Author's Note

I'm not going to lie this week fucking sucked, I narrowly avoided losing my apartment. Had to convince my best friend that he was in fact cared about and that his father was just an asshole.

Besides that mess, I rewrote this chapter twice before I got this, and even then I wasn't sure whether I liked it. Unfortunately, I've put off this chapter too long now, so here it is.
As always, please do comment, I enjoy them and like responding to you guys.
For Americans, a meter is approximately 3.2 feet, or about 39 and a half inches.

Curiosity

"what in the actual fuck?" the words echoed through the landscape before me, before they were lost to the mutters of swirling fog. I had awoken gasping and curling in on myself in an attempt to stop the throbbing pain that had shot through my chest and lungs only to freeze at the sight of my surroundings.

I was on a field if you could call it that. The floor was a swirling mass of prismatic fog that flowed across my view like a river of multicolored cloud, tendrils of it flowing and curling around and under me. The fog didn't smell which to me was honestly more off-putting than if it had smelled bad. I had gotten used to being able to smell so much more than before, to be able to gain a variety of information by scent alone. So for something to have no smell at all was, disturbing.

Thankfully the fog river didn't rise above my thighs allowing me to see for what I could only guess to be miles, a swirling mass of moving color as far as I could see, the sky wasn't much better, it was a swirling mess of blues and purples laced with pinpricks of white and yellow. It was like someone had put me on a bridge made from the northern lights that were traveling through a nebula inside a distant galaxy. Don't get me wrong the sight was breathtaking, but it was also incredibly disorientating.

I decided that it would be best to inspect myself and see the damage as it were, I remember having been stabbed so I checked there first. Oddly my armor was missing from my battered form as was my bag, something that worried me, my chest fur was slightly singed and the entirety of my skin there was bruised from the multiple times it had been impacted, I couldn't imagine my back was much better, the area under my rib where I had been stabbed was mostly healed though the tissue was red and swollen like a freshly healed scar.

I tried to figure out what might have happened while I checked myself over, I know that it was unlikely that I was dreaming, I was still in quite a bit of pain, and while possible it was rare to feel proper pain in a dream and I wasn't normally a lucid dreamer, it was certainly possible that I had kicked the bucket again and that this was something like the rainbow bridge in Norse mythology, but this certainly wasn't what it felt like when I died the first time. That had been a sudden and rapid shift from one perspective to another.

That and given I had survived having my throat slashed by a manticore I somehow doubted that a sword to the lung, a somewhat less fatal condition than the throat thing, had managed to kill me. I had a brief memory of managing to find my way back to the village somehow, which was something I would tackle when I found my way back to the said realm of existence.

Hmm, the village. I wonder, the village had that well. Maybe I had gotten too close to the thing and in my weakened state looked in, it had tried to draw me in before, maybe this was some kind of astral realm that it had taken my mind to, it was certainly possible. I wanted to try something, and with a few deep breaths to calm myself I focused inward and attempted to feel the magic around me. I gasped and almost instantly reared my head back in pain. It was like I was standing in the middle of a goddammed sun. The sheer feeling of the massive amount of magic around me caused my head to throb.

I sat there for a while, just pondering how I had gotten into this situation, I had just wanted to have fun with this new life of mine, I had been so happy to exist in a realm where I could be more than the kind but antisocial bookshop owner. I'd never considered that I might be considered a monster by the locals, I wondered if this was what the various sapient monster races in D&D felt like. I had come in peace and curiosity, and in return, I had been hunted, shot with lightning, and fatally stabbed. So much for that plan for a new bookshop.

I eventually had enough of feeling sorry for myself and got up. I shook my paws a little to limber them up and glanced around. "Shit in one hand, wish with the other, see which one fills up faster."

I don't remember who used to tell me that little saying, but it certainly fits the situation. It was probably my mother, it felt like something a Southern mother would say. As I looked around I decided to tackle the first issue, I had no reliable way of telling direction in this place besides the way the fog was flowing, so observing how the fog was like a massive river I decided to use the age-old survival trick for swimming across rivers. I began walking diagonally upstream of the fog.

I don't know how long I walked as there was no sun or moon to tell time as I traveled, I could only imagine that a few hours had passed based on my own perception of time which had never been very accurate to reality. I did eventually see something that drew my attention, the prismatic river of clouds had started to split seemingly being forced to go around an invisible curved wall extending as far as the eye could see in both directions.

The now visible ground was disturbing to look at it was an invisible barrier that showed a scene much like the one above me. The swirling vortex of color seemingly reached up to grab at something. I was suddenly very glad that I had no fear of heights. The view probably would've given me a panic attack otherwise. As it was I was thankful for the smoke now as solid or not it was incredibly disorientating to not be able to see the ground.

Now I faced a dilemma I could step into the invisible barrier and quite possibly be killed by whatever strange magics governed the place, or I could keep walking and potentially do so till I starved to death or died of dehydration. That wasn't really a choice was it, sometimes I think I might be too curious for my own good. Slowly I stepped up to the barrier and put a paw across it, it felt like I had stuck my paw through a thin layer of water and the ground felt different somehow, rougher.

With a deep breath, I hauled the rest of my body through and blinked at the sight before me. I was at the foot of a mountain, not a range mind you, but a singular large lone mountain. It stretched up to the sky a massive pillar of solemn black stone. And atop that mountain was a tree an utterly massive oak whose branches seemed to stretch across the sky like bridges disappearing in the clouds. Large roots descended from its trunk wrapping around the mountain and forming an oddly obvious path to climb.

Now I might have been a slightly reclusive person, but I had played enough video games and tormented enough D&D players as a DM to know a world tree when I saw one. The terain I could see from here was unique, a massive set of crystals here, a few rivers of glowing blue water there. I didn't put too much thought into it as I walked towards the base where the makeshift root road started its ascent.

My perception of time in this place was incredibly skewed, it had only felt like a few hours had passed when I reached the three-quarters mark of the path, something I knew made no sense given that the mountain was tall enough to be touching the lower hanging clouds, which were themselves somewhat strange given their indigo color against the now crimson sky. maybe this was some kind of limbo, an area in between?

I was a mere few hundred meters from the tree when I noticed a sound that set my nerves on edge, skittering. the kind that you would expect to hear in a horror movie about giant bugs. Slowing from my speedy trot to a more sedate speed I started rotating my head and ears in an attempt to locate the source of the dreaded noise. It didn't take me long, there sat on the edge of the path was a beetle the size of a bumper car.

The insect stared at me with its four glowing pricks of scarlet light that I assumed to be its eyes. I carefully took a step back as its Mandibles snapped together twice with a sound like a bullwhip. Its carapace was strange its texture looked more like stone than chitin and the spikes along its legs looked more like shards of crystal. I didn't get any time to ponder that as snapped its mandibles once more and strange swirling lines of red light lit up across its shell before charging me.

With a startled yelp, I jumped backward almost falling off the edge of the path before unleashing a series of fiery bolts at the beetle, which to my horror seemed to absorb the magic into its carapace with an almost mocking chitter. I quickly dug my home claws into the bark of the bath and lunged up and over the beetle before lashing out with my hind legs in an attempt to kick it off the path, a plan that thankfully worked as my hind paws connected with its armored carapace and sent it careening off the side and on to the crystal outcroppings below. it wasn't an easy blow, the thing must have weighed almost half a ton.

I stared over the edge as it hit the side of the mountain and exploded with the sound of shattering stone, red light expanding out from it as broke. I let out a triumphant shout, while I had never had a problem with most bugs I hated beetles. Spiders, no problem, centipedes, meh, worms, fish bait, but beetles no way in hell. I never did figure out why I hated the dammed things as much but I did.

I started to make my way up the mountain when I heard it again, scuttling. Not the singular kind either no. the kind that was the sign of what was possibly one of my biggest nightmares. Slowly I turned my head to look over my shoulder at the path behind me. The now moving path had turned black. The sound that escaped my mouth was not words but a single bone-chilling scream, I turned and ran. I had seen the mummy and I wasn't going to be eaten by giant fucking bugs.

The sound of the scuttling swarm seemed to grow ever louder and louder as I ran, driving me to put even more force behind my bounds, and as the rough bark of the path scrubbed my paws raw and bloody and strained already bruised muscles. I made a mental note that throwing myself off the path and impaling myself on the crystals would be a better fate than being eaten alive. In my panic I did not notice one of the bigger beetles try to blindside me from the right, it crashed into my back leg and bit deeply into my flank tearing fur and meat from it as it did, oddly through my panic I felt it take something else, my magic, it drank from my manna even as I used a tail to knock it back.

I could see the trunk of the tree in detail now, its brownish bark seeming to call out to something deep inside, like that friend during hide and seek that sat at the safe area encouraging you to run to him. A hundred meters and something took a chunk out of my thigh, eighty meters and a small set of mandibles bit down on a tail, sixty meters and I screamed as something took a bite out of my nethers causing me to stumble, forty meters and I barely dodged losing an eye, twenty and I pulled ahead of the swarm for a moment. Ten and I ran for the tree knowing somehow that they wouldn't follow me after I made contact.

I screamed as at five meters something large separated my left hind paw from my body, tears streamed from my eyes as my bleeding body slammed into the great tree with all the grace of a car crash. Blood spattering over ancient bark, I was too busy screaming in pain to notice the black tide of stony chiton splitting like a river around a boulder, nor did I notice the blood I had splattered across the tree begin to glow and smoke. I couldn't even give the bugs a moment of thought.

No, what I noticed was the way my blood felt like it was boiling in my veins even as it escaped my body from the stump that was left of my paw and the various bite marks. I gasped mid-scream as something wrapped a tendril around my magic and yanked. Like a skydiver whose parachute had deployed, I jerked with mouth agape as a deep green color crept into my vision even as it faded to black.

In my final moments of conscience, something greater stared into my soul, a deep ancient thing of immense power and size. that dwarfed any concept of power I had ever truly known. "Harbinger, welcome to thy home," bone-shattering laughter followed me into the void.

Multiple P.O.V's

Thousands of miles away a feathered head rose at the pulse of intent and power rode the leylines of the world, a single chuckle left his throat fluttering his wings. It had been so long since another had been found. He turned to look at the scaled body of his mate trapped in the same prison as he, "Well now did you feel that Omen?

His mate, a massive black dragon wreathed in motes of shadow stirred under the chains of light that bound him, slowly lifting his massive head to stare at the Phoenix. "yes, yes I did ember. Change has come, I do hope this one is ready to play this game."

On a mountain a marble white alicorn stared at the letter from her student pondering the feeling that had rushed across the world, it had felt familiar somehow something that bugged her long memory. no matter, she would have to deal with it later. This creature that had attacked the village of Ponyville had to take precedence right now. New monsters were always a concerning matter and had to be handled quickly less they bred and became an infestation. "Silverscroll send a message to the head of the hunters guild make sure to tell them I have a crown-sanctioned job for them."

A little further a midnight blue alicorn awoke with a gasp, eyes wide. She knew that feeling, she remembered it well even if she had only felt it twice. Both of those times had left behind a legacy that affected the world even now. In the castle courtyard in the midst of a mad ramble, a misshapen mismatched statue stopped mid-rant and started laughing, after all, it had been so long since an aspect had been born. In the back of his mind, Discord wished it good luck. After all the game of immortality was a harsh one, and in the end chaos was but a stepping stone for change.

Far away deep in the badlands of Equis, a single green-slitted eye blinked open from its resting place. A wicked grin spread across its owner's face, a single mental command was given. The sound of thousands of wings echoed throughout the cavern as the command was heard and followed. They would find the aspect and bring it to the hive, they would feed the mother power beyond their meager harvest.

Harbinger's pov

I shot to my paws heaving as I vomited on the grass in front of me, confused I looked around me. I was in the abandoned village its high walls signaling a sense of safety I was happy to bask in. Had it just been a dream? No, a glance at the places I had been wounded showed white patches on the skin under my fur and my suddenly attached paw was ashen white, fur and all.

I felt different as well, a soothing tingle that flowed through my body the same way you'd feel when stepping into a hot bath after a long day, my magic I think. it felt smoother like it had been grounded to me better. it simmered under my skin ready to be pulled upon and cast into the world. I hadn't been the only thing to change either. My surroundings were different as well. The once grassy field inside of the walls had been changed to a light bluish color, and there were patches of those blue flowers in a ring on the inner side of the wall.

Perhaps the biggest change to have happened was the fact that the well had a massive thirty-meter tall willow tree growing out of it. Its bark was an ash grey with a cyan hue and its leaves were a brilliant amber color that reminded me of embers when the sun hit them at certain angles. The branches spread out in a crooked yet somehow symmetrical pattern that caused the long tendril branches to spread out like a wall around a fifteen-meter radius around the well.

This curtain of shade providing branches and the fact that the blue flowers had grown to cover the ground within the natural curtain made the base of the tree look like an incredibly welcoming place to just lay down out of the sun to rest and read, that and the fact that there was a single bloody paw print directly center of the lower part of the trunk, one that looked suspiciously like mine made me incredibly weary to even approach the thing let alone fall asleep under it.

I approached the tree carefully prodding around the base and branches of the tree, after making sure I wasn't going to get grabbed by some whomping Willow knock off I took a closer look at the well, what was left of it anyway. It had been moved somehow to form a small stone wall around the first five feet of the trunk, the base of said trunk was nearly thirteen feet in diameter the stone of the wall had been fused together somehow making it remarkably solid.

I just let out a deep sigh, my brain hurt. These last few days were rough. Slowly I laid down next to the tree, the flowers and scenery already starting to soothe my racing mind. I had books! Reading had always helped when it came to grounding my thoughts and I had stolen a good chunk of new books from the library, with a much more energetic movement than before I reached for my bag, which wasn't there.

Wait where was my bag and armor, I shot up looking around in a panic before spotting them neatly folded and hanging from a little wooden root that was sticking out of the side of the well like a dull hook. "well, that's suspiciously convenient, either I'm going insane or someone or something is helping me."

I walked over to my stuff with a weary pace before checking it, there were no notes or anything of the like, just my stuff which if my nose was anything to by, was freshly washed. At this point I was confused enough that I couldn't bring myself to care, I reached into the bag and grabbed a book at random. The title read as Geography and landmarks of the known world. A surprisingly useful first book. I walked back to my spot not bothering to grab my armor or bag and laid down under the tree, first things first it was time to figure out exactly where I was and hopefully get my mind of the acid trip i had just experienced.