Twilight Sparkle melted, relieved, into the crevices of her throne. A deep sigh escaped her lips as she stared at the wonderfully empty table before her.
What a trip that had been. Three. Whole. Weeks. She loved her friends- how couldn’t she! The violet prodigy was the Princess of Friendship, after all. But some of them where mostly friendly towards each other out of association- and while they could get along for a short while, long trips strained these glasslike alliances a tad too far.
Despite providing a welcome release from the punishing mixture of incredible stress and untenable boredom that newfound royal duties pressed to her, Twilight always felt a twinge of dread as when her cutie mark began to twinkle. She would sit alone at the crystalline map, waiting to see who else would come through the door; flank ablaze, eager to tackle the unknown issue.
It was her least favorite combination- Applejack and Rarity. The two had mellowed towards each other over the last few years; far from the open hostility they seemed to share when each first met Twilight, they were known to tolerate at least a few hours together at the Ponyville Spa on semi-regular occasions.
Twilight groaned, her thoughts again forced to the near-month the party had traveled. She shuddered. Those two should never be forced into proximity for any significant amount of time. Especially in these conditions- Rarity DID NOT take kindly to the steady caking of ash that thoroughly infiltrated her mane as they struggled to keep ‘party’ minded dragon couples away from the southern Yakyakistani border.
But none of that mattered now. A few days travel, three weeks of stress, a week of debriefing with Celestia, and she was finally home. All Twilight desired now was one of Spike’s special hot cocoas, the pile of papers that her new student Starlight had written, and the gentle evening's breeze across her balcony. Maybe falling into her bed. She licked her lips briefly, even that simple motion betraying the weight beneath her eyes.
Mhhmm. Her mattress did sound pleasant.
Mind made up, Twilight allowed herself to limply flop from her stony seat, her front hooves snapping a shrill ‘crack’ through the great halls.
In that instant, the world elongated and plunged away.
Twilight grunted, feeling a sudden, powerful yank on her horn. The throne room dissolved into a dark swirling tunnel. She felt her heart fill with the frantic rush of great speed, despite a complete lack of corroborating sensory input.
Twilight growled in frustration. Reading, cocoa, and down; all had been just beyond her grasp. Well, whatever. She recognized extrapony teleportation when she felt it, and the only magicians she knew of who were powerful to pull off such a stunt were the other Princesses (and, if she’s being honest, maybe her own pupil. Twilight hadn’t yet had the opportunity to get solid readings, but she was certain that her student could at least match her pre-ascension power output.)
“You know, you could have just sent a letter” Twilight grumbled, the words vanishing into the ether, inaudible even to herself so deep into the warp.
The alicorn began to grow antsy. She knew, of course, that a degree of time dilation was to be expected in the midst of a teleport- even more so when the shift moved a great distance. A hop across a room might seem near instantaneous for outside observers, but to the pony within the warp, a second or two had passed. For a jump from someplace like Ponyville all the way to the Capitol, (for those few mages who could accomplish such a feat), outside recorders would note somewhere between a five and seven second delay, while the unicorn would feel anywhere from 5 minutes to a half hour pass.
Twilight’s internal clock silently screamed as she blasted past the half hour mark. The Princess almost always ran on the shorter end of teleport- even approaching to the higher end was virtually unheard of. And, given her body’s creeping hunger and her gradual boredom, Twilight could easily tell that she had been stuck quite a bit longer than that. Two, maybe even three hours.
Twilight felt her heart throbbing as her throat began to close. Her breathing became tight the longer the warp stretched.
Something must have gone wrong. She knew it. I could teleport across Equus in a half an hour. Her eye began to twitch, her stomach growling. Did something happen to the Princess? O-or, is this a test!? I haven’t done one for her since Ascension… maybe… oh no… I didn’t prepare for this!
Breathe. She had to breathe. She wasn’t that pony anymore. And Celestia wasn’t anypony to be afraid of. She was somepony to lean on. They were equals.
Twilight yelped as her adept mind quickly processed a sensation she had never felt before.
The total loss of magic.
All traces, of all kinds, suddenly and completely fell away.
Magic had always weakened in the warp, but it never ceased. Wherever a pony was, friendship followed, and wherever friendship could be found, so to was magic. Twilight frantically tried to reach within herself, to tap into her immense alicorn mana stores, but could spark nothing. The same directionless urge, firmly tugging her horn, pulled her blindly through the abyss.
She fell to her haunches and imagined the walls swirl and meld. There was nothing she could do. For now, she was well and truly alone, evidently traversing distances thought impossible by all manners of contemporary study. The furthest ponykind had ever teleported took Celestia to the Lunar surface, nearly 350 years ago. And even then, she had only experienced 45 minutes or so within the warp.
Twilight shuddered, her stomach grumbling even louder than before. How long had she been in here, thinking? Hours? Days? No way to tell. She was hungry, and she would stay hungry- she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t die.
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Like a floodlight flicked on in a dark crypt, magic suddenly poured back into the warp.
A very exhausted Twilight felt a sudden flurry of energy well around her. In an instant, her power surged. This mana… it was unlike anything she had manipulated before. Complex energies ebbed and flowed, growing in intensity with each passing second. So powerful were these bonds, they hardly seem affected by the dampening of the spell. Some of the most powerful friendship she had ever sensed danced along her fur, mixed bizarrely with an equally powerful hatred. Careful to avoid absorbing the Hate, Twilight greedily inhaled the mana, her strength and agency returning as her horn channeled raw power back into her body.
And the energies kept growing. Her reserves already full, the increasing passions and connections assaulted her, desperate to creep in. Twilight let out a silent scream, grasping her horn in her hooves, as the pounding continued.
They swelled.
They raced.
They exploded.
The Princess couldn’t take it anymore. No matter what it took, she had to get out of this warp. She had to stop the teleport, to get her bearings, to calibrate safely to this unfamiliar and incredible flow. With a silent scream of pain, she began frantically casting protection spells.
In the blink of an eye the warp dropped away, and once again she could see. The inky darkness was filled instead with an overpowering grey.
Twilight let out a shuddering breath, her relief evident. She was out of the warp, and hadn't quite literally 'popped' into existence somewhere in deep space.
Twilight suddenly let out a very unladylike ‘eep!’ as she finally processed the whistling in her ears, the tufts of fur poking up into her eyes, the anxious stiffening of her feathers. Her wings audibly snapped, catching the air, aggressively slowing her. She finally settled to a hover a hundred meters below what she now realized was a dense stony layer of clouds.
She hovered in place; gentle, repetitious flaps helped to slow her racing pulse. If Dash could’a seen that…
She could feel the changing weather, but saw no pegasi. It was the small things- the faint pressure in her skull, the smell of the air. She occasionally bobbled in place, her sluggish an inexperienced corrections evidence of the tumultuously swirling air currents.
With her breathing steadied and her heart rate slowed, Twilight turned her attention to the matter at hand. Namely, figuring out just where on Equus she was.
She shuddered, the phantom tugging in her horn reminding her that this fix was only temporary. Well, if she wanted to catch a train she still needed to figure out where she was. Then she could get Celestia or Luna or Starlight's aid to break whatever this spell was.
She could hardly make out her surroundings. Clearly, it was morning. The slowly dissipating mist told her as much. But where on Equus could you find a morning like this at such a time of the year? Surely, no weather division would schedule such a brisk and stormy day in the midst of summer. The sun was slowly rising, the occasional beam piercing through the shadowy haze and reflecting against the sea. But the weather spoke to winter- the wind was bitter and cold. Twilight could make out water a few thousand meters below- as grey as the sky, roiling and angry, large swells breaking near the barely visible shore in a brilliant white.
As the sun further rose, the haze lifted quickly. In no time, Twilight could distinguish the coast.
She had never bore witness to such a formation as this anywhere on Equus. A long, flat plane of pristine white sand extended, nearly as wide as a ploughshares field, from the crashing of the surf. Glistening sand delicately reflected the weak rays that Celestia had managed to thrust through the clouds. The bright sand is suddenly interupted, the graceful flowing form dumping into towering cliffs. These imposing, scraggly structures would have been right at home deep in the Quarry, or suspending the great gates of Tartarushad; they had no place so close to the sea.
Atop the cliffs, the land ran flat. It was as if Faust herself had plucked up this land, hoisted it a few dozen meters, and propped it back up. Twilight could just barely make out the dreary plain, stretching for what had to have been miles beyond the beach. Only the occasional dark speck moved across her probing gaze- probably carriages voyaging from one town to the next.
At least I’ve got somewhere to start. She really wished she had remembered to pack her “Unlosing Yourself” checklists before her trip. The absent heft of her eagerly discarded saddlebags impressed on her the folly of her underpreparedness in these sudden 'snatched-away' voyages.
As Twilight resigned herself to finding the nearest town and dealing with this whole mess without magic, the horizon suddenly inverted and her head swam as she began to tumble.
Her wings twisted and bent, desperately scrambling for purchase in the violently swirling eddies that had suddenly filled the air. Finally, her left wing found lift and she wrenched herself stable, her head already whipping about after the cause of the disturbance.
She gasped as a terrible sound brushed her ears. Deep, throaty growls filled the skies. Four small creatures raced past headed for the beaches. Whatever they were, they were hauling. Twilight suspected that even Dash may have trouble keeping up, unless she was going all-out.
From the growl, the alicorn suddenly thought she had found herself back in the dragon lands- that would explain the harsh landscape, and the draconic screeching.
They were unlike any dragon she had ever heard of, or seen. They didn’t flap their wings, seemingly propelled wholely by magic. They flew together, like a flock of geese. From each wing protruded four talons- and the things maintained their roar as they soared on.
The droning roar cascaded across the dense sky once more- fainter, further away. She spun, squinting hard as another flight of dragons neared the beach far to her left. The reptiles had certainly evolved to the local area, the deep greys and greens of their hides perfectly camouflaged against the turbulent waters below. Each confirmed what she had already suspected- their great gaping maws stayed permanently stretch wide, their frightful clamber unending. Each dragon was adorned with bright circles of gold, blue, red, and white. Clan iconography, Twilight presumed, though she couldn’t make heads or tails of the symbol.
All in all, fascinating. This little misadventure may not have been so bad in the end.
She pressed her turn, scanning for another clutch to observe. They must have been migrating, or hunting. In either case, assuming the clan was comparable in size in any way to the ones she had experienced, there would be scores more to observe.
Her sweep didn’t reveal any further drakes, though she was convinced that their screams filled the sky, the lizards buried somewhere deep within the blanket above.
Poking through the mists, cresting above the horizon, a grey speck had appeared.
Twilight was excited. Ships meant ports, and ports meant larger settlements which had a local rail connection. Her mind finally made up, the mare rotated towards the beach. How such a large city managed to completely evade her reading, how pictures of such a distinctive coast had never graced her eyes, all questions were swiftly buried. She would address them later- preferably in front of a steaming cup of cocoa somewhere far from the oppressive dampness and bone-shivering chill that surrounded her.
She she watched with interest as the reptiles neared the craggy rocks, waited to see if they would descend into caves. It was always useful, she had found, to keep track of where exactly dragons called home. Even though these were nowhere near as large as the one that had nearly snuffed out her home and threatened the capital, clutches of dragons could prove quite the- admittedly more immediate- danger.
Her slight forward drift slowed as confusion crawled across her body. The clutch of dragons split after blowing over the coast- the apparent leader of the group and the creature to his left pulled up hard, and rocketed skyward. The other two began to roar even more fiercely, their speed rapidly increasing as they lowered their right wings and made a wide bank back towards the sea. Their great arc finally straightened, the path pointing directly at the cliff face, their wings kicking up a slight spray in the surface carving only ten or twenty meters above the sand.
Excitement broke through her confusion- she had no Equusly idea why the other two had erupted away, but clearly this pair was intent on making a speed entry to their cave- even after so long a friendship with Dash, such feats of aerial daring always got her heart to skip a beat.
The pair that had ascended suddenly rolled over and plunged downward. Twilight could only stare dumbfounded as the physical crack of explosions rang out and the land atop the cliff suddenly erupted. Brief tongues of fire leapt from the ground in the dragon’s path, quickly subsiding as a wall of soil was cast out across the ground. Twilight was noticeably jostled as a wall of earth shot out from across the cliff face. She could see the shadows of hundreds of dragons, stretching for miles in either direction, the land responding in kind. She stared as the two skimming the brutual walls quickly breathed thin streams of fire and broke away, the flames peppering what looked like a cave, each impact ejecting shards of rock against the beach below. An awful metallic cacophony rang out as chunks of stone battered against the thousands of strange iron triangles which littered the surf. The reptiles twirled away away just in time, right as the last the last gasp of fire flew into the cave.
Orange briefly permeated the grey sky as the cavern erupted in a ball of fire, rolling from the mouth and popping above the cliffs. A thick, oily smoke rose high into the sky as the fire continued to rage.
Twilight scrambled, her front hooves clawing at the air around her, desperately pulling together a weak cloud on which she could perch. Clearly, she couldn't go that way. Normally, a couple dozen angry dragons would be no match for the divine power of an alicorn. Today, though, she knew that attempting to use magic would destroy the spells safeguarding her form the still-pulling warp, keeping her securely anchored to her post. protecting her from the unending magical strain, and she would be instantly consumed by the warp. All she could do was sit, wait, and prey to Faust that someone would come to her rescue, or the dragons would leave.
Her misshapen, thin cloud would make even the youngest members of Flight School cringe, but a few short test bounces revealed that it held her weight. Grasping her tool tightly, she willed her wings to surge. Her mane quickly soaked as she perched atop her soggy cushion, the crown of her head poking into the swirling grey. She returned to her observation as the dragons bobbed and weaved along the cliff, occasionally glazing the stone or scrub with the heat of their breath before gingerly stepping away. Several spots, both on and behind the cliffs, now spat columns of pitch smoke into the morning sky. The acrid scent of a bonfire graced the Princess’ nose, the smell permeating out even as far as she.
As far as she was…
Argg!
That ship! Twilight had to warn them, encourage them to stay away! (Maybe take up on the decks instead of freezing here in the clouds, too.)
She spun on her cloud, snapping her wings dry. As she began to step off the ledge, a gasp lodged in her throat and the mare was frozen in place of pure awe. Where once only the faint peak of a single mast extended, now scores of shapes blotted out the horizon, filling the area below and drowning out the swirling sea. Far away, the great shapes formed a new, misshapen horizon.
Every one of these ships dwarfed anything she had ever seen. Nopony on Equus had a maritime presence like this. Even the Naval units of the guard, a leftover from Equestria’s ancient days of safeguarding trade form Gryphon pirates, couldn’t hope to compete. The largest and most powerful ships on the globe sailed beneath Celestia’s banner- and even the smaller of this armada dwarfed those mighty four riggers. Twilight could only watch in amazement as these leviathans approached, faster than any gigantic watercraft had a right to be, all while sailing directly into stormy headwinds. The great swells jostled and rolled the craft, but on they paid no heed, pressing nearer and nearer to the beach.
Twilight’s astonishment was interrupted by a strange, intermittent ‘pop’, as well as the occasional, if faint, shrill whistle. The dark cliffs winked and flashed, caves suddenly expelling a powerful light. The shore almost seemed to twinkle, like AJ’s field in the dead of summer as the lightbugs sought a mate.
Twilight’s ribs rattled, a deep thud permeating her chest cavity as an unbelievably powerful concussive shock tore it's way to her very core. The unending ring of distant titans were momentarily obscured by a billowing layer of pale smoke smoke, as the powerful sound of rolling thunder barrelled across the waves.
For several seconds, nothing happened. The popping, the twinkling, it all continued, uninterrupted. Suddenly, the cliffs vanished, smoke and fire and sand and crumbling rock instantly filling the coast. After a brief pause, the singing ‘pops’ resumed, their accompanying dance hidden beneath the roiling mess.
Surely, whoever owned the ships was friends with these dragons. Or, wait- were they competitors? Did they each want to destroy something? Twilight again remembered the incredible pull of friendship magic that had beckoned her to break from the warp. Surely, they were friends. What else could create such a bound than a dear friendship between entities so magically intertwined gifted as they?
A strange phenomena caught the mare's eye, not far from her hidden self. One of the smaller ships had slowed and broken from its path towards shore, the vessel turning sharply in a wild arc. turning in a wide, wild arc. Several of its neighbors danced and weaved, trying desperately to stay out of it’s way. The vessel leaned in towards the sea, crawling to a halt, a pool of black spilling into the sea betraying it’s meandering course. A few licks of flame from the ship sparked, and the sea itself was set ablaze. The mammoth ship finally slowed to a stop and flopped over. Its nose dipped beneath the waves, its tail lifting into the sky, two great golden fans slowly churning slight vortex’ in the wispy clouds. With a whine and a sigh the ship plunged beneath the waves, small sprays of churning, frothy sea water and the huge patch of flaming sea the only evidence that it had ever existed.
Twilight’s jaw hung open. She just watched a ship sink. Only then did she notice the sprays of water around the ships shortly after the popping. Only then did she process the frantic bursts of activity as the goliaths slowly encroached. Far below, the ships like the one she had watched flounder slowed. Hundred of tiny specks spilled from their decks, small skiffs thundering away from their mothers and racing at a full kilt towards the shore. As the small craft neared, the true clamber began, a constant chatter and bite and crack in between the world-shaking boom’s the distant vessels the occasional scream of desertion or pain rising above all else from the distant battlefront.
Twilight shook her head. She didn’t know what was going on- who was fighting, but this was surely a brawl. She recognized a friendship problem when she saw one, and if she didn’t do something right away, somepony could wind up hurt. Just like with the Hooffields and Mccolts- if these ponies just sit down and talk out their problems, surely they could set aside their differences and be friends!
Twilight stepped from her cloud, her maw set in stony determination, swiftly diving towards one of the ships below. If she could just get to the deck, surely she could make this bickering cease.
She blinked as a sharp gust of wind cracked past her head, ruffling her mane. A fraction of a second later, as the tendrils of her hair still danced around the disturbance, a sizzling hiss cracked into her ears. Twilight focused on the ship below as it began to flash at her, glistening beams of magical light flying to meet her. Panicking, she pulled in her wings, and allowed herself to drop like a rock.
As another spell whistled past her flank she barely restrained herself from casting a shield. Her wings flared just above the churning waves, and she raced towards the cascading surf, dodging and weaving around the much slower tiny boats, her mind racing as she ignored their contents. Finally, she approached the land. Surely, if she could just duck into a cave…
Behind her, she heard that awful dragon roar. Before Twilight could turn in shock, magic from the beasts talons leapt forth. A hoof-sized hole appeared near the base of her wing. The dragon passed overhead as the pressure tore her useless limb around in the most unnatural direction, the motion pinning the feathered slab against her flank, severed tendons whipping at her neck.
Twilight screamed. She hadn’t experience pain so intense in years. She hardly noticed as her wing fully folded over, her body snapping into a roll and plummeting towards the ground. She fell unconscious as she slapped against the waves, bouncing, before plunging into the cool depths, her impact sending a bright spray against the surf.
She took no notice as her shields fell. As the water around her took on a bizarre, purple luminescence. The sea rushed to fill the small and sudden void, and her body was gone.
The faint shimmer of her blood blended into the current, quickly dashed by the churning propeller of one of the hundreds of small boats below. Within the hour, Twilight's blood was a mere few particles among many, the surf itself stained a deep, vile crimson.
______________________________________________________________________________
JUNE 6, 1944.
3 RESEARCH DIVISION KUMMERSDORF T UNIT
STURMBANNFÜHRER SAUER
DOCTOR GRAF ZIEGLER
DELIVER TO OBERSTGRUPPENFÜHRER DIETRICH
SPECIAL OPERATIONS BERLIN T UNIT
URGENT
TOP SECRET
MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH STOP PROJECT 11762002 YES SUCCESS STOP CONTACT ID UNCLEAR STOP URGENT INSPECTION REQUESTED STOP MAINTAIN SECRET AND ARRIVE EXPEDIENT STOP HOLD FOR REVIEW EXCLUSIVE IN THULE FULL STOP
______________________________________________________________________________
Author's Note
Hello all.
I lost interest in writing Homestead, and got this idea in the meantime. I kind of know what I want to have happen, so I hope you'll stick around for the ride, because I'm confident that this story will go much quicker and will hold my own interest for much longer than the other.
Just a quick note on speaking/reading in this story- because I don't speak anything but English and I want to keep everyone's Google Translating to a minimum, most of the story the actual language being used will be implied by those using it. Some scenes may employ a limited amount of (poorly) translated other languages- if, for example, two people of different nationalities are speaking together. Or, should a certain purple mage find herself listening in on creatures speaking a language she's never heard while she struggles with a translation spell. Basically pay attention to context if you want to know what language is actually being employed- exceptions will be probably painfully pointed out.
I'm getting into the fanfiction game late- I know this. Please, any criticism, praise, hints, verbal assaults, notes, whatever- anything anyone wants to toss up, I'm all too glad to take your comments, learn, and try to get better.
See you whenever I update again
CFG
EDIT- Which will be never, because I have abandoned the story. While I still like the general idea, I don't think I am executing it particularly well, and I don't really want to have my inbox filled with people arguing about it again when I have other things I want to work on. I'll keep it up as an archive or whatever, or maybe some day far in the future and I'm bored I'll come back to it. We'll see.
Oh one final note- Twilight's 'dragons'
