Far, far below Canterlot...

Beneath the abandoned crystal mines...

An ancient and forgotten throne, untarnished by time, presides over an eternally empty crystal court.

The dark, frigid chambers of the ancient castle speak of power and conquest. Now, only silence rules these halls.

Deeper still, however, lies evidence of more recent occupation- a crumbling, abandoned laboratory. Ancient, yes, but practically modern relative to the crystalline tomb within which it lies.

Decrepit texts and brittle alembics litter the large room; runes circles marked on the floor in chalk have all faded away centuries ago. Standing in stark contrast to this pitiful display, however, is a colossal, bronze, house-sized orrery.

An uninformed onlooker might assume that the giant mechanical model of the celestial bodies is, in fact, only a statue. Its curving arms twist about in the darkness like the corpse of a phantom puppet-master. Runes and labels line every surface, projection and wheel, hidden beneath a thick layer of dust. Two colossal spheres dominate the structure- one imitating the sun, the other the moon, both resting quietly in the gloom like twin sovereigns awaiting their subjects. The room is frozen in time- every passing moment might as well have been the second before, or after.

Then, with neither warning nor ceremony, the silence is shattered. The Orrery awakens.

It stretches its sweeping bronze limbs, breathing deeply of the magic which permeates its structure. Gears and cogs are given new life, sounding a steady beat throughout the ancient fortress. The shadow of the space is pierced as the replicated celestial bodies begin to glow- softly, almost imperceptibly at first, but gradually brighter until the laboratory is illuminated as if it were being observed by the actual sun. The bodies, one blue and the other red, begin to move along mirrored paths, encroaching on the center slowly and surely but steadily increasing in speed. A soft whirring increases in volume, vibrating the crystalline walls and knocking books and apparatuses off of shelves in turn. The light of the great machine becomes blinding as the two spheres reach their destination in the center of the dais and merge into a brilliant, permeating magenta aura.

The orrery holds that final note for a glorious moment, then as abruptly as the performance begun, the entire contraption goes dark in and instant. Several silent minutes pass, almost as if the show hadn't happened at all. Then... color.

A burst of rainbow light floods the room, refracting though the crystal walls of the chamber and bouncing back in every direction. The colorful, victorious applause, however, is cut short.

The room freezes once again. Iridescent light flows and stretches through the room like cobwebs. Slowly, very slowly, the light is pulled towards the back corner of the room like blood draining from a body. In this corner lies a crumbling, diamond-shaped crystal altar, legendary in its time but forgotten since. The rainbow light draws past it, ignorant and uncaring of its history, towards the far edge of the chamber. Gradually, the entirety of the web is pulled into the shadows, seeps into the ground and is snuffed out. Darkness returns to the laboratory as the orrery twists back into resting position to resume its eternal slumber.

There is a brief minute of peace. It's ended when something in the floor stirs.

The orrery was the first ancient relic in the room to wake up this day. It won't be the last.

"I'm sorry, but I swear I've never met you before in my life."

The pink pony looks terribly confused. Kyle's stare tells me she's losing patience with me, Jackie looks like he's desperately hoping this is all some terrible prank, and Henry is floating upside down, batting something around between her hooves.

The pink one, who I've gathered is named "Pinkie Pie" (evidence so far is pointing towards all ponies having ridiculous names) tries again: "But I know you have! I threw you a party and everything! You didn't forget already, did you?" Panic and distress briefly surface in her expression, and I feel a little guilty even though I know I didn't actually do anything wrong. "I know it's been a long time since you've been in Ponyville, but I thought my parties were a little more memorable than that..."

Just as quickly, the pain falls away and is replaced by a wide, devious grin. "...or did you think you could fool your way into a second welcome party?" She throws herself up onto her hind legs and crosses her forelegs over her barrel, brow furrowed with purpose. "No way, mister!! Welcome parties are a one-time deal! Otherwise, they wouldn't feel as super extra-special, would they?"

Pinkie's grave expression is broken by a huge gasp, and she jumps in surprise, freezing in mid-air for impact. "Wait just a sugar-sprinkled second! Are you moving back to Ponyville??"

I stutter a bit. "W... I mean technically I n-"

Suddenly we're muzzle to muzzle and she has a forehoof on each of my shoulders. "That means I can throw you a 'Welcome Back' party!!!" She emphasizes that last bit by swinging her arm through the air in a sweeping motion, and as she does so, confetti explodes all around us with a rather satisfying squeaking noise, and sending me rocketing three feet into the air in shock. Where had all that confetti even come from?

"And I can throw it at the same time as the other three welcome parties to make a quadruple supreme mega party!!" She catches me before I hit the ground and holds me up like a trophy. "Ohmygosh Grasswhistle I'm so excited I could EXPLO-"

"WOAH-ho-ho-kay, there, Pinkie, let's calm down a little before there are... consequences." Henry swoops in and snatches me from between Pinkie's hooves. "And did you forget that you already threw us all parties?"

Pinkie's forelegs remain in the air but she crosses her eyes in thought. "...nope, nothing's coming up! And believe me, when I throw a party I do NOT forget it! Pinkie Promise!" She glances briefly at Kyle and Jackie, "Especially since I match parties to faces! I'd definitely remember yours if I'd thrown it."

Jackie and Kyle's expressions could best be described as haunted. Kyle laughs sharply, and a strand of hair falls in front of her unblinking stare. "Ok... I get it. This, this is some kind of, of prank! Just a-a big, stupid prank to make that gullible filly Glitterdust look even crazier than she usually does!" Kyle stumbles around in place, glaring wildly into the surrounding shrubs. "But I'm not buying it! N-not this time!! I'm sick and tired of this nonsense!!" When her shouting isn't met with snickering, her panic only gets worse. "I-Is this Diamond Tiara again?? I-I s-swear, when I-"

"This isn't a prank!" Pinkie Pie looks hurt. "I would never prank someone by just, lying to them over and over again! That isn't funny at all!"

Jackie takes a couple steps towards Pinkie, face cast downward and struggling to make eye contact. "Pinkie, I believe you, but I do hope there's an explanation for all of this. We were just in town a few hours ago."

Pinkie, in response, stumbles back a step and tries to read my expression for some sort of reassurance. Judging by her reaction, I don't think she found any. "B-but... I would've... I should've..."

"Grasswhistle! Nice to see you again!" My ears swivel at the noise (an interesting feeling, but considering the context not particularly comforting), and my head follows shortly afterward to see a yellow pony with an orange mane smiling and waving at me from behind a market stall. I wave back and force a smile simply to avoid making it awkward.

Jackie smiles as well. "Hi, Golden Harvest!"

The pony flinches, but continues waving and smiling, though noticeably stiffer now. I don't think the change went unnoticed by any of my friends.

Henry looks as if she's thinking deeply about something, before turning carefully and flying over to tap another pink pony on the shoulder, this time with a bright yellow mane. "Hey, Lily- how's business today?"

The other pony glances to the side a bit before responding, "I-I'm sorry, have we met before?"

Jackie's jaw drops slowly and her face pales. Kyle appears to be frozen in fear. This is exactly what I expected would happen, and yet it's still managing to be incredibly eerie and uncomfortable to watch.

Sweat beading on her brow, Henry licks her lips and tries again. "U-uh, yeah, it's... it's me, Mellow Breeze. Y'know? Weather team? I mean, I don't really do much so I'm not necessarily surprised you forgot but-"

"You're on the weather team? Why haven't I met you before?" This one came from a pegasus stallion perusing the flowers at Lily's stand. "I've been working weather in Ponyville so long that... unless you only started recently, maybe?"

One look at Henry's face told me that she had not, in fact, started recently. She drops out of the air and looks like she's struggling for words, but before I can read her expression any further, Kyle stalks towards me with a deranged smile plastered onto her muzzle. "This is you, isn't it? W-what with the stealing, and the antique store and the jackeys! This is, y-you're getting back at us for something, a-and you, you got the whole town involved, or... or something, uh... I..." She's clearly more interested in convincing herself than accusing me, and doing a terrible job of either.

I resolve to answer her question anyway. "If you had just- oof!" I step forward and trip over my forelegs, remembering I still don't know how to use the stupid things. Henry rushes to my side and helps me up. " If you'd just listened to me in that meadow, I was trying to tell you that we're..." I shoot a glance at Pinkie Pie before leaning in and whispering so that only Jackie and Kyle can hear, "...we're not supposed to be ponies!"

That answer doesn't appear to be enough for Kyle- she looks furious. "That's- no!! That's ridiculous! Why should I believe that any more than I should believe that everypony just, spontaneously forgot who we are??" I'm about to tell her to chill out when I spot a tear rolling down her cheek. "Grasswhistle, I, I swear if you-"

Jackie wraps his arms around her and cuts her off. Kyle's cold, terrified glare lingers on me for another moment before it breaks away to stare off into the distance. A second tear rolls down her other cheek, leaving a damp streak in the coat underneath.

I've never seen any of my friends cry before. I ponder that. I don't understand what it means.

"...my name's Nathan..." I mumble.

Jackie speaks up again, muffled from around the other side of Kyle's back. "Whatever's going on. we'll figure it out. We'll go to town hall and find some of our records, and we can prove to ourselves that this is all just... a misunderstanding, or something." He leans back and looks Kyle in the eyes, his own shimmering. "Okay?"

Kyle nods, absently at first but with increased conviction as she makes eye contact.

I sigh and cut in. "That sounds nice and all, but I still don't know how to walk. Weren't we going to the hospital or something?"

Pinkie Pie gasps. "You can't walk? What happened??"

"I-... it-... it's a long story." I try to hobble down the street before almost falling again, grateful to have Jackie at my side to catch me. "If I see you later, I might be able to explain it."

Pinkie looks unsure, but before I can ask if she'll be okay, she furrows her brow again in determination and gives us all a big smile. "Okey-doke! I'm off to plan your ultra quadruple party- that'll be sure to cheer you all up!" Her genuine grin from earlier returns. "See you later, Grasswhistle, Glitterdust, Mellow Breeze, and, uh..."

Jackie manages a sincere smile. "Empathy."

Pinkie's grin widens. "Empathy, right! You'd better prepare for this party, because it's going to be AMAZING!" She strikes a dramatic pose as more confetti explodes around her. When it drifts back to the ground, Pinkie Pie is nowhere to be seen. I'd question it if I didn't already have so many other questions on my mind.

Jackie trots over and swings a foreleg under my barrel. "I'm sorry, Grasswhistle, we really are worried about your inability to walk, we just got kind of... distracted, by everything that's happened." He broke eye contact on 'distracted', and I can tell how hard he's trying to keep it together for my sake. Being physically supported and emotionally looked after by your friends is an experience I am entirely unfamiliar with, and it's made even stranger when I consider that the stallion supporting me had nearly exchanged fists with my other friends only a few hours ago. Now that I think about it, how long were we asleep in that field?

Jackie smiles and nudges me forward. "Come on, I've got you. Let's get to Ponyville General."

We continue walking through town in silence, Jackie and I in the lead with Kyle dragging her hooves behind us and Henry floating along after her. Every once in a while I get a concerned glance from the surrounding ponies, but I avoid eye contact with any of them. It still feels a little strange being treated like a familiar face, even though I'm in an alien world in an alien body.

During my effort to avoid eye contact, I notice another curious detail about the village's residents. Every single one of them has a tattoo of some sort on their upper thighs, the same one on both hind legs. From the looks of it, they appear to be part of a system, maybe a cultural thing. Each one is simple, yet colorful like the rest of their bodies, and they all depict either a recognizable object or, rarely, a simple shape or symbol. Paying even closer attention, I see a connection between the symbols on the flanks of the shop-ponies and the goods or services they're selling. A mare working a vegetable stall has a knife slicing a carrot on her hip, the stallion behind a nearby flower stand bears a bouquet of wildflowers on his. My immediate assumption is that ponies tattoo themselves with their line of work once they're settled on a career.

In my distracted state, I misstep and stumble over my hooves again, forcing Jackie to catch me. I give him an appreciative smile, which he returns, before leaning into my curiosity again and investigating my own friends' tattoos. Jackie's looks like two hearts, one purple and one blue, merging at an angle, reminiscent of a slanted Venn diagram. A glance back in Kyle's direction tells me that her's depicts a diamond or gemstone of some sort, circled by a comet's trail of sparkles, like the rings of a planet. Henry's looks like a wispy cloud blowing in the wind, and (although it requires significant concentration to keep myself from falling over again) I manage to catch a glimpse of my own tattoo: some kind of stumpy flute. I stifle a laugh- hopefully no one asks for a performance, or they're going to be sorely disappointed.

Empathy, Glitterdust, Mellow Breeze, Grasswhistle... it seems like our names- let me clarify, fake names- have a direct connection with our tattoos. Or is it the other way around? Does that mean that ponies have their future jobs chosen for them from birth... or am I missing something?

I apparently am, because as soon as I finish that thought, I spot another group of foals playing in the street, and not one of them has a tattoo. Before I can question this any further, Jackie informs me that "We're here."

Something in the floor stirs.

Slowly, it regains consciousness, weakened and dizzy after several millennia in death. The event which had flooded the room in harmony magic hadn't been a first, but it was the first time it had happened in such magnitude. The thing in the floor hadn't tasted the flow of magic in a long, long time.

When they had left his corpse here to crumble, those stupid, imprudent unicorns only had a fraction of an understanding of the power they had wielded against him. They had left him here, in the crystalline capital-turned-crypt of his own burgeoning empire, and in doing so they may as well have left the sponge in the pond. He was part of this place, now, and its crystal structure was saturating him with power- harmony magic, his lifeblood, and weapon of choice.

With an immense 'CRACK', the back of the laboratory fissures and splinters, spraying shards of quartz through the air and vibrating the abandoned fortress like a tuning fork. The room continues to fracture and shudder, twisting and bending in ways crystal shouldn't be able to.

Something begins to take shape. An immense crystalline slab, roughly in the shape of a limb but striving for something more. It cracks and bends into a crude, twisted hand, clawing and pulling at the ground like a demon struggling to pull itself from the pits of Tartarus. Which, to be fair, it might as well be doing.

Over the course of several hours, the room contorts itself into a massive form, almost as large as the orrery. The figure is bestial and distorted, like an unfinished sculpture of an ursa minor. None of its four limbs are the same length: its gargantuan arms dwarf its stubby, almost vestigial legs. The figure did not place much priority in crafting a face, but the twisted quartz between its shoulders and beneath the towering crest of its back bears some resemblance to the frozen, distorted maw of an ape, teeth bared and grimacing in agony- a testament to its struggle to pull itself back into the world of the living.

The malevolent spirit residing within this crystal terror focuses its attention on the crumbling altar before him. He hasn't forgotten what it stands for- how they used his own source of power against him, let him here to rot and suffer in the corpse of his own failed, bygone empire.

His memory of that day was crystal-clear. And in the countless centuries since his death, his rage could do nothing but grow.

He brings both colossal, twisted fists down on the altar in a furious arc, and the entire room explodes around him. Bookshelves topple and splinters of quartz rain down from the ceiling. Where was once an ancient altar of profound yet forgotten significance, now sits only a crater.

It did nothing to assuage his anger. He sits before the crater for a long while, stewing in hatred. Eventually his monstrous arms drag his form across the broken floor, towards the orrery. He stops before it, leaning down and picking a tattered book off the floor: an old journal, its binding frayed and title faded, but the creature can just make out the words scribbled onto the cover.

'Studies into Harmony, its Elements, and their Forging'

The creature turns its gaze back to the orrery. It is incapable of expression, but if anyone else were in the room at the time, they would feel the temperature drop several degrees. They would also be the only one to receive the telepathic thought the creature would have sent throughout the halls of the abandoned castle, were there anyone still walking them.

"Interesting."

Author's Note

The story lives!! I've hashed out a basic outline from start to finish- though this story should be up-to-date with the show, it'll probably clash with canon unintentionally here or there, and I apologize beforehand when it does. Now that I have an outline, though, new chapters should appear slightly more often.