Consciousness came fleetingly at first. My head was pounding so hard I could just about hear the blood pumping in my ears. Then suddenly I was awake, yet all I could see was black and the air around me felt cold, almost like someone had just taken away my blanket while I was sleeping.

I found my recent memories slowly surfacing, with a half-hearted effort I brought my hand to my face. Muttering could be heard somewhere in the distance, too quiet to understand. As my palm found the bridge of my nose the fingers reflexively went to work rubbing my eyes before moving to help me sit up. Now my eyes were open I could see that I was no longer on the bench. Looking over my shoulder the bench sat impassively behind my prone body.

Realising that I must have fallen off it I made to stand up, stumbling slightly as my legs nearly let me down. That was when someone decided remind me that I wasn’t alone.

“Woah there, careful, you already fell over once!”

A purple figure rushed forward to support me only catching me just in time as my weight shifted precariously to my right where the sword hung. My bare hand rested on the back of its neck and I could feel the softness of the strangely fluffy fur, it was an oddly grounding sensation as the world around me came back into focus again. Taking another of many deep breaths that day I carefully righted my balance and stepped back towards the bench to sit down again.

“You ah, dropped this by the way.” Looking up I found my staff floating in a purple aura mere inches from my face. Peeking from behind it I could see the horn of the pony like creature glowing with a purple aura in tandem with it. Gently, with a slightly shaky hand, I took it. Placing the butt of it against the floor I lent on it a little.

“Um, thank you.” It came out a lot meeker than I had wanted, she (or at least she sounded female) didn’t seem deterred though, her eyes seeming to light up as I spoke back.

“Ah, so you can talk.” she smiled a friendly, disarming smile before coughing delicately into her foreleg.

“I saw you walk past my home a few moments ago. You looked… confused, and I was going to ask if you were ok but then you suddenly fell over and…”

“Could I ask a question?” Stopping mid ramble, she quietly closed her mouth again before nodding.

“This may sound a bit, crazy. But, where am I?” my throat was still dry making my voice a little raspy, but I managed to ask none the less.

“You’re in Ponyville, but if you mean what I think you mean then, you are in Equestria, west of the Griffon kingdom.” Her answer was exactly what I expected it to be. The sinking sensation I had had on the way to the village returned, I was definitely not on Earth anymore.

Swallowing heavily I let my eyes wander up towards the clouded heavens as it dawned on me that the trader who sold me the staff must have definitely been the one who did this.

“Well... damn.” I muttered, a strange mix of surprise, anger and depression beginning to set in.

“Pardon?” the innocent voice was lost on me, it took me a moment to even register that she had said something. Once I finally looked back I tried my hardest to put away my emotional distress for the time being. Focusing more on the here and now was a far better idea since I had no idea where to begin.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but would it be ok if I could have a glass of water?” I asked as kindly as I could even though my voice felt like it was rusting over. For a moment it seemed like she didn’t want to leave me on my own, she did however give me a nod before turning round and heading to the tree-house sat in the middle of the road. Again I found my eyes drawn to it, puzzling as it was I assumed it had to have been made with the same kind of thing the unicorn had demonstrated earlier.

Magic, a loose term for the ability she had used to lift my staff, it wasn’t just some form of prestidigitation. No, it had been undoubtedly real. While she had been close to it there was still no physical contact, yet as I took hold of it there had been a brief moment of resistance before she had let it go. Not only that but the, admittedly cool, glowing effect kind of gave it away.

Then I looked back to the staff as my thoughts gnawed at me. A world that was completely new to me, arriving dressed as a character from a game I knew only too well, a character that also could use magic.

I sat up straight as I remembered something, something that had apparently been crucial if his words were to be believed. I felt about on my person noticing to some disappointment that the robes didn’t have any form of pockets. I chanced opening the top of the robes around my neck a little to see underneath and what I saw confused me a little, though it did explain some things.

Under my robe was a basic set of linens, they weren’t as soft as the robes but they were probably more durable, the set of what looked to be very simple leather armour over top of them however rang up a couple of questions. The parts consisted of a cuirass that mostly covered my chest, though for some reason there was only one shoulder piece on the right side, and greaves. I could also feel the grip of what could only be a set of bracers around my arms. What I was looking for though was found placed over my heart held securely by a set of vertical and horizontal leather straps with buckles. The armour was one thing but the book I had been given with the staff however, was not something I thought was supposed to be used as a form of protection.

Then again, you hear about events where a phone or other such objects had saved lives before.

Rather than fiddling around with it, I contemplated just how it was I hadn’t noticed the extra weight, and the fact that I even had it at all, to be honest. I was learning not to question it by this point, there was either a reason, or not. During my self-inspection I hadn’t noticed that the unicorn had returned and I jumped as she cleared her throat.

“Oh, thank you.” For once in all the time I had been here, I smiled. Gently accepting the glass from the aura I gingerly began to drink. It immediately felt like relief was flooding my system.

Once I had set the glass down on the bench next to me I looked up to find the unicorn looking me over. It took some time until she spoke again, and when she did what she said was something I had yet to think about.

“Now that that’s out of the way I realised that I have yet to introduce myself, my name is Twilight Sparkle, student of princess Celestia.” She spoke with a casual authority, which was obviously expected with a prestigious title I supposed. Though with my mind in its current state and only just coming to terms with everything I didn’t pay it all too much heed as another realisation presented itself.

Not only could I not remember hardly anything about back home, I couldn’t even remember my own name.

“Um, my name is… my… name… I can’t remember.” At that Twilight gave me an awkward smile somewhere between disbelief and worry.
I felt the blood rush from my face, for a moment my head went light enough that I thought I was going to pass out again. It did not last however, I had already had my fair share of shocks today and while this was a serious problem, it didn’t faze me as much as it should have.

“I, suppose for now you can call me Red.”

It had only come to mind because of the robe.

“Ok, Red. May I ask what you are doing out here at this time of night?”

For a moment I thought of a serious answer, for a moment, what came out of my mouth however.

“I don’t know, what are you doing out here?” My childish smile received a deadpan glare, I don’t know what possessed me but I carried on. “Honestly, shouldn’t a budding student like you be in bed by now?”

“I’m not a filly, and you aren’t funny.” She muttered, which earned her a chuckle before I let the attempt to lighten the mood dissipate back into the empty quietness from where it came. I took the moments distraction to ask myself the same question.

“Look, I… I just… I don’t know.” I relented with a sigh. For all intents and purposes I really was at a complete loss for any reasoning what-so-ever.

“You- you’re kidding right?” Shifting from mild annoyance to incredulous, she looked me over again, her eyes lingering on my face, the staff and sword in turn.

“Seriously, I have no idea what’s going on here. I have no memories of anything that happened before I woke up. All I recall is… well, waking up in the woods back the way I came.” Deliberately omitting the details about who I presumed sent me here may not have been the best of ideas, but with what little I knew at this point I didn’t want to complicate things further.

“Oh… wow. You woke up in white-tale woods? Did you hit your head or something?” She was genuinely sympathetic, but now it was my turn to return the deadpan look. While it would explain how I had felt, it wouldn’t explain suddenly being there, and as I voiced this before we both, again, lapsed back into silence.

It was agonising, so much so that I had to change the topic just to get talking again.

“So uh, your kind rather common around here I take it? No offence, just where I’m from…”

“Yes, Equestria is our homeland after all, home to Earth, Pegasus and Unicorn ponies alike!” Her attitude was friendly again, still wary though, probably not so blind to the fact that I was just making idle conversation. Knowing that there were apparently three different races of these ponies along with the mention of griffons earlier made me feel as if I might have hit the loony bin jackpot. “And then there are the Alicorn Princesses, Celestia, Luna and Cadence.”

“Oh-oh-oh-ok, ok, well it’s safe to say that life here is going to be a lot different to back on Earth.”
Not meaning to say that last part out loud a hand slapped over my mouth, but Twilight just smiled.

“So, you’re from another world? Well that does seem like a plausible explanation since I’ve never seen someone like you before. Speaking of, what are you exactly?” The bluntness of her attitude was briefly unnerving, almost as if this kind of thing was a daily occurrence for her.

“I’m a human, or homosapien, if you prefer scientific terms.” Her smile turned thoughtful for a moment before she seemed to have an idea.

“So, you have nowhere to go right? Since you just got here, if you want you can stay at my library till morning? Don’t want to be leaving someone new out in the cold.” At her mention of cold, a shrill breeze tore through the street. For the most part the robes kept me warm yet the night was still young and with such a kind offer I could hardly refuse.

“If that would be alright, thank you, I take it you live in that tree there?” Nodding furiously, she turned around and began to trot away

“We might want to hurry. I don’t know how long it will be till tonight’s thunderstorm will start.” At that I stood up and followed her back to the tree-library-house. Literally the kind of place a bookworm would fantasise about. As we walked I noticed a couple of interesting details, firstly, Twilight was actually quite tall, her head was about chest height not counting the horn. Secondly, that it was already starting to rain.

We got in just as it started to pick up, oddly timed as it was. The place was big, warm but most importantly, inviting. The fireplace was already lit and I could see some strange green and purple scaly thing toasting marshmallows over it. As for the rest, well, there were definitely a lot of books, quite a ways from the fireplace of course. An armchair and a settee positioned comfortably around where the heat could reach, and another doorway that presumably lead to some form of kitchen stood not far off. There was also a staircase, but I didn’t want to be rude by nosing around.

“Hey Twi, uh, sorry I kind of ate some of yours since you took so long.” The little reptile thing called, not even turning to look at us as it concentrated on evenly cooking the sugary treat.

“Spike, we have company for tonight, say hello to… Red.” As it turned round, its eyes went wide.
When spike finally found his own voice again though all he could say was.

“Wow… Twilight, what is that?” It was fair play really. I could only just guess that he was some kind of small lizard, a drake maybe? On the other hand while I had jibed at Twilight, indirect revenge aside, I had to admit essentially being called an ‘it’ was not something I was used to.

That was not the only thing that was going to take some getting used to though, was it?

“Are you ok Red, you keep spacing out?” Twilight was once again worrying about me, understandably so since I had appeared to miss her entire conversation with Spike, even he was now looking a little worried. I struggled with my thoughts for another moment, an errant hand scratching at the back of my neck.

“Honestly, no, I’m not alright.” I said with an awkward smile. “There’s not much I can do about it at the moment though.” Twilight just nodded sympathetically while Spike scratched his own head perplexed.

“So you uh, really have no memory of how you got here?”

“Where I woke up is crystal clear, but how I got there from my world is nothing short of a mystery” While it was not a complete lie I did feel a little guilty.

“Man that must suck. Well, so long as you’re cool you’re good in my books! I don’t know where you’re going to sleep though.” Admittedly it had been kind that Twilight was letting me stay the night, but I think getting to sleep, never mind where, was still going to be a bit rough with how much rest I had gotten earlier even though passing out from shock probably doesn’t count. On top of which my brain was still ticking over with how to process all this new information it was receiving. All I wanted to do really was curl up and sort my head out, didn’t look like that was going to happen any time soon though with everything happening.

“For tonight you can have the settee if you want. The guest bed unfortunately needs to be replaced after the frame got broken and while the mattress may be comfortable the floor is quite solid.” She visibly winced, obviously recounting whatever the event was that caused it.

Smiling and thanking her, I decided to take another sit down as we all walked back towards the fireplace. The seat was definitely comfortable, a bit low again though as my knees ended up above my waist. It was however comfortably large. Spike hopped up alongside me as twilight took to laying on an elongated armchair closer to the fire, watching closely as she grabbed a marshmallow with her telekinesis from a bag left on the rug and just held it over the fire like it was an everyday occurrence, which for them it probably was.

“So, Red. Since I take it you can’t remember anything about where you come from perhaps you could tell us a little about yourself instead?”
It was almost like I wasn’t some being from another world with how casual the conversation began to flow while the thunderstorm outside roared on and the fire inside crackled happily.
I explained roughly what I remembered, little things mostly, fortunately I did remember what I had been doing with my life up until the point of no return. Not that it really mattered.

I am twenty years old, fresh out of education from college, I had had plans to go into university after a year or two of solid work at my job. I loved playing video games and watching shows in my free time while getting out and seeing friends as often as I could. I tried to go into detail to test just what I could remember…

…Turns out it was not all that much.

Family, friends, acquaintances, work, play, was all I could remember, but like looking back on an odd dream. Details were blurred, names were non-existent, and places were muddled and confusing. I shook my head solemnly as I began to stutter the last attempt, my brain coming up blank.

“I-I’m sorry, that’s all I can remember.” I finally looked up from the floor, feeling hollower than when I first sat down. Twilight gave a supportive smile, but a twinge of pity did not manage to escape my eyes as she slowly got out of her chair. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t really looked at Twilight before, now as I watched her slowly get up to come join spike and myself on the settee I got a proper look. I took a moment to really take in Twilights appearance, besides the purple fur, her mane had a nice contrast of dark, slightly more blue, kind of purple with a single dark and lighter purple stripe. Her horn was shallowly spiral fluted and the tip was rounded much to my surprise.

She also had a starburst mark on her flank, I refrained from asking though to avoid being rude. Other than that her appearance was that of an actual pony, if ponies had an almost cartoon appearance and belonged more to myth than real life. As my mind began to wind down she sat on my other side.

“Maybe we should come back to that later when you’re in a better state of mind. For now, are there any questions that you would like to ask?”
So much for my mind winding down, the moment those words left her lips I had hundreds of questions all begging to be answered. Asking them proved to be difficult for some reason though, for some reason as my mind processed them my mouth refused to form the words which led to several false starts.

By the fourth I was starting to feel a boiling anger swelling up inside me, biting my tongue to prevent any profanity I shook my head.

“M-maybe later, I think I just need some time to… think.”

She smiled sadly as she got of the seat, levitating Spike onto her back in the process.

“I understand, this is still quite a lot for you to take in. Thank you for answering what you can, I’ll try and write up some theories about what may have happened for you to get here before bed. For now maybe you should rest, there is food in the kitchen so feel free to help yourself.”
Twilight and Spike slowly disappeared upstairs, and I was again left alone with my thoughts.

I listened for a moment to be certain they had gone before taking off my robes. Looking them over thoroughly they were exactly as I had remembered, the hood was also a separate adornment that sat over the robes shoulders rather than being fully attached. Looking over the armour I slowly removed that too, separating the book from its buckles, the strings at the sides of the chest piece and bracers more like thin leather ropes than I had expected. Finally slipping off the shoes and setting everything aside except the book and my linens, I laid down on the makeshift bed which turned out to just be big enough.

It was going to be a long night, I didn’t feel tired and my head was filled with so much clutter that I probably would be tossing and turning anyway. So it was time to really look into what I was in for.

Picking up and opening the palm sized book to the first page was rather uneventful. It looked like some kind of index with only page numbers listed while all the places where the titles would be were blank. The font was a fairly average size and overall the first two index pages squeezed in ten pages each vertically. There were six index pages.

It didn’t take a genius on the subject to figure out what this was. A book for magicks.

There were two already present as well on the second page, the basic couple of haste, and revive.

My hands shook slightly as I looked for the corresponding pages and as I found them a sudden unease washed over me. Their descriptions were almost as I remembered them, element symbols and all.

Lightnng – Arcane – Fire = Haste
Life – Lightning = Revive

So it was supposedly possible for me to use magic, well…

… this was going to get interesting.

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It was three in the morning.

I knew because the hanging clock at the other end of the room told me so, along with its incessant ticking.

I had been awake most of the night, and by most I meant all but one measly hour of sleep that had come at the expense of finding out it was far easier to sleep on the floor than falling off the far too snug cushions on the settee.

Falling off of low lying seats seemed to be a thing at the moment.

Regardless I had spent the time dredging my memories for anything related to the game I appeared to be from, with a strange amount of success in comparison to normal memories which was quite irritating. Lore, spells, and other titbits started to come back to me, but not the magicks. It made sense since I was imitating a game character, I would have to find the tomes.

Funny as it was though, I was still angry and scared at being stranded in a completely unfamiliar world where even the lore was of no use. Not only that but magic being real, while fascinating, was in itself rather worrying. Twilights magic was rather refined, Wizard magic… not so much.

Fire balls, lightning strikes, furious snow storms, death beams and many more such hostile spells could be bristling at my fingertips at any moment. On the flipside though, healing life, water, shields both magical and earthen were also a possibility, though I had to wonder just which game I was “playing” as. There was one of the games which had a similar ability to levitation, but not knowing left me hesitant to try.

There was just one other problem though, if it was true that I could use magic, then how? In the games you had to press the corresponding keys on a keyboard, and I didn’t have one of those just lying around on my person. The staff didn’t offer any hints nor did the sword, which I had politely left far away by the front door, leaving a rather confusing problem. I supposed that the old RPG mindset of concentrating on what element I wanted could work, no guarantee but it was better than nothing.

I sat up slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the dark room I grabbed the staff lent against the seat behind me and decided on my first spell. Life had the least destructive properties of all the elements that I knew, even the shield element could cause its own brand of havoc since passing through it was impossible without either breaking it or waiting till it faded, so life was the first thing I settled on trying.

Sitting on the floor cross legged with the staff in my hands across my lap I… well… meditated I guess.

Thinking hard about the green icon while sitting as still as possible, I was almost tempted to start the humming that people usually did while just sitting there for so long with my eyes closed, expecting something to happen. Thinking it through I should have really kept my eyes open, though concentrating as hard as I could meant distractions outside my head would not be welcome, changing my thoughts slightly to try thinking about healing and growing flowers something finally happened.

There was one little detail that I had momentarily forgot about as a weight suddenly settled over my shoulders and back like a quilt had been gently placed over me, reflexively opening my eyes the glimmer of green light that met me momentarily blinded me.

Fluttering around just at eye height left me stunned as it swooped around randomly around my person, reaching a hand out it reacted instantly flying to my open palm where it held still enough for me to look at it clearly.

It was exactly as it should have been as far as fluttering green ball of light goes, at first I smiled, I had done it. I had successfully summoned an element! It quickly turned into a grimace as I realised this didn’t fix the ever growing list of problems. If anything it actually created more, after all, what reason did I have for having this ability?

Regardless I chuckled quietly to myself, a fantasy world with fantasy powers, something a lot of people could only fantasise about back home. Now here I was living a literal dream.

I was just going to have to get used to it I supposed, nothing more to do until I could get home after all. Letting go of the little ball of light I watched it for a few moments. The weight on my shoulders was pleasant, a warm quilt like I had thought earlier, and it also felt powerful, like at any moment it would become some profound energy that could alter the very fabric of reality. Which in a way, it would.
Another reason I had chosen life was because I also thought it might be able to help a little with healing my fatigued body and mind, once I could figure out how to self cast. Thinking for a moment, I remembered the kind of stance a Wizard would take when performing a self casting action, taking the staff in one hand I raised it above my head before thinking about channelling the element.

The moment the little element light shot to the staff a feeble green beam shot from the tip at the ceiling. Dropping the staff in panic, thus cancelling the spell, I jumped up to inspect any damage.
Several flowers had grown limply hanging downwards in hues of white and pink, I hadn’t thought it possible to cast spells upwards or downwards but the reality of the situation quickly dawned on me that realistically the spells could be fired off in any direction, and that simply channelling the element wasn’t self casting.

So now Twilights home had a set of ceiling flowers.

Great...

I was certain that I should have been worried, the noise that the beam had made wasn’t loud but if Twilight or Spike saw the flowers then questions would certainly be asked. Not to mention she might not exactly be happy with the new additions. Self casting completely forgotten I hastily made for the kitchen to grab a chair.

Strangely the chairs were fairly normal, or human like in this circumstance, perfect for standing on, dragging it through into the living room I made to grab the offending flowers.

When I said human like, I forgot one key problem. As I stood on the chair and reached for the flowers the chair rapidly began to tilt and wobble, I was able to grab the flowers but they disappeared into magical sparks as my hand closed around them.

Then the chair fell backwards, and my face found the floor.

I laid there quietly, listening for if anyone was coming down the stairs to find the disturbance. It didn’t take long before the sound of hooves could be heard clopping down the steps.

Author's Note

Sorry this chapter has taken a while, I've recently started a new job so I haven't been able to spend to much time typing.