In a flash, an unicorn and an earth pony materialized in a very small island composed only of sand.
Starlight Glimmer looked around, her eyes growing wide; she didn't know it, but the ocean that surrounded them wasn't made of water, but of time. Though it flowed like a liquid, even imitating a tide, it was obviously made of solid particles that shined with a golden glow and were transparent at the same time. It was identical to the power they possessed.
And it stretched beyond the beyond the horizon. No, that was not a mistake; it actualy went beyond the beyond. It was overwhelming to see.
"Where are we?"
Turner lifted his head from the map he was checking. "In a point outside of time, but near enough to not be timeless."
Starlight just tilted her head to the side. "I'm not sure I get that. And what is this ocean?"
"Time," Turner answered nonchalantly, going back to the map. The unicorn's jaw dropped.
"Time?!"
The earth pony looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes; isn't it obvious?"
"Wha-? But how-? Why is it-? Ow, my head hurts" She groaned, holding a hoof to her temple. Trying to wrap her head around what he was seeing and how overwhelming time apparently was seemed to be too much for her brain.
"It's too much, isn't it?" He gently patted her in sympathy. "Every member of the Order that I know that isn't a temporal being had problems wrapping their heads around this the first time they see it. If it makes you feel better, you are taking it better than I did."
Starlight took a couple of deep breaths and pushed the headache aside for the moment; she better started with the most important question to get answers and prevent the veins of her brain from popping.
"Why are we here?"
"To teach you," Turner answered while gesturing to their surroundings, the waves dancing in a mesmerizing way."This is an ocean, and the timelines are the sea currents that go through it; they turn, they shift, they join and split. As a Chronos Watcher, your job will be to observe certain points in time that could have consequences to the temporal stream of that line.
"Does that happen a lot?"
"With how big this place is? Very often; there is always a job available. Lucky for us, power over time tends to assure days off and vacations," Turner smiled, already planning his travel to a nice, tropical island. He showed her the map and pointed to one of the shimmering lines that seemed to wave over the paper.
"They want you to start with an alternate timeline; an Equestria-no, an Arcana Magna different that yours, a split of our timeline that occured almost a millennia and a half from your perspective."
"What do they want me to do?" Starlight asked as she looked over it, swearing one of the lines was waving at her..
"To watch, and try to learn why this timeline is different." He noticed her frantic expression. "Don't worry if you fail, though. They don't expect you to get it right at the first try."
Starlight looked taken aback, though her expression soon grew angry.
"T-they don't? Then why do they have me doing this in the first place?!"
Folding the map and putting it in his saddlebag, he turned to the shore. "Because it's the only way you'll learn: with practice and learning from your mistakes."
"That makes sense, I suppose..." the unicorn grumbled; Turner roll his eyes in amusement..
"Well then, let's get going!"
With a jump, he entered the ocean of time and dived underneath the waves. Starlight swallowed her nervousness, with little success, and touched the time tentatively. Apart from a tingle, nothing happened.
Taking a deep breath, she jumped after her guide and teacher.
The Everfree Forest.
In a world more akin to a machine, where things didn't work or even change without a magical being using their power to do so, it was... unnatural.
The wild and untamed Nature magic on it made it grow and thrive without the need of someone watching over it. And the ponies feared that.
As they settled in the forest, as the Castle of the Two Sisters was established and Capital City flourished around it, its inhabitants worked to tame the untamable, fighting back against the wild beasts that lurked deeper in the Everfree. The magic of the three tribes clashed against the nature magic in the land, pushing back and forth. This had been going for a few years, and slowly the ponies seemed to be winning, forcing the land's inherent magic back.
Big mistake.
Magic borders the line between the living and the unliving; sometimes it was more akin to a machine: smart, but without a will of its own, without consciousness or self-awareness.
But sometimes, it crossed that line.
Deep in the Everfree, nature magic churned and coiled as the ripples of the ever-going fight against the ponies' order and harmonic one passed through the entire land. It responded to them, growing and expanding and becoming more complex. And somewhere among all that, among all the energy and the potential, a mind was formed.
Well, more like it popped into existence when a ripple pushed an arcane node to the side and made it collide with another.
OW!
Pain welcomed them to the world, and the recently formed mind decided it was a horrible welcome. Shaking off the pain, they noticed their surroundings.
As information flew past from one arcane node to another, flowing through the ground like shifting ley lines, the new being looked in understandable curiosity. Being born from an unbelievably huge and ancient amount of magic and the information that went attached to it, they were ridiculously knowledgeable. Still, lack of experience left them understandably confused.
So, floating in that part of the arcanosphere, they approached one of the flows, and touched it. Part of the energy went into them, before overflowing and falling back into the stream.
The new being grew a little as the magic shifted inside of it, opened their incorporeal mouth... and did what could only be described as the energy equivalent of a burp.
Wobbling in excitement at the new sensation, it launched itself into the stream, swimming along it.
Flow...
Their joy was cut short when another ripple threw them into yet another node.
!!!
Too bad they didn't know any curses, because there weren't more appropiate words to describe how they felt about the ripples. Pulling themselves together, they felt the telltale sign of yet another one coming. Not being even ten minutes old, though, they could only brace for the impact.
Dragged through a current of magic, they felt a spark of anger that grew into an ember and exploded forward as a burst of flame, opening a hole in the ripple to pass through.
Looking at the scorched ground, they realized thre was more to their surroundings than magic. There was land, air... life.
There is life.
Plants, animals, insects and everything in between.
And through the energy flows, they could feel them. They could feel everyone. Their breathing, their beating hearts, the pulsating magic in those that had it...
Among the power, the world was like an book, laidd open for them to read.
A lesser mind would have broken trying to understand so much information, so much knowledge at once. But the newborn Spirit of Nature was no lesser being.
Now conscious of their surroundings, curiosity filled their mind and they hungrily went over all the things they could perceive, from the smallest bug to the biggest tree. Using the flows of magic they ventured through the forest and away from the ripples , ready to see the marvels that awaited them.