The Castle of Friendship, an immense tree shaped crystal structure that towered over the town of Ponyville. The castle is owned by and home to the Princess of Friendship, Twilight Sparkle. Two other house guests are also living there: Spike, a purple dragon and the number one assistant to Twilight, and Starlight Glimmer, a freeloader that is there to learn about Friendship.
Currently, the Princess was in one of the many crystal rooms that she had converted into a laboratory, working on her latest research topic. Twilight sat at a table near one of the rooms windows, a book gently floating in front of her face, held in place with her magical aura as she scanned its pages.
“No, no, no,” Twilight chanted to herself as the pages of the book rapidly flipped one after the other. In a rare fit of book harming, Twilight snapped the book shut and slammed it down on the table in front of her. “Ugh, nopony has gotten close to, or even started to head in the right direction of, obtaining better access to the Aether.”
Sighing in defeat, Twilight levitated A Simpleton’s Guide to the Aether in hopes that rereading the book for the next couple hundred times would yield better results.
The door to the laboratory cracked open slightly and Starlight’s head peeked through the crack, “Everything alright Twilight? I heard something slam.”
Twilight nodded her head, “Yeah, everything's fine. I’m just trying to see if there are any research avenues into the access of the Aether that have yielded any fruit. So far I haven’t found anything that was worth looking into further with today’s understanding.”
“The Aether? That old topic?”
Twilight giggled and set the book down, “Yup, I want to at least try and see if I can do it. But so far I don’t have a lot of faith that I’d make any difference like the last dozens of scientists that have tried.”
Starlight smiled at her friend, “Hey! Don’t give up just yet, if anypony could do it then it’d be you, Twilight.” She looked over at the book Twilight had set down, “If I might make a suggestion… why not try your own personal practical application instead of relying on the experiments of others? I mean, it’s the Aether, everypony has access to it on some level. It’s harmless.”
Twilight rubbed her chin with a fetlock as she looked at the ceiling of the crystal room in thought, “You know… I might just do that.”
“Happy to help, Twilight. So how about I get out of your mane, just leave you to your experiments?” After exchanging a few more pleasantries Starlight’s head disappeared through the crack of the door and Twilight was left with her thoughts.
“Practical application, huh?” Twilight thought to herself.
Springing to her hooves, Twilight quickly positioned herself in the middle of the room. Bracing herself, she channeled power through her horn and closed her eyes. Immediately she felt herself tap into and connect herself fully to the powers of the realm beyond hers. The Aether, the realm of souls and the source of all magic on Equus. Instead of gathering the necessary power and forming a spell with it like she normally would, Twilight simply stayed connected to the realm and felt the gentle currents of power wash over her mind.
Experimentally, Twilight tried gathering power like she normally would. She felt the power flood into her through her horn, but it was as hard to grasp and inefficient as usual. To anyone other than unicorns, spellwork looks much easier than it really is. And in some cases, like for example minor levitation or just a straight up beam of energy, that’d be true. But as for any complicated spell, things start getting progressively harder and more energy is wasted.
Twilight cut the flow of power and this time tried to manipulate the energies differently. Power started to flood into her once more, but it was the same as last time. Cutting herself off, Twilight tried again. Once more she failed, snorting in annoyance Twilight did it one more time. Power filled her up again, but still the same.
After several more repeated failures, she stomped her hoof in frustration and screamed out in anger. She, however, was still channeling power and the Aether bent to her emotions. A pulse of power in the realm of souls rippled out into its depths in response to her emotional outburst.
Twilight blinked in shock as a response to this new development. A bright smile overtook her previously angry face at this and the princess quickly went to work observing the way the Aether responded to her now. Twilight bent and played with the energies of the Aether, its power now so easy to take control of.
She was so busy experimenting with her newfound way of taking control of the Aether that she didn’t notice the presence watching her.
“Oh Twilight, I forgot to tell you!” Starlight Glimmer said as she trotted happily into the room.
So focused on what she was doing, Twilight jumped in surprise as the voice of Starlight interrupted her. All the power she was gathering and playing with blasted out of her horn, gathering into a ball of crackling power before expanding out in all directions and swallowing her up.
Just as quickly as it expanded, the ball of energy shrank back into a tiny ball and popped out of existence.
Starlight was left to gape in disbelief for but a moment before she shrieked, “Oh sweet Celestia! Twilight!”
“And that was how I got here!” Twilight proclaimed to the majestic skeleton sitting on the golden throne before her.
“You are ab-so-fucking sure there was nothing else between then and now? Because I’m pretty positive I felt several different things happening in the immaterium during your little Warp-esque fuck-uppery,” the robotic voice of the Emperor’s text to speech device rang out from his throne. “Also, why the fuck were you being so descriptive of all of your actions leading up to that cosmic failure. I just wanted to know what the fuck you were doing to land you into my throne room.”
Twilight scowled up at the decaying not-god, “I told you, if you were actually paying attention, I was trying to find out a better way for my species to access the Aether, or as you call it the Warp. The way we do it is very inefficient and I wanted to fix that.” Twilight looked off to the side, “And maybe there might have been a slight… encounter during my little trip through space and time.”
“Do tell, because I want to make one hundred percent sure you aren’t some daemon trying to fuck with me. I have enough shit to deal with and complain about as it is without having a nuisance like that around here.”
“Didn’t you just release a Daemon Prince Primarch riding a motorized bike into the most heavily populated planet in the Imperium?” Kitten asked.
“Hush, you. Don’t ruin my son’s first bicycle experience.”
“Right, right. I think I’m going to go send that message to the Ultramarines now,” Kitten replied.
“And don’t forget this time to tell them to cut Guilliman’s life support.”
Kitten chuckled nervously, “Eheh, certainly My Lord. I’ll get right on that.”
“Good. See that it is done. This is my will.”
Ignoring the golden warrior walking out of the throne room Twilight said, “Anyway, as I was saying, I was drifting through the Aether-”
“Warp”
Ignoring the Emperor Twilight immediately continued, “-I realized I couldn’t simply move my body through the Aether back to my world with teleportation. Something kept blocking me whenever I tried to gather the power for that spell, so I just kept moving forward. Eventually the ride started to get a little… bumpy is the best word for it I guess.”
“I would have used neck-snappingly jerky myself, but bumpy works I suppose.”
“Right. Well as I was trying to stabilize myself something else tried to attack me mentally. Luckily I was on guard at the time and managed to repel it. I tried to see if I was able to teleport again and found myself in some disgusting and nauseous Tartarus equivalent.”
“By any chance did the air reek of a landfill marinating in a sewer for a hundred years?”
Twilight grimaced and her face tinged green in disgust, “Yes actually, it was not a pleasant experience.”
“Sounds to me like you mentally fought off a daemon and then landed in Nurgle’s domain of the Warp. A disgusting bloated blob of fat, rotting meat, corruption, and pus. He’s also the Chaos god of pestilence.”
Twilight shuddered, “Thank you, Mr. Skeleton, I really needed that image right now.”
“First of all, I am the mother fucking Emperor and don’t you forget about it. Second of all, you’re welcome, now continue with your story.”
Twilight sighed, “After quickly having enough of that dreadful place, and not wanting to stay and longer than absolutely needed, I channeled more power and launched myself into the Aether once more. This time I was more prepared and as I searched the Aether for something to lock onto I found your spirit being projected very brightly into the Aether. I used that as an anchor and dragged myself to you, it was the only source of purity I could find.”
“Yes, I am pretty pure in soul and all that. I can see why you would have been attracted to my magnificent presence resounding in the chaotic fuckery that is the Warp. I am actually surprised you didn’t notice it earlier when you were fighting off that daemon.”
“To be fair I wasn’t actually actively looking for anything at the time, I was mostly confused and sorta just teleported to that disgusting realm on accident.”
“You must have the luck of a million fucking leprechauns to be able to pull off a random teleport like that and not get yourself stuck and dead in the middle of fuck nowhere space. Seriously.”
“I’ll try not to think about almost dying by suffocation.”
“If you were stuck in the middle of space, I wouldn’t think suffocation would be the way you’d go.”
“True,” Twilight said. After a moment’s pause, she asked, “Where am I anyway? And do you think I’d be able to get back to my home?”
“You are in my Imperial palace, on a planet called Terra. This is also just one of the many worlds that make up my galactic empire called the Imperium, sadly it has fallen into an extreme pile of shit that I will have to thoroughly unfuck now that I can actually talk again. And for you returning home, that I can not guarantee as I have not encountered something like this before. And that is saying something coming from the guy who is over forty eight thousand years old.”
Twilight’s ears drooped down in sadness, “Oh.”
“But, when my son Magnus gets back from his bicycle ride around the neighborhood maybe he can search the library for any books that might help. He is a bit of a nerd like that.”
Twilight quickly brightened up and clopped her hooves together excitedly, “Oh, I love libraries!”
“Good. You two will go together like two peas in an extremely nerdy pod. Now, how about I try and fill you in with what I know about the Imperium so far. I have a feeling you might be here a while.”
“Well… if you say so.”
Author's Note
This first chapter was mostly just an experiment of sorts, I expect to make the future chapters longer so expect updates to take a long while as this is just a minor hobby of mine.
