The Thousand- Wait? We're NOT Doing That Now?

"Are there really Seven Thousand Steps?" Derpy asked, wings beating against the cold, mountain air as she flew alongside the human and the Khajiit, squinting down at the snow covered, intermittent stone blocks that acted as steps winding around the mountain.

"Of course there are!" The Dragonborn replied, striking his armored chest with a gauntleted hand. "I have made this journey many times! Besides, why would they say there were seven thousand steps if there weren't?"

"Huh. Good point! I guess I'm just counting wrong!" Derpy said, smiling, her eyes closed.

The Khajiit's eyes were not closed, and she had been counting. About halfway up the mountain, a two hour journey, already, in the frigid cold that was making her teeth chatter and pull her clock tighter around herself, and she was only at about four hundred steps. Granted, there were large gaps between one set of steps and another, and she supposed time could have eaten away some steps, but, still . . .

There was no way in Jone's sweet crescent that this mountain had seven thousand steps going up it.

Derpy happily flapped along beside the two heroes, smiling into the cold air around her, as she felt like, maybe, she might be on the way to accomplish something. To see her little Dinky again, and get back home. She had a muffin in the oven that she was more than ready to get back to, after all, and . . . .

And why was everything so still, suddenly?

Looking about, the pegasus realized that the snow had stopped falling. Not that it had stopped snowing, but rather that the snow had literally stopped falling, stuck hanging in mid air as though on invisible strings. The wind had stopped blowing, and the air was no longer cold. Turning around, she saw that her companions were frozen, stuck in mid step, the big one with the sword on his back even had both feet slightly off the ground, and yet he hung there, as though gravity meant nothing.

Like she could talk, hovering in place as she was with such relatively tiny wings.

"Hey, that's not nice! My wings are average!" Derpy said, before blinking and looking around. "Wait. . . "

There was a flickering light and a sudden pop, as the sky around her began to . . . shudder and glitch, black lines forming across it, like fractures spreading across a mirror glass, and then, with a sudden, deafening silence, it all just . . . went away.

Derpy found herself hovering in a plain of nothingness, pure white stretching as far as she could see, but everything was so featureless, she could not even tell how far that was. There was no sense of distance or scale, no way to tell if the white was a hundred miles away, or right in front of her muzzle.

She looked around, breath coming harder as she felt panic trying to crawl up her throat. Her little Dinky . . . She had felt close! She needed to get home!

"Hello?!" She called out, feeling like her voice should have echoed, but instead it seemed somehow flat. Not muffled, but as though there was nothing to carry the sound past her own ears.

"Hello, Derpy." A voice, sounding vaguely like it was from the East End of Trottingham, said from behind her, and she turned in place, without really feeling like she was moving, and beheld an alicorn, but not one that the pegasus was familiar with. She was a pale grey in color, a bit lighter than Derpy's own coat, while her mane and tail were a similar straw blonde, although both had hot pink highlights running through them, and both hung long and straight, the mane cut short on one side, like a skater cut, or so Derpy thought. Her hooves were painted blue? Or maybe that was natural. It was hard to tell in the lighting of the place, because there really was no lighting. It was strange, a weird feeling of it being lit but not lit, all at the same time, like this place was some kind of-

"Paradox?" The alicorn said, tilting her head, and Derpy looked back to her, her eyes focusing once more.

"What?" She asked, blinking.

"A paradox, something that seems to contradict itself. That's because this place . . . kinda does contradict itself." She said, teal eyes glancing down as she frowned in annoyance. The alicorn looked . . . tired, worn down. She seemed thin, like she had not been eating enough, and her wings were ruffled, feathers disjointed and looking very much like they needed to be preened.

"Um, sorry, but who are you?" Derpy asked, still looking at the pony in confusion.

"Hm? Oh, um . . . I never really . . . had a proper name." She said, distantly, before glancing up into the sky . . . or possibly down at the ground, or maybe both. It was hard to tell. "I guess you could call me . . . Muse." She said, turning her eyes back to the pegasus mare.

"Muse? Oh. Okay." Derpy said, feeling a little sad for the alicorn, who was only a bit taller than the pegasus, putting her around the same size as Princess Twilight. "Where are we?"

"The Ether." Muse said, moving over to hover near Derpy, without seeming to move.

Derpy swallowed, looking around. "Where's that?"

"Everywhere. And nowhere." Seeing the confused look on the mare's face, Muse smiled slightly, an expression that seemed to have not graced her face in some time, judging by how stiff it was, but it still seemed genuine, lighting up her eyes as it did. "Do you remember when Princess Luna pulled all of Ponyville into a joint dream, to help her battle the Tantabus?"

Derpy nodded, smiling slightly. "I'll never forget it! I was so huge! And Spike looked like a big knight, and rode me into battle!" She paused for a moment, frowning slightly. "That was a little weird, now I think about it." She said, wondering momentarily why Spike might want to do such a thing. Was it just a childhood fantasy kind of thing, or something maybe . . .kinky?

"That doesn't matter, Derpy, what matters is that you know what it's like to be inside the Dreamrealms, or, at least, a dream."

"Wait . . . Did you know what I was thinking, just then?"

"Of course, Derpy." Muse said, smiling again.

"How?"

"Because . . . I am the Muse." She said, before winking. "Now, as for The Ether . . . Think of it . . . like a glue, but also like a river. It runs through and between all the different realms, all the different places within the multiverse, connecting them all and holding them together, while the Dreamrealms are sort of . . . they're like the banks of the river. They can act as a bridge, between all the different universes, if you know how to navigate them."

"Ohhh." Derpy said, nodding and smiling, before her eyes crossed and she shook her head. "Wha?"

With a chuckle, Muse shook her head. "Don't worry, Derpy. I'm here to help you get back home."

"Really?" The pegasus said, before frowning. "But, Doc said the only way to do that was to use his machine!"

"Oh, yeah, that . . . We're leaving that plotline right there, in the graveyard where it should be." Muse said, muzzle twisting in a grimace of distaste.

"Huh?" Derpy said, frowning.

"Yeah, no, see, the Author doesn't actually know enough about Doctor Who to keep trying to make references to it, and as for Skyrim . . . Well, a lotta people ain't so happy with Bethesda these days, so that's kind of a big banner asking for drama." Muse responded, a sentence that only left Derpy looking more confused, and the alicorn smiled. "Don't worry, Derpy. I promise, we'll get you home."

"But . . . Doc said something about the Author, too. What does that mean? Who is the Author?" She paused for a moment, then looked up. "Discord?"

""Who, him? You think he's the one behind it all?" Muse said, before smirking slightly to herself, then shaking her head. "No, no, no. Just . . . You see . . . You . . . Don't need to worry about that. Just . . . Help me, and you'll help yourself." She said, nodding. "Okay? I promise, do this, and we'll have you back to your little Muffin Dinky in no time."

Derpy looked into the alicorn's eyes, biting her lip as her own golden eyes slowly came back together, bringing the fine features of the other pony's face into focus. She was . . . kind of pretty, in a princess-y kind of way. That thought helped her reach a decision, and so Derpy nodded, finally, smiling.

"Okay, Princess Muse!" She said, cheerfully.

"Oh, I'm . . . not a princess."

"You're an alicorn! That makes you a princess in my book!" Derpy said, grinning, and, slowly, the smile on Muse's face spread wider as well, and she nodded.

"Alright, then, Derpy. If you say so." She said, before turning and pursing her lips, and Derpy looked around as well.

"So . . . How do we get out of here?"

"I'm working on it . . . We're going to need help to get you home. We still need some threat and danger, after all. If we could just do everything ourselves, it wouldn't be very entertaining, would it?"

"Um. I guess not?" Derpy said, frowning, before she started to become aware of . . . something. For the first time since she found herself in the white, blank space, the Ether, she felt a sense of something other than her own body. A feeling, like a looming presence, a claustrophobic feeling that wrapped around her, as though to squeeze the life out of her like some great serpent. She turned, looking around, and saw . . . something. a darkness, seeming to spread through the white expanse. She still could not tell how big it was, or any real sense of proportion or scale, but she somehow felt it was getting closer to her.

"Uhhh . . . Princess Muse?" She said, trying to take a step back, but finding her hooves could not move. She glanced down, but saw nothing wrong with them, other than the dizzying feeling of not being able to tell if she was standing on top of something or not. She glanced back up, seeing that spreading darkness again, and now beginning to make out that it seemed to have little . . . flecks of color, a green tinge, spread throughout it, as it moved and shifted through the white nothingness like poisoned veins spreading, reaching, crawling towards them.

"Princess Muse!?" Derpy said, desperation clawing at her, as she gulped down air, looking at the thing that was coming towards them, still unable to tell how close it was, only that it was getting closer with ever beat of her panicked heart.

"MUSE!" She screamed, only to feel a warm, tingling sensation, like static electricity, flowing over and around her, a soft feeling, strange, but not unpleasant.

"It's alright, Derpy. It's too early in the story for anything really bad to happen, anyway." Muse said, and Derpy frowned in confusion and fear.

"What do you-" Her words were cut off by a gasp of shock as she suddenly felt like something pulled on her very soul, hard, and then found herself falling up, through the ground, before turning diagonal somewhere around the fifth dimensional paradox, and taking a right at the space-time continuum, before being dropped headfirst through a blanket of static and falling hard onto her back.

Her eyes opened, and she looked around, gasping for breath as she struggled back up to her hooves, looking around.

Muse was standing nearby, panting slightly, looking ever so slightly more ragged than before. Derpy looked around, finding that she was standing, albeit shakily, in a dark, wet alleyway, the sort she'd expect to see in Manehattan or maybe the rougher sides of Detrot. The buildings to either side were huge, stretching up, high into the air above either of them, and, in fact . . . everything in the alley, even the ubiquitous overflowing Dumpster and the old metal trashcan, seemed so much bigger than she thought they ought to be, as though she were no bigger than a dog, to them.

"Where . . . Where are we?" She asked, furtively.

Taking a shaking breath, Muse looked up. "Canterlot." She said, turning and looking to the far end of the alleyway, before glancing over at the skeptical expression on Derpy's face. "But not your Canterlot. This is another Canterlot, that's a bit . . . Different, from the one you know. In a world that's a bit different than the one you know. Sort of a . . . blend, between your world, and the one the Author resides in."

Seeing that the pegasus was still confused, the alicorn gestured with a wing, beckoning the other mare to follow along with her, and she led the way to the end of the alleyway, where she poked her head out from behind a trashcan, scanning the area beyond, before turning and nodding her head for Derpy to come look.

She stepped up beside the other pony, and felt her mouth drop open, her eyes widening and focusing on what was before her. It was a street, wider than any she had seen, and paved like those in Manehattan. Carriages moved up and down it, without anypony attached to pull them, the sound they made like an angry bugbear. And, to either side of the streets, on the sidewalks, were creatures like none she'd ever seen. They were colored like ponies, and in fact . . . some even seemed strangely familiar to her, yet they couldn't be. She'd never seen creatures like these, tall and twiggy, moving about on two legs, with their weirdly flat faces moving here and there as they spoke to one another.

She glanced aside at the alicorn beside her, who smiled and shrugged. "Welcome to Equestria Girls." She said, smirking.

Author's Note

Jeeze. Sorry for the long wait, Everypony. This year has been . . . Yeah. And, it's still not over yet. Real life is set to put a boot up my ass for a while longer, but, I'm working on kicking it back, just as hard. So, we'll see who wins. For the moment, enjoy this return to absolutely random bollocks! Also, look, guys! It's Muse! Anypony remember Muse?! The Ponified avatar of my own drive and motivation? SHe's looking a bit ragged, these days, isn't she? Let's see if we can help her out, eh? Can we get this story to ONE BILLION LIKES?! For Muse?! C'mon, everypony! SMASH IT!

Anywho, until next time, ponies! Harmonia Invictus!