and what appeared to be short bits of hay.

Alex greedily tore open and downed half of the packages, saving the other half either for later or for his alien friend, whoever lived longer. Looking over to the barely-breathing alien, he had a grim vision of more trail mix in his future. The man quickly drank about a third of the water from the canteen. Alex would have drunk from his large bottle of pop that had come with him for some reason, but he had heard that soft drinks actually dehydrated you more, so he forwent that option. He ignored the question of how the water had stayed liquid in the twenty-below weather and the strange tingling feeling it caused going down his throat. The ways he saw it, death by alien water was probably one of the more pleasant ways to go out here. He then spent the next fifteen minutes figuring out how to wrap the alien’s wound with gauze.

Alex was about ready to wrap his friend and himself up with the blankets and woollen sleeping bag to try and sleep the rest of the night when he got an idea. If someone was wandering all the way out here with camping gear, then the nearest settlement couldn’t have been too far off.

Picking up his plasma gun, Alex moved to the edge of the overhang. Thankfully, R&D had decided to make the device “user-friendly”, so he was easily able to figure out how to increase the firepower on the small touch-screen control pad under the rear sight. Aiming to the sky, Alex pulled the trigger, and watched a much brighter bolt of blue plasma arc into the sky, ascending for a good forty-five seconds before fizzling out. He fired off another one for good measure before retiring into his hovel.

Even if the alien pony died and his comrades came and imprisoned him, Alex didn’t really care. They couldn’t possibly do worse to him than leaving them in this frozen wasteland, could they? The scientist chose to abandon that line of thought.

Alex carefully slid into the large sleeping bag with his alien friend, when he got another bright idea. He grabbed the gun once more and activated it, clutching it to his chest to absorb the heat it gave off. When he felt nothing, he frowned.

“Core temperature is over five thousand degrees, and it’s stone-cold. At least I know where all that military funding is going now; goddamn legendary heat-sinks.” After some more fiddling, Alex tried increasing the gun’s core temperature to just below unsafe levels, then engaged the trigger safety. He smiled with satisfaction when the weapon started to warm up. “Hmm. Maybe you’re not so useless after all–” he gave the device a piercing glare “–despite all the trouble you’ve gotten me in today.”

Done with berating inanimate objects for the moment, Alex squirmed around in the sleeping bag until he got cozy and placed the now pleasantly warm gun between his alien bedfellow and himself. Now that he was no longer moving or thinking, the cold air and hard, frozen dirt under them was even more apparent. Shivering, Alex gingerly moved his arms to embrace the alien pony in a totally manly man-hug, bringing their cores closer together for better heat-exchange.

Alex knew he should have been awestruck. The scientist should have been out of his skin with excitement over having discovered an alien species, or an alien planet, no less. Unfortunately, as he readied himself to fall asleep in an alien’s sleeping bag, he felt as though all his energy had been sucked out by the freezing air around him, and that there was simply none left to feel excited with.

Oh well. At least, as his eyes began to flutter closed, he didn’t seem to feel as cold anymore.

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

Thousands of blue-flamed candles encompassed a circular, stone-brick room. In the centre of the room, a shaft of pure white light shone down through a hole in the ceiling from an unknown source. Directly in the beam was the figure of a pony sitting stock-still, whose features were obscured by the intensity of the light. It sat facing away from a set of doors, the room’s only defining feature. Despite the beam’s luminescence, the rest of the room was ominously dim, barely lit by the strange candles.

“Enter,” the figure said in a low, raspy voice. Despite there being no indication that anypony was at the doors, they indeed creaked open, and a dark figure slid inside.

“You summoned me, Mistress?”

“I did. There has been an awakening. Have you felt it?”

“Mistress?”

“The Awaited One is among us. The Star-Creature has arrived and is being held in the Crystal Empire.” The dark figure seemed shocked.

“This… this is wonderful news. How would you like us to proceed, Mistress?”

“You are to go to the Crystal Capital. It is likely to have already been captured by the Crown’s agents, so exercise caution. You shall attempt to… acquire it. By any means necessary. I trust you are equipped for this task?”

“The Nox are always equipped to serve the Order, Mistress.”

“Good. Go, then, and recover the Star-Creature, so that we may fulfill our Cause.”

“I shall succeed in my mission.”

The stallion turned to exit the room, when the old mare added something.

“I also trust that you know what must be done should you be captured, Nox?” The stallion paused, standing in uncomfortable silence for several moments before responding.

“I will not be captured.”

“Correct.” The stallion waited for several more moments, and when it was clear that nothing more would be said, slipped back out the doors. The mare’s figure did not move once, always facing away from the entrance, contemplating her plans for the future. Equestria's future.

“Soon. Soon the Nightmare shall reign supreme once more, and we shall reclaim the night.”

Author's Note

So it begins. If you enjoyed, please like and let me know in the comments. If not, any constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated.

Big thanks to AlicornPriest for editing this chapter.

The Tundra is the worst place to have to survive. The absolutely bitter cold mixed with little life in any form creates a unique landscape that is nearly impossible to survive in…

Excerpt from survive-prepare.com

Chapter 3 - Twilight's Hunt for Truth

Author's Note

The following chapter contains a brief description of [gore] in a medical context.

Additionally, I forgot to mention that this story splits off from the cannon storyline sometime after Scare Master in season six, and assumes that Hearthbreakers chronologically occurs after.

Chapter 3 - Twilight's Hunt for Truth

“Good morning, Twilight,” Spike said, looking up from his bowl of sapphires.

Twilight squinted at him through groggy eyes, her mind just beginning to wake up properly from what little sleep she got. She yawned, and wiped away the long-dried tears from her face. Her voice was raspy and monotonous.

“Morning. Coffee.”

“On the table.”

Twilight lurched her way over to the room service tray on the dining table in her palace suite. She had been living in this room for the past month, mostly working. Complex charts and chalk-laden blackboards cluttered every wall of the once luxurious suite. Now, it was indistinguishable from a messy professor's office. Twilight had tried to keep it all neat, but eventually, the need to juggle large volumes of information overcame her compulsion for order.

Having poured herself a cup of the coffee, Twilight took a seat across from Spike. As the caffeine gradually diffused into her bloodstream, she absentmindedly eyed over a stray diagram of her machine.

It was perfect. Not one mis-carved rune, not one crossed power stream. It would have performed perfectly, had it not been for Discord’s meddling. Why did he have to go and do that? Didn’t he know how much this meant to me? Well, of course he did. Why else would he do it?

The more Twilight thought about it, the angrier she became. Discord had destroyed her best chance of actually making a contribution to science, and for what? She genuinely had no idea. Even Discord usually had some reason for his behaviour, whether to prove some nonsensical point, or simply get a kick out of watching ponies scramble to clean up a mess he had caused. But this? He just showed up in time to throw a spanner in the cogs and left.

“Twilight?”

Twilight's coffee began to boil in her magical grip as she began to seethe. He had no right to interfere with my work! If it had just been some dumb project, then that would be one thing, but this is deliberately hindering scientific progress! Why, I have half a mind to summon that wormy ass of his right now and shove it into…

“Uh, Twilight?”

“YES, SPIKE?!” Twilight’s mug erupted into a geyser of vapourized coffee, the ceramic mug itself beginning to glow and deform from the intense heat of her rage.

Spike paid little attention to his caretaker’s outburst, instead clutching his stomach with a twitch in his eye.

“I feel… weird. Like something’s digging around in my body.” Before she could respond, Spike collapsed and began jerking in odd angles. Twilight immediately forgot her grievances and dashed around the table to get to her assistant’s side.

“Spike! Just, uh… Just stay there. I’ll get somepony to-”

Before she could get all her words out, Twilight gasped as Spike let out a mighty belch, and a cone of golden flames engulfed the space above the table. No heat came from the flame. Instead, it gave her a chill. The fire almost felt like it was judging her.

When the golden fire finally died down, a letter remained floating in its place. The envelope was a bright, crimson red, and seemed to shimmer.

Once Twilight snapped out of her shock, she broke her gaze with the mysterious mail to check on Spike. He lay face up on the cushion, limbs splayed out and staring dumbly at the ceiling.

“...Sapphires for breakfast; never again.”

Giving a sigh of relief to see him well, Twilight turned back to the letter. She plucked it from its spot suspended above the table and brought it cautiously towards her face. Instead of a scroll with a wax seal bearing the insignia of the Crown like she was used to, this envelope instead had a rune impressed into a seal of lead, presumably what was giving it its magical shimmer.

She hadn’t been holding it for three seconds before the shimmering field rippled with light, and an ethereal voice filled the air.

“Recipient thaumic signature detected - please state your name to confirm.” The voice was like wind chimes ringing in her brain.

“Uh, Princess Twilight Sparkle…” she responded to the disembodied voice that seemed to come from every direction at once.

“Confirmed. This is a high-security message from the desk of Princess Celestia of Equestria. Please tear the parchment in twain once read to initiate self-destruct. Self destruct will be initiated automatically in five minutes.”

And with that, the shimmering field shattered, and the lead seal melted off, evaporating before it hit the hardwood floor.

Twilight stood stunned as she held a letter that had told her it intended to destroy itself. Spike groaned beside her as he pulled himself up into a sitting position.

“Well, are you going to read it? Whatever it is, it’s spoiled my appetite. Might as well find out what it wants.” Twilight turned to him with a mixed look of awe and fear.

“Spike, this is a Royal High-Security Communiqué. It’s only used for the most dire of circumstances. I think the last time one went out was when Tirek took over, and the princesses had to secure Equestria’s secret installations. I’ve never seen one up close.” Twilight just sat there, staring in awe at the red envelope.

“Well, what are you waiting for, then? Open it!”

Twilight looked unsure for a moment, then quickly nodded. She gingerly pried it open with her magic, and equally carefully pulled out a surprisingly ragged piece of scrap parchment.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Twilight,

Report the the Crystal Capital castle dungeon immediately.

- C.

P.S. Speak to nopony. That includes Spike. Go.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

“Well? What does it say?” Spike, now recovered from his ordeal, attempted to read over Twilight’s shoulder, but she pulled it away from him.

“It says that, uh… that I can’t tell you what it says. I… I have to go. To a place. Right now.” Nothing like had ever happened to Twilight before. She didn’t know what to think, or how to feel. All she knew was that Celestia was ordering her to go to the Crystal Empire in one of the most urgent manners possible.

Spike simply gave her a concerned look. He realized the situation must have been quite grave to have Twilight so spooked.

Twilight then moved the paper away from her face and began tearing the paper in two. Once the rip reached about half way, both the parchment and the envelope began to dissolve into a cloud of golden sparks, before fading into nothing.

She then returned Spikes look of concern, then began towards the door. However before she could get to it, a sonorous call came from outside her suite’s balcony window.

“Princess Twilight, are you in?”

“Luna?” Twilight would recognise the night princess’ commanding voice anywhere. Upon hearing Twilight respond, the princess of the night let herself into the suite from the balcony.

“Ah! Thank the Makers! Pray tell, Princess Twilight, has sister come to see you? It is of the utmost importance.”

“No, but I did just get… a red letter from her.” Luna did not appear as impressed as Twilight had been.

“Oh. She has no doubt instructed you to depart for the Crystal Empire.” So much for ‘Speak to nopony’. Twilight decided she could trust Luna, though she loathed to brush off such rigid orders.

“She did. Luna, can you tell us what’s going on?” Twilight was getting worried.

“I am afraid not. This turn of events has unfolded just as quickly upon me. Though, I have some notion as to what has prompted sister’s strange actions. We were having our supper - or breakfast, as it were - when an urgent letter from Princess Cadence arrived by dragonfire. Attached was a guard report of some sort. Before I could draw information from her, she dashed to her desk, hastily wrote up several letters, then teleported away. I could not trace her. I had hoped that she would be here.”

Twilight frowned. Whatever was going on, if Celestia didn’t even have time to speak to her sister, it was far more urgent than she had thought. Celestia clearly knew something.

“Do you have any idea what could cause her to act like this?” Luna sadly shook her head.

“I am afraid not, Twilight. Many… procedures were conceived over the centuries, relating to many scenarios; war, plague, natural disaster, to name a few. Though, without more information, I could not guess as to what exactly has occurred. However, for ‘Tia to have acted with such haste, it can be assumed that the situation is of the utmost gravity.” Luna said. However, after a moment, she flattened her ears and added apologetically, “Oh, yes. And I am afraid your brother has been injured.” This statement left Twilight jarred.

“W-What? How badly?”

“If I saw correctly, the guard report mentioned Shining Armor, and bore the seal of the Crystal Palace’s royal infirmary. Evidently, badly enough to be hospitalised.” Twilight was frozen with anxiety, haunted by thoughts of what could have happened to her dear brother. Quickly she regained control and looked back up to her fellow princess.

“Whatever’s going on, it’s important. I’ll get to the Crystal Empire as fast as I can, so I can see Shining and figure out what Princess Celestia wants me to do.” Luna nodded.

“Prudent decision. Speak to the Rail Master at the train station. She will have an emergency engine brought out with haste. It is faster than other engines, and will not make stops.”

Twilight turned to the balcony and made to take flight, before Spike spoke up.

“Uh, what about me? Am I coming too?”

“Sorry Spike, I think I’m supposed to do this alone. I’m sure I’ll be back soon, when this clears up,” she apologised. Spike nodded and let Twilight perform her duty. Luna and the dragon watched as she took to the air and silently flew out the window and into the early morning sky.

“If you would not mind, Spike, I should like to have you with me. Having a source of dragonfire shall be most useful.” Spike smiled in agreement. Luna crouched down to allow the dragon onto her back. “You have no aversions to opossums, have you?”

“I… don’t think so. Why?” Luna stood and began to leave Twilight’s suite. She simply smiled.

“No reason. Perish the thought”

<~.~.~</^>~.~.~>

Several ponies were startled as their princess teleported straight into the train station office. Twilight ignored everypony accept the Canterlot Rail Master sitting in her office. Twilight urgently requested the emergency engine, and the mare quickly called out orders to a nearby engineer.

The locomotive was hitched and ready in under ten minutes. Unlike normal steam engines, it was propelled magically. It and its single car were not ornate like other trains, but made of wood and polished wrought iron. They were conical in shape to allow for higher aerodynamic efficiency.

Now, Twilight sat in the sparsely furnished car, traveling north at nearly a hundred miles an hour. There was nothing to distract her from her thoughts but the drone of the magical engine ahead.

Twilight rested her head in her hooves and gazed out the narrow, utilitarian window, her lack of sleep catching up with her. She was still trying to convince herself that the last half-hour had actually happened.

What happened to get Celestia to act this way? Why was there no time to explain it? How is Shining involved?

She was drowning in questions that she couldn’t answer, so she tried to distract herself by thinking what her friends were up to. Likely, they were all preparing for Hearth’s Warming coming in a few days. Twilight sighed at the thought. The last time they had all been able to spend time together as friends was for Nightmare Night, over a month ago, and now she was about to miss one of the most important holidays to be among friends and family. Would she have to miss Winter Wrap-Up as well? When she had initially proposed the idea to catch an asteroid, her friends were all so supportive. Even when it began to consume more and more of her time, they had assured her that they would manage, and that they were glad that she had found a way to fulfill her life-long dream of making an actual scientific breakthrough, instead of “just being smart”.

For the first time, she began to question whether it was worth it.

As Twilight attempted to catch a bit of sleep, she lost herself in her mind. She was drowning in worries for her brother and fear of the unknown. She could tell secrets were being kept, and that troubled her. What the future held for her, she couldn’t guess. After her misfortune just the previous night with her teleportation experiment, she couldn’t help but feel like she couldn’t catch a break.--

After a while, the train moved under dark northern clouds, and it began to snow. Twilight stared blankly out the window, and eventually drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

...

Twilight looked around as she entered the Crystal Palace’s medical wing. She had been there several times before, but it was now unrecognizable. The main reception room was in chaos; crystal ponies of various professions trotted briskly from room to room, hauling boxes of files and assorted medical equipment. Papers lay scattered on the crystal floor, and everypony had various looks of concentration, clearly working as quickly and efficiently as they were able.

Ponies barely spared the princess a quick bow before getting back to whatever they were doing. As Twilight approached the reception desk, the attendant looked up and dropped her stack of papers upon seeing her, looking shocked.

“Oh, Princess, you’re here already. Apologies about the state of this place. The director is waiting in her office.” The crystal mare said distractedly, her concentration clearly divided.

“Of course, but first, I need to see Shining Armor.” Twilight’s worry deepened when the mare expression grew troubled.

“Oh, the Prince. Yes, he is in room ‘14-A’, in the intensive care ward. I believe Doctor Hays just went to check on him. You could still catch him.” The attendant’s ears were folded back in pity. This can’t be good. Twilight thanked the mare, and trotted quickly to the specified room.

Once she found her way to the intensive care ward, the crystal walls became plaster to easier see contamination. The air reeked of bleach.

Upon arriving at the door labeled ‘14-A’, Twilight stopped as somepony in medical garb exited the room, who she assumed was Doctor Hays. She didn’t waste time with pleasantries.

“Doctor. Tell me what happened,” she demanded. The stallion turned to see his princess glaring at him, and thankfully didn’t try to bow, or anything else that would only serve to waste her time.

“Princess Twilight. I don’t know much about what happened, but an hour ago, Prince Shining was brought in from outside the city by the Guard. He has a serious burn across his right latissimus dorsi and external intercostal muscles, along with some frost bite. We’ve managed to stabilize him, but he’s still in critical condition.” Doctor Hays efficiently conveyed the important information to Twilight.

Twilight turned away from him and was about to burst into the hospital room, when the doctor put a hoof on her shoulder to stop her.

“Princess Cadence is currently asleep in there. I wouldn't recommend waking her. This… incident has taken its toll. On everypony.” After a moment’s pause, Twilight nodded and steeled herself. She opened the door, and slowly entered the sickeningly sterile room. Her eyes ran laps around the beige walls, before finally managing to settle on the mass in the bed on the far end of the room. On a cushion next to the bed sat Cadence, her head wrapped in her forelegs resting on the mattress. Her hair was in a most disheveled state.

Shining Armor lay there, his eyes closed and breathing shallow. Were it not for the medical equipment on either side of the bed, Twilight could believe he was simply sleeping. Time seemed to slow as she began toward his side. After what felt like an eternity, she arrived next to her unconscious brother.

With a hoof, she gently touched his shoulder, careful not to disturb the blanket hiding his injury. When no response came, she hung her head in silence, trying to fight back the fear and sadness in her heart.

Doctor Hays stood in the doorway, patiently waiting while she stood in the prince’s presence. After a few minutes, she turned away from her brother and sister-in-law and returned to the door, the normal glimmer of cheer found in the princess’s eye absent. Wordlessly, they both vacated the room, and she gently shut the door. Once they were once again alone, Twilight took a deep breath of bleached air and blanked her face.

“Prognosis?” The doctor grimaced. Worst part of this damn job…

“Not good. I won’t lie to you princess. He could die.” This caused Twilight’s composure to shatter completely. A manic rage grew in her eyes as she began shaking.

“You have access to the best doctors and medical technology in Equestria, maybe even the world, and you can’t even heal a burn?! Did you even try any regeneration spells?! I certainly didn’t sense any healing magic residue on him!” Her voice rang through the hall, startling a few nurses passing by.

“Princess, please try to remain calm. I realize that this is traumatic news, but we have to try to stay rational.” Twilight’s nostrils were flaring in anger like a bull, but she let him continue. The doctor looked at her sympathetically, before explaining. “The nature of the burn makes any regeneration spell either impossible or potentially lethal. The wound is too close to his vital organs to brute-force it with a restructuring spell, and we can’t just simply regenerate it closed, because the necrotic tissue will almost certainly cause him to go into septic shock. Any other healing spells utilise his body’s own regenerative capabilities, and he’s nowhere near strong enough right now to normal regen-therapy.

“Normally, we could just keep him here for a few months while he regains strength, but the high risk of infection means we don’t exactly have time on our side.”

Twilight glared at the doctor for several moments, trying to think of something, anything, that could save her brother.

“Let me see.”

“See? See what, Your Highness?”

“The burn. Let me see it.”

He stood there awkwardly under his princess’ glare, before concedeing. The unicorn levitated some papers from his saddlebags.

“Very well, Princess. I can’t let you disturb the prince, but these photographs were just developed. I warn you, though; they are-” His warning was cut off by Twilight snatching the photos from him in her own magic. Her eyes widened in horror as she looked over the first one.

The colour photo showed her brother sprawled out on a gurney, the legs of several guards and doctors in the edge of the shot. Centre frame was a long crevice in Shining’s body, running from his shoulder to his flank. Twilight couldn’t quite make out the details, as the picture was smudged from motion. However, the next one in the stack gladly focused on the gruesome wound. The fur around the burn had been shaven off, and blue marker now encircled the gash to better notice infection.

The burn itself caused Twilight’s stomach to roll. Most of the flesh in the gash was burnt black, with patches of bloody, raw muscle in the cracks. Twilight felt shivers go down her spine when she noticed some deformed ridges, blackened on one side, that could only be bone.

Twilight desperately tried to keep herself from vomiting right there in the hall as she continued to flip though the disturbing photos of her fallen brother. The last one in the stack was an osteography, confirming that Shining’s pelvis and several ribs had been mangled.

After standing dumbstruck for a while, Twilight slowly returned the photos. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered that this was the most horrendous injury she had ever laid eyes on.

“...I see…” she said softly, her look of shock not yet gone. Doctor Hays tried to give her a reassuring smile as he replaced the pictures.

“Try not to worry too much, Your Highness. He just got here, and we have a whole slew of treatments ready to try, so it’s not like we’re without options. And like you said; we have the best resources on Equus available to us. We’re not about to just let our best prince go without a fight.”

Twilight tried her best to return his smile, but underneath, her dread refused to be buried. The doctor decided to change the topic. “Anyway, I believe Doctor Reflex is waiting for you. You’re a bit earlier than expected, but I’m sure she won’t mind. She’ll probably be in the director’s office, just down this hall and to the right.”

Twilight nodded, not bothering to respond, and began to trot down the hall. However, she paused when Doctor Hays added,

“Princess, I’m not stupid, and I don’t think you are either. The scorching on only one side of the ribs indicates a blast of some kind. This was clearly caused by some sort of weapon. I’m not going to pretend to know what’s going on, but there’s been talk of terrorists…” He stopped when he noticed the princess frown. He cleared his throat and looked away. “Anyway, I’m sure you’re here to help figure things out, so any information about whatever has done this to your brother will help us greatly to make decisions for his care.”

“If I learn anything that can help save Shining, believe me, I won’t hesitate to pursue it,” she stated firmly, then turned without waiting for his reply, and made her way to the director’s office.

…

As it turned out, the director of the hospital was not in her office. Her secretary, a small Crystal mare suggested checking the hospital’s third level, so that’s where Twilight was headed now. The hospital was its own spire of the castle, and had a spiraling staircase and an recently-installed, modern elevator to change floors. Twilight chose to take the stairs, as they were faster, and the elevator was being occupied by a team of workers ferrying large crates.

As she approached the third floor, she could start to hear strange clanging noises. Once she arrived and opened the pair of swinging doors, her ears were assaulted by the pounding of construction equipment.

Before her was a sight to behold; dozens of construction workers in reflective gear and hard hats were busy knocking down walls, erecting support beams, and all manner of different tasks. The area wasn’t particularly large, as this was the tip of the spire, but was spacious enough to reverberate the torrent of sound.

In the middle of it all was a unicorn mare speaking, or shouting, rather, with a group of ponies trying to assemble a machine of some sort. She was wearing a hard hat like everypony else, but her black and white business dress indicated an administrator. Twilight supposed that this was her mare.

The mare looked away from her conversation with the mechanics and locked eyes with Twilight from across the room. She looked surprised for a moment, before looking back to the worker. She bellowed some orders over the din, turned to make her way towards Twilight. Once she was close, Twilight cast a muffling spell around them to actually be able to converse. The mare gave her a polite nod.

“Princess, you’re early. Excellent. I’m afraid I won’t be able to join you in our little workplace yet. I still need to oversee this reconstruction. These ponies couldn’t tell a centrifuge from a soul-forge.” The mare gave a quick glance over her shoulder to glare at the mechanics, who appeared to be trying to hook up what Twilight recognised as a medical refrigeration unit. “Oh, where are my manners; my name is Doctor Sharp Reflex. I’m chief surgeon and acting director of the Royal Crystal Infirmary, but I’m sure you already knew that.”

Twilight eye twitched slightly. She considered herself a patient mare, but enough was enough. She had been carted to the other side of Equestria, and led through a rigamarole of tracking ponies down. And for what? Something important was going on, and it seemed like everypony knew more than her, and nopony was telling her anything!

She took a deep breath, and did her best to speak in a calm and collected fashion.

“I’m sorry Doctor, but I was asleep two hours ago, and just saw my brother... in the critical care ward. The only thing I know is that I’m supposed to go to the castle dungeon for some unknown reason. Now, can you tell me what’s going on here?” Doctor Reflex expression grew concerned.

“Oh my. This must be more serious than I thought… Well, I’m afraid I don’t know the nature of the situation, but I can tell you about this.” She gestured to the reconstruction effort going on around them, the noise reduced to whispers. “Just a few hours ago, I received an emergency message from the Crown instructing me to oversee the conversion of this storage floor into a new laboratory. Apparently, the castle foreman got the same message, as I found the construction team ready to go by the time I spoke to him.”

A new laboratory? Twilight added it to the ever-growing list of things she had to get answers to.

“Do you know why? Build a lab, that is.”

“Afraid not, Your Highness. Though in the supply manifest, there’s listed microscopes, alchemical analyzers, and various thaumometers. If I had to guess, I'd say we’ll be doing something biology related. Oh, and some medical runes were requested to be sent to the dungeon, so I imagine we’ll be doing something there while this lab is being finished.”

“You keep saying we…”

“Hmm? Oh. It’s just that my message implied that we’d be working on something together. Us, and possibly a whole team. I did see Doctor Edge heading towards the dungeon this morning.”

Doctor Edge? Could she mean Straight Edge? Before she could ask, Doctor Sharp continued.

“Perhaps there is something you could answer me, Princess.” Twilight doubted there was anything she could say for certain about this ridiculous situation she was in, but she nodded her head anyway. “Well, if I am correct in assuming we are assembling a research team, then I can only wonder, why me? I mean, I know I’m a good surgeon-” she gave Twilight a sly smile, “-but I’m by no means the best in Equestria. You are renowned for your vast knowledge of magic and science, and if I’m not mistaken, Doctor Edge is the leading figure in materials science. It almost makes me wonder…” The doctor paused to think, but before she could continue, Twilight noticed a sudden flash of movement behind Sharp Reflex.

The refrigeration unit had started wildly spraying coolant, and the workers were scrambling to get the leak under control. Sharp gave a groan when she turned and saw the mess unfurl.

“Apologies, Your Highness, we can speak later. I’m sure all these questions will be answered in the dungeon. For now, I have to get these feather-brains in line. I will see you as soon as I’m able. Now, WHO SAID YOU COULD UNSCREW…” she hollered to the mechanics as she cantered away, her admonitions fading away with the rest of the sound as she crossed the silencing spell’s one-way barrier.

Well, that’s that, I suppose. Twilight watched the bizarre sight for a few moments, before heading back towards the stairs. With any luck she was finally about to find out what the buck was going on. To say that she was frustrated is an understatement; she was positively pissed. She absolutely loathed not knowing things, and she had only accumulated questions since arriving in the Crystal Empire.

The only thing that kept her from snapping at Doctor Reflex was the fascinating prospect of being on a research team. Did Celestia have something that needed the best minds in Equestria to investigate? Was a dangerous relic from the rule of Sombra discovered in the dungeon? Or perhaps somepony was infected with an unknown pathogen, and was being kept in the dungeon while a proper lab could be assembled. She giggled internally as she imagined having to tell Spike that they had a zombie outbreak on their hooves. Whatever the case, Twilight’s curiosity had been piqued.

With nothing left to do but head down to the castle’s dungeon, once more she trotted towards a future she couldn’t see. Descending the crystal staircase, she absent-mindedly gazed at her reflected image.

…

Four hallways and two stairwells later, Twilight arrived at the door to the staircase that led down into the castle dungeon. Two Crystal guards were posted on either side of the reinforced entrance. She was a little concerned by their full battle armour and mana-lances, but they let her pass without issue.

As she descended what she dearly hoped to be the final set of stairs, she recalled what she knew of this castle’s dungeon. Unlike Canterlot’s or her own, this dungeon was quite small, with only a hoofful of cells. The Crystal Empire’s society had been quite advanced for it’s time before Sombra’s takeover, and was likely the first nation to adopt a public penitentiary system, with a whole building separate to the castle.

From accounts she had read, the castle dungeon was mostly used for scaring young royals out of misbehaving.

The stairs eventually ended, and led into a small antechamber, dimly lit by a single sconce.

Twilight was distracting herself from her little castle-marathon by imagining all the possible things that could be waiting for her down here. With her mind distracted, she was startled to suddenly bump into something hard. She looked up, and was shocked to see a pony in front of her, from hoof to ear covered in black and silver armour. The light from the sconce glittered off the silver bands and the steel sword.

Twilight gulped. She knew what this pony was. This was a Praetorian, the elite guard of the Crown. In the past, it was their duty to protect the royalty of Canterlot Palace by keeping watch for would-be assassins, or act as bodyguards during times of war.

The last time Twilight remembered seeing one was when she had still been a student of Celestia, during some important diplomatic meeting she was too young to know or care about. When she had read about them later, and asked her teacher why she didn’t see them anymore, Celestia told her it was because they had been outmoded by modern security spells, and close combat specialization was rarely needed, even in altercations.

“Ah, Twilight, I hope my obtuse friend here didn’t startle you.” Twilight heard a familiar mare’s voice beside her, where she had been sure nopony was standing before.

Twilight turned and saw a older, chocolate-brown mare, wearing beautiful robes of the Canterlot colours, gold, black, and white. Her pointed hat and utility belt covered with small sacks and runes indicated that she was a battle-mage.

After a moment, the memory clicked in Twilight’s head.

“Seer Stone? What are you doing here?” Seer Stone had occasionally looked after Twilight for Celestia when she was too busy with political matters to teach Twilight. Twilight had learned many powerful self-defence spells from this mare over the years.

“What’s it look like? Guarding!” Seer gave a good-natured laugh. “But, before we continue, I’m afraid I have to ask to see your seal. Celestia’s orders.”

Twilight nodded and stood back, and cast a shower of purple light above her head. The light arranged itself into an intricate pattern of swirling stars and tendrils of various colours, all circling around the purple star of her cutie-mark. It was her seal, which was a form of authentication among unicorn nobility, and was virtually irreplicable.

“Excellent! Now, if you would stand aside?” She asked the Praetorian. He wordlessly stepped to the side, revealing the door to the dungeon proper. As Twilight and Seer moved to enter, Twilight noticed that this Praetorian was a pegasus.

Once inside, Twilight looked around. It was barely a dungeon. It consisted of a single hallway, with a dozen cell doors at most on either side. It was even well-lit. What a weird dungeon, she thought.

“So Seer, can you tell me what in Equestria is going on?” Twilight asked hopefully as they walked down the stone hall.

“Heh. Let me guess; you’ve been galloping around the castle after Celestia gave you some vague orders, and you’re tearing your mane out because you can’t get any information from anypony.” Seer knew her better than she thought.

“You don’t know the half of it. So, a praetorian and a battle-mage? This must be more serious than I thought.” Seer’s cheer waned slightly.

“Indeed. Well, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be my place to tell you, but you’ll be relieved to hear that your journey has come to an end. Through that door is Doctor Straight Edge, who should be able to answer all your questions. Well… most of them, at least.” Seer gestured to a simple wooden door at the end of the hall they were heading towards. “It’s my understanding that you know him?”

Twilight nodded. Straight Edge was a family friend, her father’s old university roommate. When she was a young filly, she loved his visits, as he always brought something fascinating from his lab. He was Twilight’s first introduction to the fascinating world of science. In later years, he would give her his lab’s private-subscription science journals about Equestria’s cutting-edge theories in mathematics, physics, and alchemy.

“Good. There is a long journey ahead of us, Twilight, and we’ll need all the friendship we can get. Though, I bet you already know all about that.” Seer chuckled, poking fun at Twilight’s moniker of “Princess of Friendship”, though at this point, she was too wound up to care.

“Yes, of course. Just through this door?” They had come the the door at the end of the hall, and Twilight was practically shaking in anticipation. Seer nodded happily.

Yes. This is the dungeon-keeper's office and quarters. After the construction of the dungeon, it was mostly used for-” before she could get into a history lesson, Twilight pulled the door open as quickly as she could without breaking it and moved inside, closing it behind her. Seer chuckled again, enjoying making one of her students squirm again.

Inside, Twilight noticed nothing glaringly out of place. It was the size of a large living room, lightly furnished with a wooden desk and some chairs. One wall held two other doors, both closed, one with guards on either side. On the far end of the room was Straight Edge, looking at some objects atop a long table spanning the length of the wall. When he heard the door, he turned and gave her a bright smile.

“Twilight! How are you doing? I’ve been reading all about your amazing project. How has it been goin- eep!” In the middle of his sentence, he gave a yelp as Twilight magically pulled him across the room to nose-to-nose with his old friend.

“Greeting later. Explanations now.”

Once she returned him his mobility, he gave a little shake, and returned to her gaze.

“Heh, still not one for small talk, eh? Can’t say I blame you; this discovery can only be described as… world-shattering.” Twilight found herself once again suppressing a growl.

“And this discovery is…” she prompted. Straight Edge’s eyes widened.

“You weren’t told? Well, I suppose that makes sense. I didn’t find out until I got here, I figured you being a princess-”

“Edge!”

“Right, sorry.”

With that he leaned in close and looked conspiratorially to either side, despite the guards and them being the only ones in the room, and gave her a sharp smile.

“Aliens.”

Twilight cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, making sure she had heard correctly.

“Aliens?”

“Aliens.”

Twilight stood there for several seconds, trying to grasp the idea.

“As in… extra-Equan aliens?"

“Yep. Those aliens.”