Through Hell's Gate

Twilight Sparkle found herself floating in a white void. No sense of direction, no up, no down, no left, no right.

“Hello? Is anypony there?” she called out, her voice left no echo. But nonetheless a voice called back.

“Twilight Sparkle?” she heard Princess Luna’s voice call as the Princess of the night materialised in front of her, her body hazy and transparent, even flickering every so often.

“Luna!?” she asked in surprise “What’s happened?”

“We aren’t sure” Luna said “we felt a great surge of magic, then you and Spike seemed to…disappear. It was only after a full day and nights worth of searching that I managed to locate you, which brings us to now. Can you maybe tell us where you might be?” Twilight began recounting her time in the strange world, all the while Luna sat and listened, her expression growing even more troubled as time passed. When Twilight finished Luna looked downright mortified.

“That is…disturbing to say the least” she said after some time.

“Is there anything you can do to help me and Spike?” Twilight asked. Luna shook her head.

“Ney, finding one’s mind is one thing, locating them across the boundaries of a universe is another matter entirely” she said “Assuming this
“Human” is able to save your life, I’ll try to teach you everything I know to help you survive on this world, whilst Celestia may have thought you well with most magic, there are still some areas where I feel your knowledge is…lacking”

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked.

“Defensive and offensive magics” Luna explained “whilst a simple shield or stun spell is useful, I fear there may come a time where you have to defend your life at the cost of another” Twilight went to speak, but Luna cut her off “I’ll explain later, but now I have some business to attend to, Fare thee well, Twilight Sparkle, we pray you will recover” and with that, Luna faded out of existence, and Twilight's consciousness went with it.

I was sat on the bonnet of my car dozing under the evening sun, using a foot-step that I’d bolted to the bonnet for just such an occasion to hold me up, it was to the left of the huge air intake and slight lower than. I’d just finished helping the doctor to patch miss purple up, she’d survived, but barely and now she was resting in the back of my car, which I’d cleaned up for the first time in…actually I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cleaned it. To the right of me, on the other side of the intake sat one purple lizard. The both of us were quite frankly exhausted, Myself because I’d just finished assisting in an operation, and lizard boy because he’d probably never been exposed to violence before, judging by the vacant look and the bags under his eyes.

The gates to the city swung open and a Jeep-turned-halftrack drove through dragging the remains of one of the trucks from earlier, followed soon after by a small convoy bringing in the rest of the trucks. High performance trucks like are a valuable commodity out here, so they would most definitely be put to good use. Just as they swung around and drove past us my vision began to blur and I heard a faint voice, growing clearer. Out of nowhere a large blue horse, similar in appearance to miss purple, materialised, walking towards me. I saw a fellow human walk past, seeming to walk right through the horse.

“Human, can you see and understand me?” it asked in a female voice.

“W-what the fuck are you?” I asked. The horse raised an eyebrow.

“…I’ll take that as a yes” she said “I am Princess Luna, sovereign of the Night and co-ruler of the nation of Equestria, one of my fellow princesses and her assistant have appeared in your world and through fat have come to you”

“you mean Lizard boy and Miss Purple?” I asked, she seemed to bristle at that.

“Their names are Princess Twilight Sparkle and Spike” she said “and you will address them as such from now on!”

“Whatever, your highness” I said dismissively, resting my head back on the windscreen of my car and tipping my flat cap to shield my eyes from the sun “kind of hard to get someone’s name when you don’t speak their language”

“Quite” ‘Luna’ replied.

“How come I can see you anyway?” I asked after a brief pause “for that matter, how can I understand you?”

“I forced you into a dream” she said “Languages become meaningless once you start communicating on a spiritual level”

“Right” I said “I get the feeling that you came to me for a reason, so get on with it and get out of my head” I couldn’t see how she reacted, but I imagined she wasn’t too happy.

“I came here to ask for your help” she said, I tipped my cap up slightly and cracked open an eye, she seemed almost…pleading “Twilight Sparkle and Spike, they’ve never been in a world like yours, and as much as you’ve helped them so far, I’m asking you to keep helping them, watch over them, teach them the specific skills required to survive in your world, I’ll do what I can with Twilight, but I’ll need you to help Spike also, do you think you can do that?” I waved my hand dismissively.

“As much as I’d love to” I said “as I’ve said before, the language barrier is an issue”

“I can solve that” she said, and I heard an honest to god sparkling noise, before I felt an itching on my left hand. Pushing my cap up I glanced down at my hand to see a stretched out 6 pointed star.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“It’s the mark of magic” Luna said “It will allow you to speak with Spike and Twilight Sparkle with ease. And in time, use magic yourself, something your species cannot normally do.” Suddenly Luna’s form began to fade in and out of existence. “my connection to you is beginning to weaken, I’m afraid this is where we part ways, human” and with that, she disappeared entirely. At that moment I woke with a start, shaking my head to clear my thoughts I saw that people were carrying on as they were before, seemingly unaware of what just happened. I began to mull over on what Luna had said, when suddenly I heard a bang and my cr rocked. The lizard, apparently called Spike, awoke with a start and yelped as he fell off the bonnet of the car and onto the dirt below. Standing up I could see him looking around in confusion.

“What the hay?” I heard him ask, in perfect English, he sounded young, very early teens at most. Suddenly a purple aura surrounded him and he flew into the air. Soon after I saw Twilight making a run for it with a bandaged hind leg and an apparent limp, holding spike in the air with her…magic, was it.

“Hey, wait!” I called, beginning to run after them. She didn’t seem to have any set destination in mind, pushing random people out of her way with her magic and causing them to shout in surprise and confusion as she ran in a blind panic, despite mine and Spike’s protests. “Twilight, STOP!” suddenly a bolas flew whirled me and entangled itself around Twilight’s legs, causing her to yelp as she face planted the dirt a slid along the ground for a couple feet. A small crowd of confused onlookers created a loose circle around her as I walked up to her.

“What’s all this then?” I hear an old, male voice call. Turning around I saw an old man riding an equally ancient looking 3 wheeled petrol scooter towards us. This was the city’s leader, old man Barnes next to him stood Barnes’ personal body guard, that’d fired the Bolas at Twilight “earlier I heard tale of a certain limey returning from a scouting run with a wounded passenger, you said it was “something complicated”” he mimicked my accent as he said this. “I was expecting an intelligent zombie or some such bullshit, not a couple of escaped experiments from some abandoned government facility”

“I’ll explain later, barnes” I said “right now I’ve got these two to look after”

“well everyone’s here and I’m pretty sure they’re just as curious as I am to know what the hell those two are” he said, gesturing to the small crowd. I sighed.

“long story short…they’re aliens” I said, and was answered by a sea of laughter. “They’re intelligent, and as crazy as it sounds, one of them is royalty”

“And do tell” Old Man Barnes said “How did you come about with this intel?”

“Another of their kind spoke to me in a dream” again, more laughter. I glanced down at Twilight and Spike, the latter was looking around at the gathered people fearfully, meanwhile the former was studying me.

“Ha, after all this time, I’d say you finally gone off the deep end” Barnes said.

“looks that way, doesn’t it” I said “Though they talk, not that you’d understand what they were saying”

“Oh I’d love to see this” Barnes said “You got one minute” I quickly turned around and walked over to twilight, bending down to remove the rope holding her legs together.

“Sorry about this” I said “I know you can understand me, some Princess called Luna put something on my hand that lets me talk to you”
“You spoke with Luna!?” Twilight asked in surprise, she spoke with an American accent.

“We don’t have much time” I said “I’ll explane properly once I can get us out of here, but first, I need you to put on as big a magic show as possible. Most of the people here are practically feeding off your fear, gotta intimidate them back a little, can you do that?”

“Why can’t you just ask them nicely?” Spike said.

“Because things don’t work like that around here”

“I see you talking to those two over there” Barnes said “Times up” suddenly Twilight stood up and began walking towards him, then she closed her eyes and let out a sigh before looking back to me

“I’m sorry about this” Twilight said, before I had a chance to answer what she meant her eyes set ablaze with dark blue flames, a sickly green and purple cloud surrounded her horn and shot towards me, upon striking me I felt a great weight fall on me, my find began to be filled with all sorts of negative emotions, all the negative memories in my life. I barely noticed her beginning to rise up into the air about 5 feet, suddenly I heard her talk, her voice having a strange distorted sound to it. “I’m having to use dark magic against him so that I can talk to all of you in a language you’ll understand, so I’m only going to say this once. My name in Princess Twilight Sparkle, experienced in all kinds of magic, I come from the land of Equestria, I’ve recently been shot in the leg and I’m quite frankly not in the mood to be dealing with any more crud from ANY of you, so let us pass!” with that a shockwave of what could only be described as a wave of negative energy rolled across the gathered crowd, before I felt all the negative emotions dissipate completely. I stared in shock at Twilight, before the silence was broken by a very shaken sounding Old Man Barnes.

“G-get the hell out of here, freak” he said, before jabbing behind him with a thumb towards the direction of the gates. I looked to Twilight and Spike.

“I think it’s best if we leave sooner rather than later” I said, before walking back in the direction of my car, the crowd of people split to let us through, staring at Twilight as she walked past them. We got back to the car and got out of the city as fast as possible. Almost immediately Spike fell asleep in the back of my car, and so we drove for a few hours, until the sun went down, all in complete silence. Eventually I spoke.

“So…care to explain what the hell that was back there?”

“Dark magic” Twilight said quietly, not looking at me, instead staring out the window “it’s ancient magic, forbidden in Equestria…I used a spell that forced your mind to allow me to speak your language…temporarily.” She sighed before letting her head drop on the window sill “I shouldn’t have done that”

“Hey, it’s alright” I said, trying to shrug it off “It got us out of there quicker, didn’t it” she whipped her head around to look at me, her eyes were soaked with tears.

“you don’t understand” she said “that sort of magic, that sort of spell, is always used at the cost of another. I…I used you, I used your soul for my own use” she looked quite frankly horrified at what she was saying. I saw a familiar spot to park the car for the night and pulled over.

“Come on, I want to show you something” I said, stepping out of the car “Your friend will be fine where he is” Twilight reluctantly obliged, following me as I walked further way from the road. Eventually we came to a ridge, where Twilight stopped and gasped.

“What in Celestia’s name happened?” off the end of the ridge, in the distance, was the ruins of an old city, the occasional skyscraper still standing proud, albeit a shadow of its former self. Among the ruins were the occasional flickering lights.

“The war” I said bitterly “about 15 years ago this world was filled with great cities like the one you see before you. With multiple in every country. But it wasn’t peaceful, age old disputes between different nations had already led to two world wars, on the third…we lost it all”

“What caused this to happen?” Twilight asked.

“It started off with two countries, America, which is this country” I said, nodding to the city ahead of us. “And Russia, a huge country to the west of us. They had disputes with each other over many things for years, oil, allies, that sort of thing. Eventually, it came to blows. Words were said between leaders, orders were made, and bombs were dropped. In the end there were no winners, every country paid the price no matter what side they were on. Whilst those left were abandoned to scratch out a living on rocks.”

“what about you?” she asked.

“My home is far from here, an island about 5000 miles east of here. They used to call it the United Kingdom, after the bombs fell it was reduced to craters and swampland, so myself and a small band of survivors gathered what vehicles we could and trekked east. There’s an ocean between my homeland and here, so we had to take the long way around, go via Russia, that was fun. Made the journey closer to 20,000 miles. Even out here, it’s tough; what isn’t vast desert is reduced to impassable woods, swampland or near constant storms”

“And where does that leave me and Spike?”

“Up shit creek without a paddle” I said “If the climate doesn’t kill you, the people will, whether it’s bandits, ghouls or cannibals, everyone’s out for themselves out here. But there are those of us that band together. Common goal, sense of comradery, that sort of BS. I’m one of those types, part of a clan that does odd jobs here and there, and in my spare time I map out what’s left of the old roadways.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Look” I said, turning to her “I’m not sure exactly how important you are back home, but out here, you’re nothing, you may as well be a beggar. Now this “Princess Luna” of yours has asked me to protect you, teach you to survive out here. The best way to do that, is to draft you into our clan. But it won’t be all sunshine and buttercups” Twilight looked at me in confusion.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“well, for a start, I’m nearly out of fuel, down to the last dregs of petrol in the tank and then another canteen” I said “so we need to head back to Haven City. Which, curtesy of your magic show, is going to be difficult”

“meaning?”

“from now on, you can’t be seen in the city, not until I can get you inducted and under my tribe’s protection” I said “And I’m not leaving you outside the city, so you and Spike are gonna have to hide in the hold, which is that metal box on the top of the car. I’ll probably be gone for an hour, maybe more, securing a full load of fuel and a few other supplies. In that time, you’re going to have to make sure you’re not seen. Not only would it put the security of my tribe at risk, but your lives as well. Think you can do that?” Twilight gulped before growing determined and nodding.

“Yes, I think I can” she said, I nodded before turning and walking back to the car.

“good” I said, climbing up on to the bonnet and then onto the top of the roof box “get some rest in the back of the car, if you need food there should be some rations on the shelf, and there’s some purified water in a flask”

“What about you?” she asked as I laid back.

“I’ll keep watch” I said simply, there was a moment of silence before Twilight finally went inside. When I was sure she wouldn’t be able to hear me I sighed, gazing up at the clear night sky before muttering “What the hell am I getting myself into”