Chapter 1
“Twilight! Twilight!” cried Spike as he rushed through the door. “I got that book you wanted!”
Twilight Sparkle grabbed it and poked her nose in it. Yep. This was it. She turned around to Spike. “Thanks. Take the rest of the day off. I need to study this.”
Beginning to walk away, Spike stopped and said, “Are you sure? You’ve been working a lot lately. We could go get ice cream, or explore the castle library instead…”
“Maybe later Spike.”
“Oh, well, ok…” He turned away so Twilight wouldn’t see the dejected look on his face. Twilight continued to pour through the book, titled ‘The Worlds of the Cosmos’.
~
Steve plunged his pick into the stone. “Come on, diamonds…” He wiped his brow clean of sweat. Jamming the head again and again into the blocks, carving a path through the earth, he harvested coal, iron, and lapis. No diamonds. Down he dug, straight down. Finally, the ground gave out from beneath him and Steve plummeted into a cave. Lava sizzled, bubbled, and casted a red-gold glow throughout the cave. The roof went up until concealed by darkness with a passage way splitting off the chamber to the left. Across the lava on the opposite side of the cave, Steve could see –gasp- DIAMONDS! Steve shuffled through his pockets for blocks. There was his pickaxe, red, green, and blue dye, wool (“That won’t work,” he thought), a bed, and… there! 48 blocks of dirt. Carefully, he built a bridge across until there they were, beautiful diamonds! The pickaxe seemed to work itself as he harvested 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 of the sparkling gems. Enough to make a sword and boots. Steve had a crafting table in his inventory…
~
Spike had watched Twilight for hours as she read, took notes, and muttered to herself. He couldn’t take it anymore. It was midnight, for Celestia’s sake! He boiled water on the stove and made mint tea, which had sedative properties, he had heard. Silently, Spike slipped into the room and placed it onto the table. “Twilight?”
“Mmh?” she grunted. Her eyelids drooped, obscuring her vision. Bags that had formed under her eyes showed how tired she was. “What is it, Spike?”
“Well, seeing how late it was, I thought you should get some rest, so I made you this tea to help you sleep.”
Twilight glanced at the clock. Was that really the time? She sighed, “Ok, Spike.” Sipping it gingerly, she trudged to her room where she collapsed onto her bed. Spike yawned and stretched. He was quite tired himself… but Twilight’s notes caught his eyes. It crinkled under his claws as he picked it up. Words were crossed out here and there, changed sometimes 4 or 5 different times. It looked like an incantation in a strange language he didn’t recognized…
Cautiously, he read it aloud, “Ego vado, et lunam, et stellas vento. Saluta saculum feci . Et qui venturus est.” Light blurred his vision until he could see nothing. His body was ripped away and Spike felt himself plummeting through space.
~
A flash of violet light ripped through the cave with enough force to knock Steve to his feet. “What the heck was that?” His eyes darted around finding no explanations. Maybe it came from the surface…
~
Spike plopped down, stunned. Where (or maybe even when) was he? Everything looked… wrong. The trees, the ground, the clouds, the sun, all where made of cubes. He himself had also changed. Spike found himself to be a lot taller than before, and he appeared to be missing his fingers, his claws fused in a permanent fist. Animals wandered here and there, also made of cubes.
Spike blinked the dust from his eyes and pondered what to do. Surely there must be some intelligent creature in this world? “Hello!” Spike called. “Is anyone here? Please help!”
~
Steve dashed out of the cave. A voice was calling, one he didn’t recognize.
“Hello!” it said. “Is anyone here? Please help!”
“Sheesh. Another noob. I should’ve known not to join a public server. Fine… I’ll help you do what you could’ve done yourself if you had one ounce of brains… OVER HERE!” Jogging over, Steve found someone with a purple and green dragon skin. “Hey. What’s up? Zombie get ’ya or something?”
The player seemed at lost for words before he stammered, “N-no… I don’t even know what those are… (“How big of a noob is this guy?” Steve thought) but I was just transported here by a spell…” Seeing confusion in Steve’s face, Spike stopped. What, did this strange creature not know about magic? Or worse, did magic not exist in this world? This was obviously not Equestria… so it was possible…
~
Steve wondered why a dude would come into a server and know nothing about the game. “Well, dude, this probably isn’t the game you were looking for, so why don’t you just scurry along, and leave the surviving to the pros, ‘kay?”
Spike stared. Where was he supposed to go? This person obviously didn’t want him here, but there were no towns in sight. “What do you mean? I have nowhere else to go! If you don’t want to help me, I don’t know what I’ll do!”
Steve walked over to the nearest tree and crashed his head into it. “Why is it always me?!? Why can’t the noobs pick on someone else? Arrgh… And if I leave you alone, you’ll die… Fine. Come with me. My house is this way,” Steve muttered. He trudged off, not looking to see if Spike was following. As they turned around a corner, Spike gasped. Steve’s house, or mansion he should say, stood overlooking a lagoon among jungle trees, huge wall-to-wall windows, a tower, and it was made of a beautiful dark wood Spike didn’t recognize.
“It’s… amazing!”
Steve chuckled. “Well, I’m planning to add another floor, maybe a basement. It isn’t much yet, but it’s home.”
“It isn’t much? This is spectacular… Hey, wait, you haven’t told me your name.”
“Steve.”
“Nice to meet you, Steve. I’m Spike.” Spike held out his hand (claw? Whatever…), but Steve just stared at it until he put it down. They went inside to be met with a strange noise.
“HSssssss…. HSSssssssss…”
Spike jumped. “What’s that noise? It sounds like a snake!”
Steve chuckled and pointed to a small glass cage in which was trapped a weird, green animal with empty black eyes and frowning mouth. “What’s that?” asked Spike.
Steve stared incredulously. “You really are new, aren’t you? You see, Spike, that’s a creeper. His name’s Bomby. Mobs can’t see through glass, but in the open, he would run up to you and explode. Sometimes it’ll kill you if you don’t have armor. Died to one a few nights ago.”
Spike thought he had misheard. “What do you mean ‘you died’?”
“I mean dead. Lost all my stuff. Had enchanted gear, too.”
“You died? How are you still hear? It’s impossible!” Spike couldn’t believe it. This Steve had risen from the dead…
“Well, here in Minecraft, if you die, you lose all your stuff and respawn at the last place you slept, or spawn point. Annoying if you just found diamonds…” Steve looked up abruptly and walked over to a large chest, from which he pulled some armor. “Here, Spike. You can have this old stuff. I don’t need it anymore.” He handed Spike a leather tunic, iron leggings and boots, and a chainmail helmet. Some of the pieces were worn with age, but would still protect him.
Spike put them on, and he felt almost heroic. He had never worn armor before. Turning around, he saw Steve holding out a shimmering stone sword. “You can have this, too. I found enough diamonds to make a new sword. This one’s got some good enchants. Fire Aspect, Unbreaking IV, and Bane of Arthropods I. Cool, huh?”
Spike nodded and took the sword, waving it around. It had good weight to it, but he could still maneuver the sword easily. “I’ll call it… Dragon’s Breath. Where did you get it?”
“I made it myself. Like everything else I have. Except that helmet you’ve got on. Dropped off a zombie.” Spike didn’t know how to make stuff, but he would probably need to find out, if he was… stuck here. He hadn’t really thought about how he would get back, but Twilight Sparkle would find him. She always had.
“Can you teach me?” Spike asked.
“To what?”
“Make stuff.”
“Ah. It’s called crafting here. This is a crafting table or bench, whatever you want to call it.” Steve placed it on the floor. “You arrange items in a certain pattern on these squares to make new items.” Spike watched as Steve put gems on the square –two on each side- then they suddenly formed together to make a pair of boots… like magic. Maybe there was magic in this world.
“Cool! Can I try?”
~
Twilight Sparkle woke up, slowly opening one eye after the other. The sun poured in the window from high in the sky onto the bed and birds were chirping in the trees, the clock began tolling… By Celestia! Was that the time? She jumped out of bed, scrambling downstairs. She had to finish the spell by Friday. Twilight grabbed her notes from the table and… she could see little claw marks… no… Spike couldn’t have… He would’ve known better…
“Spike! Spike, where are you?” she called. No answer. She teleported through every room, but Spike wasn’t there. “No, no, no! The spell wasn’t ready!” Spike could be anywhere! Or worse, nowhere.
Her frantic search through the rooms with banging and wailing had brought her friends over. “What’s the matter, Twi?” asked Applejack.
Twilight eyes were darting frantically to and fro, still hoping Spike would pop out any second. “Spike is gone! Gone!”
“Well, he can’t have gone far… Why are you so worried?” Rarity was nonchalantly sewing a dress while she talked.
“No! You don’t understand! He’s not here! He’s not even in Equestria anymore! In fact,” Twilight sat down in dismay, “I don’t know where he could be. Not even what world.”
Fluttershy stared. “I’m sorry, Twilight, but I still don’t understand. What do you mean?”
Twilight sighed, “I was working on a trans-dimensional spell for Princess Celestia that would work without the mirror portal. It would have led to any of the worlds, not just the human world. I wasn’t finished with it, so Spike wouldn’t have been able to control where he went. I have no idea where it would have taken him. In a worse case, it would have taken him nowhere and stranded him in space to die.”
“But Spike isn’t a unicorn! How would he be able to use it?” Rarity exclaimed, still not believing what had happened.
“It was a new type of spell that doesn’t require the use of a horn. Only speech. It probably works with anyone who tries it, since all beings in Equestria are creatures of magic.”
Applejack alone comforted Twilight while the others stared. “There, there, Twi, we’ll find him. It’ll be all right.”
Rainbow Dash had a sudden stroke of brilliance, despite no knowledge of magic. “Could you use a spell to bring up the last location? Or could you track Spike?”
Twilight jumped up. “That’s it! Tollite me ad praeteritum.” She said, tapping her horn to the parchment.
It started trembling, then jumping with glowing violet veins of magic splitting it surface. Crackling with magic, it rose off the floor in a much more impressive display than before.
“Uh… Do you think we should step back?” asked Pinky Pie.
Too late. It seemed to expand and envelope them in purple light. They, too, were now hurdling through the depths of space.