Gerhardt felt an absolutely immense wave of magic energy wash over him and everything turned white with the peripherals of his vision being the only color he could see as they were filled with ever changing fractal-like patterns that made it appear almost as though he was looking through some demented kaleidoscope. As soon as he was fully inside the vortex and it closed behind him, he began to experience a sensation as though the world had fallen out from under him and he was falling through reality itself, for lack of a better term.

Realizing he wasn't dead, at least not yet, he attempted to analyze the wild raging magic in the pure white space surrounding him but oddly he found it utterly impossible. It was as if he were trying to analyze an ever changing and ever moving fluid that operated in a non-euclidean space rather than studying actual tangible magic. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Attempting to manipulate this "fluid" or change it in any way, shape, or form he found was equally impossible. It was like trying to mold air or water like clay with his bare hands in a universe where the laws of physics worked completely differently to those of his own universe. Trying to use actual magic from his own energy reserves on this "fluid" did absolutely nothing but slowly drain what remained of his energy reserves.

Opening a writing program in his head, he began writing down notes and observations about this strange unusable pseudo-magic. His iolite vocalizer was no longer being shut down by an external force and out of habit he unconsciously started muttering to himself as he wrote his notes down. After a moment, however, he noticed something that made him pause. He just realized that he couldn't actually hear his own voice. Blinking in surprise, he tried saying something again. True absolute silence was all he heard. He couldn't even so much as hear the sounds or vibrations of his own body as he moved. It was as if his audio processors had been completely removed from his head entirely but a quick diagnostic check assured him that they were still there and were all working properly.

Curious, he reached into the chest of his robe and pulled out his ornate gold and silver concealed magic pistol he always carried with him. Flipping a tiny switch on the side and setting it from "Silent" to "Shriek" he fired a single shot off into the ether as an experiment to see if he might be able to hear something louder then his voice. Nothing. It appeared that sound just didn't exist in whatever this place was.

Even stranger, however, was what happened to the beam his pistol had fired. As the silver colored ray of magic energy shot off into the vast nothingness, Gerhardt watched as it bent, stretched, twisted, expanded, shrunk, turned numerous different colors, disappeared, reappeared, turned and shot back towards him only to pass harmlessly through his body as if either he or it didn't really exist, and many other things before it eventually just vanished again seemingly for good this time. Simply put, what happened to that beam was complete and utter bullshit. Hell, at this point he wouldn’t have even been surprised if the beam had turned into literal bull shit at some point during whatever the hell it was he had just witnessed.

Out of habit Gerhardt sighed to himself inaudibly. ‘I suppose that means this place’s laws of physics operate on non-standard logic then. Damn it all.’ He thought to himself in frustration. That meant if he wanted to figure out how this place truly worked he was going to have to use “Chaos Theory” which had always been something he absolutely hated ever since it had first been invented, yet had still been forced to use on multiple occasions as it proved to be extremely useful in certain circumstances. He had very little patience for dealing with the underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization inherent to Chaos Theory and found working with it extremely frustrating and tedious. He very much preferred the pure solid logic and order of technology and standard physics over supposed “chaos” any day. As such, he very much so wanted to get out of whatever this place was and back to a realm, plane of existence, or whatever else so long as it at the very least had a relatively normal set physics where things were relatively simple to understand and actually made sense, as soon as physically possible.

Not really sure what else to do, and having lost all interest in figuring out how the physics of this place worked upon discovering that he would have to use chaos theory to do so, he put his pistol away and continued to "feel" around in this pseudo-magic fluid for a few minutes, slowly reaching deeper into the seemingly endless ocean of the stuff. Eventually he found something that he could only describe as "solid" in that infinitely vast expanse of "fluid". It felt strange, alien, yet oddly familiar. As if with the instincts that he should technically no longer even have he almost immediately knew exactly what it was that he had found, though how he knew this was still a complete and utter mystery to him. It was a world, an entire universe even. Yet, while it felt somewhat similar to his original universe, he knew it was definitely not his original universe. He also felt himself rapidly being dragged away from it as if he was being pulled by the rapids of a raging river, while it was simultaneously moving away from him as it was also being dragged in a completely different direction.

He took a few microseconds to think, which for him was the equivalent to several hours for an unaugmented human due to his brain's drastically enhanced processing power. According to his internal chronometer he had in fact spent close to half an hour in this "place", if it could even be called that, already and he calculated that if he was being dragged this rapidly and this universe was being dragged just as rapidly in a completely different direction then he was already much too far away from his original universe to ever be able to find it again, let alone return to it.

The universe he had just found felt somewhat different but he estimated that it should probably be close enough to his original universe that he believed he should be able to survive in it. There was no guarantee if or when he would find another universe if he passed this one, and even if he did find another there was no guarantee he would be able to survive in it like there was with this universe. The gods only knew how long it would take for him to find another potentially habitable universe in... whatever this was. He also had no idea where he would end up if he just let this "current" continue pulling him along as it was. That was assuming it was even taking him anywhere since it could easily just be throwing him around completely randomly and without direction, like a leaf caught in a hurricane or a tornado.

After much deliberation he decided he had no other choice and followed these strange instincts he shouldn't even have in order to "latch on to" the universe he had found. Suddenly he felt his "direction", for lack of a better term, change and felt himself rapidly being pulled towards the universe he had latched on to. Finally he collided with the universe and felt himself being thrown towards a seemingly random location within. Suddenly he felt something — possibly multiple things — watching him and detected his "velocity" shift ever so slightly to send him somewhere else entirely. He immediately assumed his uninvited entrance to this universe had caught the attention of a few of whatever spirits or deities managed it and they were the ones who were changing his course for whatever reason. If he were to guess, they likely altered his course to force him to end up in the center of a star or a black hole or something to that effect to dispose of him as they would view him as an intruder. If he was correct, he was effectively doomed as it was much too late for him to do anything about it now.

With a noiseless sigh, he accepted his inevitable demise. He had been expecting this day to come for a very long time, he just never knew how, where, or when it would happen. Honestly, he was more surprised it hadn't happened sooner, especially in his line of work and with his political position. He had simply been lucky enough to survive this long, with quite a bit of help from his augmentations, but he was still mortal so his luck was not infinite and it seemed that it had finally run out. His only regret was that he didn't have salivary glands, lungs, or mouth muscles so he was physically incapable of spitting in Silvanus' face before he threw him through that vortex as a last great act of defiance, but he supposed that his words alone would just have to suffice.

As the bright white light vanished and along with it the feeling of being watched, Gerhardt realized he was still alive and had apparently been incorrect in his assumption about the intentions of whatever had redirected his course. However before he could register anything else, his sensors — which had a one mile effective radius — had very nearly exploded from a sudden influx of an absolutely massive amount of data as they immediately began detecting hundreds of thousands if not millions of energy readings all around him in every possible direction. It was almost as if he was in the middle of a forest and every living thing in said forest that wasn’t either a single celled organism or microscopically small had some sort of connection to magic. Not only that but only a fraction of the energy readings he was detecting were consistent with actual mages while most of the rest were not even remotely consistent with anything he had ever encountered before — though he was able to tell that almost all of them were mortal — and effectively all of them were somewhat unique in some way shape or form. None of which should have been even remotely possible based on everything he knew about magic.

A mortal being born with a connection to magic was a highly uncommon trait and was almost completely random as it had to do with how an individual's soul formed before birth rather than biology or genetics (though two mages reproducing did have a far higher chance of having their offspring be born with such a connection, however this phenomenon had absolutely nothing to do with genetics). Furthermore, when something — be it a member of a sapient species or even just a mere animal — was born with a connection to magic, they were always capable of using magic and thus were always, without fail, a mage. Every. Single. Time. Without exception. It was completely binary. Either one was born with the ability to use magic or they were not, there was absolutely no middle ground. As such all of these strange energy readings made no sense to him whatsoever.

However, he was unable to really consider these issues for very long as he was very quickly forced to lower the effective range of his sensors to a maximum radius of approximately 50 feet as they were not designed to handle anywhere near that much raw data all at once and were in grave danger of overheating and melting to a useless puddle of slag or outright exploding inside of him which could have potentially damaged a few of his other systems.

As soon as the range was lowered and he was no longer being absolutely bombarded with excessive amounts of data, however, he finally noticed something somewhat alarming that had previously gotten lost amongst the millions of other energy signatures. Even within the current drastically lowered radius of his sensors were still multiple energy readings. One was consistent with that of a demigod, several others were consistent with those of mages, while others were unlike anything he had ever encountered before. He panicked for a microsecond believing he had been sent straight into a trap of some sort, when he noticed something odd about the demigod, mages, and not-mages. Their energy signatures all seemed to lack proper control and coherency and seemed strangely weak, atrophied even, as if they lacked proper training and had never in their lives taken the time to properly maintain their magical fitness. Realizing this, he was no longer concerned about being in any danger but he was now more confused than ever.

Curious, he finally looked around and found himself standing in the middle of what looked like a throne room filled with strange, horrifically deformed, almost unnaturally colorful, tiny, mutant, equine-esque parodies of creatures with extremely exaggerated features that wouldn't look out of place in a child's picture book. Some of said pseudo-equine creatures had traits such as long spike-like horns sticking out of the center of their skull or uselessly tiny presumably vestigial wings on their backs that made them vaguely resemble unicorns or pegasus from ancient Elven and Dwarven mythology respectively, while others lacked either. Most of them appeared to be wearing primitive armor and some even wielded spears.

The demigod he was detecting — which appeared to be significantly larger than the rest of the pseudo-equine creatures and appeared to be some sort of black or very dark blue hybrid pegasus unicorn creature — was currently sitting on a throne and was somehow already glaring at him menacingly despite the fact that only a few milliseconds had passed. It was very clearly the ruler of these other equines.

Slightly intimidated by this demigod since it was currently the only being in the room that could actually pose an actual threat to him even with its magic atrophied as it was and it had somehow managed to react to his presence in a matter of milliseconds and how immediately aggressive it appeared to be towards him, Gerhardt immediately decided he didn’t want to become enemies with it if he didn’t have to. He couldn’t afford enemies at the moment, let alone an enemy that presumably ruled over an entire kingdom and especially not a demigod on top of that.

With that in mind the first thing he did was activate the universal translation device that was built into his brain while carefully raising a single hand so as to not provoke any of the creatures and lowering his hood in an attempt to look slightly less intimidating or suspicious. He then let his hand fall back to his side and said, “Greetings. I come in peace. My sincerest apologies for this sudden intrusion, my arrival here was not by choice. I would much prefer to avoid any trouble. So if there are no objections, I will be leaving now. Good day to you all.”

He was about to bow politely and turn to start heading towards the massive door that he could only assume was the exit. Before he could, however, the demigod shouted, “Halt! I don’t know who or what you are but you dare intrude in my palace uninvited and you think I am just going to allow you to leave?!”

“Again, it was not my choice. I was sent here against my will. If I had it my way I would still be back in my lab in my own kingdom and this would have never happened in —” Gerhardt tried to defend himself only to be cut off mid sentence.

“Silence worm! I care not for your pathetic excuses! Guards, execute this metal beast!” The demigod commanded. Her soldiers immediately began moving to follow her orders.

Gerhardt simply frowned slightly and reached into the chest of his robes with his right hand. Grasping the handle of his concealed magic pistol but leaving it in its holster for the moment he stated in a dangerously calm voice, “I said I would prefer to avoid any unnecessary conflict. Please just allow me to leave or I will be forced to defend myself.”

The guards ignored him and just kept coming while the demigod just scoffed as if what he had just said was completely ridiculous. Some of the unicorns fired beams at him all but one of which hit him in the torso, burned holes through his robe, and slightly dented the magically reinforced copper plates that made up his exterior, causing his pain receptors to flare up.

“Gah! Gods damn that stings! Very well, if you refuse to see reason and truly wish to kill me so badly then so be it! You cannot say that I failed to give you fair warning!” Gerhardt growled furiously as he tore his teleportation pistol out of its holster and pointed the ornate weapon at the mutant equine creatures. Allowing an advanced targeting program to take control of his arm, the limb began to move on its own as it very quickly aimed his sidearm at each of the creatures in turn and pulled the trigger of his weapon twelve times in rapid succession. A deafeningly loud otherworldly shriek as though reality itself were screaming in agony filled the air, rupturing some of the guards eardrums, as the inch wide silver beam lanced from the barrel of the pistol.

Each beam slammed into their targets leaving inch wide holes dead center through their heads killing their targets instantly. The bodies of the guards flopped lifelessly to the floor one after the other. Just as the last guard fell and Gerhardt was about to shoot the demigod in the leg as a warning, a powerful beam of dark blue energy slammed into his hand. This destroyed his weapon and all but ruined his hand.

“YOU INSOLENT WHELP! YOU DARE KILL MY GUARDS?! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?!” The demigod roared at him as she stepped off her throne.

“No I don’t and I don’t care! I just wanted to leave peacefully! You’re the one who decided to attack me, now you’re going to die for it!” Gerhardt shouted back, raising his other hand and casting a powerful combat spell. Suddenly a large copper orb the size of his head shot out from his hand and towards the demigod at blinding speeds. However the demigod managed to raise a shield in time and managed to deflect the copper orb away from herself. As such, instead of hitting her it hit a wall and exploded with the force of an artillery shell. Bits of stone went flying like shrapnel as the entire wall and part of the roof began to collapse.

Gerhardt immediately began using telekinesis to redirect all of the falling debris towards the demigod, to which the demigod responded by firing an even more powerful blast of energy at Gerhardt which hit him in the chest and sent him flying. He crashed through the large door behind him smashing it to splinters.

Forcing himself to get back up Gerhardt’s entire body was enveloped by a pitch black aura as he began lacing some of the most horrific curses he knew into an absolutely devastating war spell. If this didn’t kill that bitch then nothing would. “DIE DAMN YOU!” Gerhardt roared, his voice heavily distorted from rage.

Hundreds of absolutely gigantic tendrils of pitch black arcane energy reminiscent of powerful arcs of electricity made of pure darkness erupted from the ground and began ripping the entire castle apart as if it were made of wet tissue paper killing everyone inside and cursing everything they touched. As the entire castle was collapsing, however, something shot up out of the rubble. Adjusting his eyes to allow him to see better in the darkness of the night, he saw the demigod. She appeared to be heavily injured and patches of her flesh were visibly beginning to rot away. That being said she was still very much alive and looked unbelievably angry.

Seeing her, Gerhardt immediately raised his good hand and cast a primitive but still very powerful and extremely lethal combat spell at her. Several massive bolts of lightning lanced forth from his hand, however the demigod seemed to have predicted what he was going to do and had raised a shield to block the lightning. It worked for the first two blasts of lightning but the third managed to shatter the barrier. He was about to fire a fourth blast to finish her off, but before he could she retaliated by flying away from his line of sight at extremely high speeds. Once she was in the air behind him she fired a huge beam of magic at him.

Gerhardt didn’t have time to react as the beam slammed into him. The blast was so powerful that it completely destroyed his clothes leaving only scraps of cloth and leather hanging off of him, ripped off his already damaged arm, severely damaged his left leg, heavily dented his back, ripped off portions of the first layer of copper plates that made up his exterior including those that made up his face leaving his steel teeth and the mechanisms under his face completely exposed as it used his body to dig a huge trench in the ground. When it was over he growled in fury and began climbing out of the trench.

The demigod stared at him in a mixture of disturbance at his current appearance, shock that he had somehow managed to survive that blast, and rage. “You don’t know who I am?! I am Nightmare Moon, Queen of Equestria and ruler of the Night! Now, do you have any last words before I destroy you, you insolent metal abomination?!” She demanded, a dark blue aura surrounding her horn once more as she prepared to cast another spell in order to kill him.

Gerhardt took a few milliseconds to evaluate his current situation. In his current state he knew that there was no way he was going to win this fight. He was too damaged and low on Arcane Energy. He needed to escape, gather resources, conduct repairs on himself, establish a base of operations, and make new tools and weapons. As such he cast an optical and auditory illusion spell and created a large flash of blinding light and a deafening boom. It had the effect of a flashbang grenade thus disorienting the furious and wounded demigod. Then he quickly created a portal leading high into the sky straight above him. Grabbing himself with telekinesis he quickly pulled himself through the portal before closing it behind him.

Now floating in the sky, he took a moment to look around and saw a large forest surrounding the now ruined castle. That would be the perfect place for him to escape through. That bitch of a demigod would never find him in there. As such he quickly looked around for a place for him to open a portal to. Unfortunately the canopy was a bit too thick for him to see through which unfortunately meant that he couldn’t open one leading all the way to the ground. As such he just resorted to opening one above the trees far in the distance. Floating through it he carefully lowered himself through the branches and leaves until he was finally on the ground once more. Then he began limping away, trying his best to get lost in the forest in order to minimize the chances that the demigod would find him.

The very instant he had entered the forest he felt the anger and malice of the Nature Spirits that lived there but he didn’t have the time to deal with them. Not when an angry demigod could potentially be hunting him down in order to try and kill him. After a few hours had passed and he was finally confident enough in the fact that the demigod either wasn’t searching for him or couldn’t find him he finally stopped walking and started thinking.

His tools inside his portable tool kit had either been lost or destroyed in the battle alongside his clothes. Now he truly had nothing. Not his universe, not his world, not his kingdom, not his soldiers, not his lab, not his experiments, not his tools, hell not even the clothes off his back. The only thing he had was his life and he had come within inches of losing that as well! He wasn’t going to stand for it! While he may never return to his own universe, he would not just sit idly by doing nothing for the rest of eternity. No! Even if he had to build everything from scratch he was going to make a new lab here in this world and would continue his research, Silvanus and “Nightmare Moon” be damned!

For that he needed materials. There was plenty of wood around for him to use to build his lab but he needed more than that. He needed metal and crystals. Fortunately he knew just the spell to help him find some. It was developed by the Dwarves thousands of years before the War of Survival to help them locate new veins of ores and gems for them to mine. If there were any sources of metal or crystals within a mile from him, he would immediately know where they were. Raising his good hand above his head he cast the spell and detected a large source of both ore and crystals a ways to the east. As such he immediately set off limping in that direction. No matter how long it took, he would rebuild.

[Meanwhile on Earth]

With Gerhardt’s disappearance the Human Kingdom was currently in complete and utter chaos. So many pathetic humans were running around like decapitated chickens. It was just so amusing. Once the chaos subsided a bit, they would be forced to declare war on Silvanus for what he had done. It was all part of his master plan for revenge, which had been almost eight hundred years in the making. Still, until then he would simply watch the Humans and laugh at their plight. They deserved this and so much worse for perverting his gift in such a disgusting fashion.

Speaking of watching Humans, he was currently watching Gerhardt via the tether he had tied to the bastard’s soul as a back up plan before tossing him into that vortex. Most of what he had seen had been incredibly boring. The majority of it was just Gerhardt floating in the primordial space between universes. The most interesting thing that had happened to him while he was there was when he had decided to try firing his teleportation pistol. Even that only lasted for about a minute before the metal bastard was just floating in primordial white space again.

However that all changed as soon as Gerhardt had figured out how to latch onto passing universes and ended up being dragged into one. There seemed to be a bit of time dilation between this universe and that one but it was nothing Silvanus couldn’t put up with. The moment Gerhardt was dragged into that universe he had ended up in some castle and was assaulted by the demigod who apparently owned it and ruled over the entire kingdom Gerhardt had ended up in. The bastard nearly died in the ensuing battle, but so had the pathetic demigod that he had been fighting. However as per fucking usual the bastard survived yet another situation that by all rights should have killed him.

Silvanus found this both exceedingly frustrating and somewhat relieving. On the one hand he definitely wanted the bastard to suffer and die. On the other hand he was still extremely worried about how the Greater Gods would react to his most recent actions so he needed the bastard alive — at least for now — so he could pull him back to this universe if need be.

Still watching this battle gave Silvanus a bit of an idea. He may have needed the freak alive for the moment, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t subtly influence things to make the freak’s existence in that universe a living nightmare. All he needed to do to ensure this would happen would be to get in contact with the very demigod that Gerhardt had just been fighting. Then he could help her by telling her about a few exercises that lesser beings like her and mortal mages needed to do in order to maintain their magical fitness. Then once she was more powerful and Gerhardt had time to build up a base of operations and defenses enough to just barely survive, he could tell the demigod exactly where he was hiding so she could seek her vengeance.

This would be perfect! The worthless bastard would have no peace even in the separate universe he found himself in! Silvanus was going to make absolutely certain of it. He would turn that entire world into Gerhardt’s own personal hell! A large malevolent smile spread across Silvanus’ face as he extremely cautiously sent a tiny thread of power through the tether attached to Gerhardt’s soul and tied it to some nearby plants.

Once Gerhardt was far enough away Silvanus would then begin very very carefully working his way over to the demigod. Then he would have a little conversation with the demigod and may help her get rid of any curses that were still lingering from her battle with Gerhardt in order to build up a bit of trust and good will with her. After that his plan would already be set in motion and as long as he was extremely careful so as to not to get caught by the Greater Gods nor the gods that ruled over that universe there would be nothing that could stop it from coming to fruition! He couldn’t wait to see the bastard suffer!

Author's Note

This chapter is a bit short for my tastes without the rest of the beginning of the prologue of the original story. However, I was a bit worried that if I included that it may not count as being different enough from the original. So It's a bit cut down just to err on the side of caution. Either way I suppose it shall simply have to suffice. Well, hopefully the rest of the chapters will be just as long as the chapters in the original version.

Fun Fact: I have had this idea stuck in my head for the longest time. Originally I was planning for it to be a one off horror chapter in the original version of the story when I finally got to episodes 25 and 26 of season 5. However, I finally broke down and decided to make it its own story.

Anyways, as always, constructive criticism is more than welcome. Please, tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much if not more than I enjoyed writing it!

Stay safe out there everyone!