Chapters 02 - There's no Simple Explanation
The princess bringing back a hydra wasn't the afternoon the crystal ponies had planned for today. Even less so a living and talking hydra.
Maëva was surrounded by small ponies looking at her weirdly. She had to ward off foals playing with her tail, and even some curious adults. "That's dangerous," she said to them. And it was, she didn't know how to move that thing around without being at risk of breaking anything. Coming to this place, in the middle of the city, right in front of the castle, had already been hard enough.
She had seen Flurry as small, but turns out she was a little bit taller than most of the other ponies here. But she wasn't as tall as her mother, princess Cadance, standing right in front of Maëva after her short introduction. Some explanations had been given to the princess of love.
"I've never seen a human get transformed into something other than a pony," she said, worryingly impressed.
"The tales in my world also talked about people being turned into ponies through the portals, if that's any reassurance."
It was Maëva's polite way of saying she didn't have any clue as to what was happening either. Sure, those royals sounded nice, but she didn’t want to try her luck by being a bit too rude to the local monarch.
"I didn't even know there was more than one portal. We're not even sure as to who built it. You talked about ancient mages?"
"People wielding magic," Maëva confirmed. "It's not something we know how to use in my world. But they knew. They came through portals of their own making when my people had barely mastered copper. But they didn't stay long, and the portals were lost, for the most part."
"But you found one. Or at least, your friend did."
Maëva nodded slowly, thinking about Éma. Her heart sank a bit. And something was off.
"I shouldn't be the first one to come here," she raised.
"Well, I didn't hear anything about talking hydras showing up," Cadance said, sorry for her. "But I'll contact the other princesses and the nations of the world, just to make sure."
"I'll send an expedition to where you said the ruins were," added the white unicorn right next to Cadance, before turning to his wife. "We should also contact Twily. She understood enough of the magic to change the mirror, after all."
"She also has her book to contact Sunset Shimmer," said a pegasus with a salmon-pink coat standing right next to Flurry.
"We'll work on that," Cadance abridged. "In the meantime, you're our guest, Maëva. Welcome to the pony world."
"Thank you, princess," the hydra bowed.
"Oh dear..."
"Yep, I told you."
Maëva looked with disgust and fear at the mirror Flurry was holding. So, that was her face now? She had never thought of herself as a pretty girl, but this... this was beyond horrendous. No amount of makeup would fix this face.
"I don't even have hair," she noted, horrified.
"You're a hydra," Flurry repeated, flying by her side. "That would be weird for a reptile to have hair. Pretty sure a wig would make it worse."
Maëva didn't even have arms to reach for her own face. She could only look at it and accept it was hers.
They were both standing in the middle of a great stadium. Since she was taller than most houses, Maëva had been assigned to live here. At least she had a roof, and Flurry had cast a spell to keep it warm, so that was something.
"How old are you even?" asked the alicorn – that's the term she had employed to designate winged unicorns like her and her mother.
"Nineteen. You?"
"Eighteen. You're young, I couldn't have told that from your appearance."
"... That's mean."
"Hey, at least your voice sounds feminine," the princess tried to reassure. "Almost. A bit."
Maëva could hear her own voice. It didn't sound feminine at all. It was deep and distorted, like one from a monster in a movie. But she didn’t feel like replying to this lie.
The pegasus from before came to them from the hole in the stadium’s roof, flying up to Flurry.
"We have an answer from T-Er, princess Twilight," she corrected, after briefly glancing at Maëva. "She's coming soon, your highness. Your father said he's going to greet her and accompany her here. The mirror is coming as well."
"Thank you, Cozy," said Flurry, before smiling. "You don't have to be so official around me, you know."
"Yeah but... In front of someone else?"
The pegasus nodded towards Maëva, while wincing from embarrassment.
"I don't care," Flurry said categorically. "You're talking to me. I'm already surrounded by people bowing and picking words with such precautions it's like they're working crystal with my feelings. I don't need my best friend to do that."
"Crystal isn't fragile around here, you know," the young pegasus mare pointed out.
"It's an expression!"
Maëva looked at them both. She could tell they were friends, simply by the fact that the pegasus hadn’t bowed when coming, nor had she presented her respects. She looked about the same age as her, with a long blue curly mane.
"Anyway, I don't think I've introduced you, right?" Flurry said, turning back to the hydra. "Maëva, this is my friend, Cozy Glow."
The pegasus briefly nodded politely. She had a nice face, though more distant and cold than Flurry’s, as if she didn’t truly care about much.
"She'll be the one to help you if me or my parents aren't around," Flurry added.
"What!?" Cozy replied, surprised. "I wasn't aware of that."
"Well, now you are."
The princess giggled, looking at her friend with a mischievous smile. But that didn't seem to make Cozy laugh.
"Come on," Flurry said lightly. "It's not like you have anything planned."
"Well, it turns out I do," the pegasus replied, raising an eyebrow, before acting all dramatic. "But you never ask me, so how could you know I'm actually busy? What I feared has become true, I'm just a servant to be sent around, not a real friend. Oh, poor me, I-"
"Cut it out, will you?" Flurry interrupted with a little laugh. "What do you have to do?"
"I wanted to do a bit of research about the portals," Cozy said, returning to her serious tone.
"With Twilight coming?" the princess doubted, raising an eyebrow. "As if you could find things she doesn't know already."
"I have my ways, mind you," said Cozy, defending herself with self-importance, raising a leg against her torso. "I know I can't really compete against the princess of books, but don't doubt my skills."
"Yeah, sure."
"In the meantime," Cozy pointed out. "Your guest is looking a bit left out. That's not very royal of you."
"What?" said Maëva, suddenly coming back to reality, a bit surprised to be involved in the discussion and the center of their attention. "No, no, I'm fine."
Flurry looked at her with concern. Not because she had seen something on Maëva's face, but because her friend had said something about it. She knew how observant Cozy could be, especially with people.
"You were clearly lost in your thoughts, tho," the young pegasus insisted.
"I-... Well it's just... You two remind me of my friend."
"She didn't die, right?" Cozy asked with a little uncertain frown.
"I don't think so," Maëva said, a bit of fear rising in her at that simple possibility. "But my world is in such a mess that she could have... And I probably won't see her again."
"Unless we find a way to get to your world," Flurry said with a confident smile. "Why do you think we called for some help?"
"I... I don't know?" Maëva hesitated. "Because you want to send me back or something? Or you don't want others like me?"
Flurry seemed shocked, while Cozy Glow couldn't refrain from displaying a little smug and mocking smile.
"She has a very nice opinion of us, I see," the pegasus noticed.
"We want to help your world!" Flurry said in disbelief. "You told us it's a mess, we're going to find a way to fix it. Then, yeah, probably send you back if you want. Or at least find a way to give you a body with arms."
"Why would you do that?" Maëva asked, thinking she was joking. "You don't know my world, you barely know me."
"Oh, she's deep in darkness," Cozy giggled, impressed.
Flurry was losing her mind, gobsmacked.
"What do you mean ‘why’!? Because you don't leave people in a bad situation if you can help!? Even if you don't know them!"
Maëva was perplexed by her tone. It sounded so obvious to Flurry. Well, she was the daughter of the princess of love after all, but Maëva had thought this was more like an honorary title given by another noble ruler just to sound great. Cozy Glow noticed the expression on her face and guessed:
"Are people selfish in your world?"
"Well, like everyone I would say," Maëva explained, unsure. "We all have a busy life, especially since things started to go to shit, so we only help each other if we have something to gain or if we feel like it on a given day."
"Hardships don't always bring harmony, huh?" the pegasus repeated with a mischievous smile and a brief glance at her alicorn friend.
"We're not like that," Flurry cut with conviction, almost as if she had gotten hit in her pride. "We have a princess of love and a princess of friendship for a reason. We help, we care, we rescue, we forgive. In this world or another."
"That... sounds like something a cartoon character would say," Maëva couldn’t help herself to say.
"A cartoon?" Cozy asked, interested.
Maëva thought. Yeah, they probably didn’t have TV here, huh? She winced a bit and tried to explain:
"Er. A story. Like a comic, but animated. For children."
"Oh, that was like an insult then?" Cozy deduced.
"What? No!"
Maëva looked at Flurry, afraid she might have misunderstood her. The alicorn seemed more confused than anything, but just to be sure, the hydra added:
"It's just... Well, people in my world would call that very naive."
"What's wrong with that?" Flurry asked, almost offended.
"I... I don't know, really. People think you can be exploited if you see things brighter than they are."
"Well, the blame is on the people taking advantage of that then."
"... Guess so…" Maëva half-sighed, wondering why the conversation had drifted so much. "How do you even intend on helping my world?"
"We'll see. We'll need to get there first."
Maëva didn't really reply. What could little ponies do against the end of the world? Even with magic, their powers didn't look that overwhelming. At least from what she had seen.
"On that note," Cozy said. "If you'll excuse me."
"Fine, fine," Flurry sighed, waving a hoof. "I'll stay with her."
Her friend had her wings already deployed anyway. She flew off the stadium, leaving them both alone.
"... Am I an annoyance?" Maëva asked, not sure as to what Flurry's sigh meant.
"Oh, no," she giggled. "Trust me, life as a princess gets boring around here. It's just snow, snow and snowstorm. I'm glad something is finally happening. And the fact you found some ruins will maybe finally shake things a bit."
Maëva thought of the dome she had crossed when coming to this city. It was weird, that line between cold and decently warm. Like the spell Flurry had cast around them, but applied to a whole city. No wonder why they didn't seem to need electricity here, if magic could act as both insulation and heater.
"Why so much snow?" She asked, curious.
"Because we are in the north...?" Flurry replied, arching an amused eyebrow.
"Fair enough. So, things aren't like that to the south?"
"Oh, no. South, that's Equestria. There's pretty much every climate there because it is so big. Continental, mild, there's even a desert and a tropical forest if you go south enough."
"Wait, so we aren't in Equestria? I thought Equestria was the name of this world?"
Flurry bobbed her head left and right, breathing in through her teeth.
"Well, not exactly but in a way yes. We're like an independent region. My mom is still a princess of Equestria. And, no, the world is called... world. That would be weird if we had a name for it, wouldn't it?"
Maëva thought about it. Yeah, she didn't have a name for her own world either, aside from "world". That made sense, weirdly enough. Flurry suddenly realized something:
"Wait, how do you know it's called Equestria?"
"Well, I think that's how the ancient mages called it?"
"... How long ago was that?"
"I don't know, two or three thousand years? Why?"
Flurry frowned, a bit skeptical about one thing.
"I'm not sure Equestria existed back then..." she slowly said.
"You don't know for how long your country has existed!?" Maëva shouted with surprise, causing Flurry to cover her ears. “Sorry.”
"I said I'm not sure. I'm not a history book!"
"Well, you should ask your princess of books then."
"Princess of-"
Flurry facepalm with a hoof, sighing:
"Twilight isn't the princess of books, it's just a name Cozy gives her. Don't call her that in front of anyone."
"What is she then?"
"The Princess of Friendship, Twilight Sparkle."
Trumpets and flugelhorns echoed throughout the stadium, as the procession made its way towards Maëva, standing up in the middle of the field. She bowed respectfully, seeing the purple alicorn approaching, followed by a trailer carrying a mirror surrounded by crystals, as well as a pile of books next to it.
Twilight tilted her head forward, saying:
"It is my pleasure to meet you, Maëva from another realm."
"The pleasure is mine, princess Twilight."
The alicorn giggled kindly:
"It's a bit weird to hear a hydra talk."
"It's even weirder to be one, believe me. I’m still getting used to those strong vocal chords."
"I can imagine that."
Maëva smiled, happy to meet yet another friendly princess.
"I understand you went to a human world?" the hydra asked.
"Yes," Twilight confirmed. "Few are the ponies that can say that. Flurry told you this, right?"
Maëva nodded, noticing that this princess was about as tall as Cadance. She seemed nice.
"I didn't hear about it in my world, tho," Maëva brought out.
"It stayed a secret. But it's more likely an indication towards the fact that your world isn't the same as the one I visited. Your name shows that as well."
"Is this why your ancient mages never came back to my universe?" Maëva asked. "You found other worlds?"
Twilight winced, feeling a bit awkward about what she was going to say.
"I don't know who those ancient mages are. I couldn't find anything about them in my old books. As far as I know, no one from Equestria knew there existed other human worlds before you came."
"Great..." Maëva sarcastically said, though not aggressively so.
"There's also another problem..."
Maëva tilted her head on the side, as it was the best gesture she could do. Twilight's horn began to glow and a book was lifted from the pile.
"This book is supposed to be connected to that other human world. A friend of mine has an identical copy in that realm, and they are linked to transfer messages. I hadn't really noticed up until now, but she hasn't written to me in months now. And when I tried on my way here, the words stayed on the page without being sent to that other world."
"Which means?" the hydra wondered, trying to understand the story as best she could.
"That a link has been severed."
Twilight looked up to Maëva, following with a compassionate:
"If something similar happened with your world as well, that might explain your... state."
"So, I should have been a pony, right?"
"Well..." said Twilight, a bit embarrassed. "It's more complicated than that. I thought I could recall, but actually, there's no documented cases of someone from outside coming to Equestria through a portal. Only ponies went to other realms and back again, never the other way around. So this might be the natural transformation for someone from another world."
If Maëva had arms, she would have scratched her head, confused. She tried to sum it up:
"So, you don't really know more than me?"
"In your particular case, no. But that's why I'm here. We're going to try some things."
"Will it involve cutting my head to see if another one grows?"
"Wha-No!" Twilight said, shocked. "I would never do that!"
Maëva let out a sigh of relief. Flurry's proposition from earlier had stayed in her head and she was afraid they would put that to the test.
"First, we're going to try and reconnect you to your world," the princess followed. “Since we want to help you fix it, we'll need a reliable way of going there."
So she wanted to help as well. All of this sounded really weird for Maëva. She had never come here with the intent of finding a solution for her original realm, only to run away from an inevitable doom. And now she was feeling a bit selfish for that reason.
"You're alright?" Twilight asked, seeing her distant gaze.
Maëva shook her head.
"Yes, yes. Sorry, I lost track of my thoughts for a moment."
"Hmm..." The princess pondered, looking at her. "Maybe it's because of your neck. Your brain isn't as irrigated as it was when you were human."
"I... don't think that's the problem, don't worry."
That pony was really worried about her. In fact, all of the ponies she had encountered up until now were very kind to her. Maëva couldn't help but think how she would have been atomized from the very first moment she laid a foot in her world with that body.
Maybe she could trust them.
"Do you have any idea as to how you can... reconnect me with my world?" she asked.
"Yes. A few, actually. May I examine you first?"
"Go ahead."
The alicorn began to fly around her, sometimes a bit closer, sometimes a bit further.
"You have a bag from your world?" she noticed.
"Oh, right. I forgot. It's not like anything in here is going to be of any use."
It barely weighed on her tail, so much so that she didn't even realize it was still there.
"Well, it will," the princess corrected. "Your items have your world's essence in them. That's great! Can I take a look?"
"Sure."
She would have shrugged but, again, no shoulders.
The bag was carefully lifted with magic. Twilight began to take the items out to analyze them. A coat, a bunch of vegetables. She looked at them, thinking a bit, before having an idea.
"Great!"
She carefully lifted the mirror off the trailer, getting it down on the grass, surrounding it with strange devices, some looking like plain old metal scraps and others like weird magical artifacts.
Maëva sat down, looking at the princess of friendship doing whatever she was doing. The alicorn was thinking out loud, mumbling some "this should be here" and "the resonance will be better there".
The guards that had followed her looked imperturbable. Maëva had almost forgotten about their presence, to be honest. It's only because they moved out of the way of Shining Armor that she paid any attention to them. A quiet nod from his part also sent them away.
The unicorn came by the hydra's side, looking at the princess.
"I'm guessing she's going to try something?" he whispered to Maëva.
"She looks like she got an idea, yeah."
"Alright. I'll stay here then, just in case she tries to pull you into something you don't understand."
"Would she do that...?" Maëva wondered.
"No, unless it's something really really interesting."
"There!" Twilight suddenly said. "It should work!"
She turned to Maëva, only to see Shining by her side.
"When did you arrive?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
Shining giggled.
"About ten seconds ago, little sis. What do you have in mind?"
"Well, since the mirror hasn't worked in a few years, I want to reignite it and make sure it connects to our guest's world."
Twilight looked back at the portal.
"The mirror can actually link itself with her world?" Shining inquired. "I thought it was only to go to Canterlot High?"
The princess of friendship argued, with a bit of modesty:
"At its creation, maybe. But relocating its destination shouldn't be complicated, now that we know other worlds exist. Can I borrow the coat?"
She looked at Maëva, seeing her nod. Twilight took the cloth out of the bag and placed it next to the mirror, before thinking twice about it. Shining had come to the same conclusion than her:
"Wouldn't it run the risk of closing off any access to Canterlot High?"
"Probably..." Twilight slowly said, thinking, before her face brightened. "Wait! Human energy! That could work!"
"Human energy?" Maëva and Shining repeated.
"Yes! Even if you're not from that world, you're still a human! That might be enough to restore the link!"
"So like, I give a part of my soul or something?" Maëva said, raising an eyebrow.
"No, nothing like that," Twilight reassured. "You just touch the mirror when I ask you to. Your tail should do."
They both looked at each other, Twilight smiling eyes into Maëva doubtful ones. After a second of silence, the princess added:
"It won't suck your soul. Promise."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been through it a couple of times."
Maëva thought a bit. Unless those ponies were masters of deception, they seemed full of good intentions. She agreed:
"Fine, princess. I'm ready then."
"Great, come closer."
"There?"
Maëva carefully moved her massive body next to the mirror.
"Perfect," Twilight commented with an undeniable learning lust. "On my command."
Twilight focused on her magic. Maëva saw a bright purple halo engulfing her horn and the mirror, as well as the objects she had scattered around it. The crystals engraved on its outlines began to glow. A weird buzz came out of the portal, as the polished reflective surface seemed to shake like waves on water. Twilight frowned in her concentration.
"Something's off... It's like... There's something stuck in between the worlds... And Canterlot High feels so distant."
Maëva had no idea what this meant, but she was feeling all the more unsure about all that. Yet, Twilight followed with determination:
"We need to bring it back to normal. Touch, now."
Maëva hesitated slightly. But that purple alicorn looked like she knew what she was doing. So, moving her tail around, she laid the tip right on the pony figure on top of the mirror.
The portal suddenly turned bright. So bright it blinded everyone looking. Maëva felt something, like electrical sparks climbing up her tail, yet she could not move it.
Everything went fast. There was a great noise, as if the mirror was trying to swallow all its surroundings, before it stopped and unleashed a large orange and purple smoke cloud, making Maëva and everypony else cough.
"What's that!?" the hydra said, raising her head high to breathe in clean air.
"I don't know!" Twilight answered, waving around a fan she had just teleported in. "Maybe some kind of magical exhaust?"
"T-Twilight?" A new voice suddenly said, confused, surprised but also deep and deformed. "Is that you!?"
"Huh?" the princess said. "Who's there!?"
"It's me, Sunset! Oh, I finally managed to get to the other side!"
"Sunset...?" Twilight repeated, confused, as she wasn't recognizing her friend's voice.
The smoke dissipated and Sunset was nowhere to be found. But, on the other hand, Maëva had grown a new head.
03 - You're an Old Maker's Creation
"Sunset?" Twilight asked, shocked
"Twilight! You have to listen to me!"
The princess couldn't believe her eyes. And neither could Maëva, as she looked at the other head coming out of her body, panic quickly building up inside her, ready to burst out in a scream at any moment.
The other head was also freaking out, but for an unrelated reason it seemed.
"The sky!" she said, staring at Twilight with fear. "It was torn apart!"
She tried to move forward, but the body didn't follow. Her head went back on her neck like a spring, causing her to turn around towards her body with confusion to see what was wrong. She froze.
"What..." Twilight slowly said, too many questions bumping into one another in her head. "What do you mean the sky was torn apart!? Is something wrong at Canterlot High!?"
But Sunset's mind was somewhere else right now. She slowly said:
"Where... Where are my hooves...?"
She looked down on her body, then up to her own neck, as if to make sure both were indeed connected. That's when she saw there was something else. Another neck, right next to hers, in the same body. Her eyes slowly went up, creating a meeting of confused and shocked stares with Maëva's. Silence fell.
"I... think something went wrong," Shining guessed with an uncertain expression on his face.
"This is worse than I thought..." Twilight whispered.
Sunset was finally able to speak again, but her voice was distant.
"H-Hi...?"
"Hi..." Maëva replied with the same detached stupor, to Sunset's surprise.
They would have waved to each other in an awkward fashion, but they had no arms. So instead, they just sat still, trying to face a fact they couldn't even put words on.
"I'm... Maëva."
"Sunset... Shimmer. Huh... I... feel like I should scream and lose my mind."
They both felt unsure about each other and every words they said, yet Maëva still followed:
"Me too... You thought you would be a pony as well...?"
"Yeah, that's how I'm supposed to be here... I... take it that you're not a natural hydra?"
"No, I was a human..."
"Sunset?" Twilight interrupted, concerned, coming to her.
The ex-unicorn-now-second-head turned to her, still feeling distant but closer to reality.
"Well, that explains why you looked small..." she said to herself, watching the purple alicorn.
"You talked about the sky...?" Twilight repeated, understanding her friend's shock but still worried.
Sunset's eyes went wide as she remembered. She had more important things than a mere body problem.
"R-Right! Twilight, you gotta help us!"
"What happened?" the purple alicorn inquired
"It's hard to describe. We heard a loud noise, as if something massive crumbled, like a tower or something, but it was everywhere in the world. The sky was torn apart like a paper towel, and there was nothing behind it. Just an empty void. Not space, just nothing."
Twilight frowned with fear, scratching her chin rapidly.
"We have to go back and see what's wrong!" she concluded.
"I came as fast as I could," Sunset followed. "But something seemed wrong with the portal. I feel like it took me more time than usual to get through."
"You were stuck in there," Twilight explained. "We were trying to get the link back."
"The link? Is this why you didn't answer my messages?"
"I probably didn't receive them," Twilight said with a serious tone. "The last ones I got from you were the conversation we had about mermaid's history."
"So like, two days ago," Sunset summed up. "Something happened between then and now."
"Two days...?" Twilight slowly repeated. "Sunset, that was months ago."
"What?"
"That conversation, we had it over eight months ago," the princess worryingly confirmed.
Sunset's expression went from concern to complete fear as she realized.
"How long have I been in this portal...? Oh no! The others!"
"We need to get the link back!" Twilight said, going to the portal to examine it. "And find out why there's a problem in this world too!"
Sunset slowly lifted her head, still shocked, but wondering about that last part.
"What do you mean in this world too ?"
"Your world had a Collapse," Maëva said, finally joining back the conversation after listening carefully. "Just like mine."
Sunset turned her head, almost hitting Maëva's in the process. Twilight also looked at her, asking skeptically:
"A Collapse?"
"That's how we call it in my world," Maëva explained. "We heard something fall apart, some say it was the pillar of the world – whatever that means – and everything has been shit since then. The sky became dark and it's been sending some kind of meteors and other catastrophes at us."
"You didn't say anything about that," Twilight pointed out.
"I didn't know if I could trust you", Maëva replied, not all that sorry. "I was afraid you would send me back off of fear I would make your world collapse too."
"I would never-"
"Twily," Shining interrupted, walking to her. "If what they say is true, terrible things have been happening at Canterlot High for months now. We don't have time to debate trust issues."
Twilight looked at her brother, then at Maëva, then the mirror, focusing back on the task at hoof.
"Right. I'm sorry Maëva, but your world will have to wait for now."
"It's been falling for fifteen years," the first and original head reassured. "I'm just worried about what will happen to my friend, but you have yours to save first, I understand that."
"Just your friend?" Sunset asked. "No family or anything?"
"Family died before I could become an adult," Maëva said, looking at the other head right next to hers, speaking with a strangely casual tone. "I may still have an older brother alive, but that's it. His island sank a few months ago, so he's probably dead anyway."
"Woaw... I'm sorry."
"It's fine," she sighed in an accepting way. "You... get used to it at some point. Everything is uncertain. You might die tomorrow, your house might be on fire, something might eat your friend right in front of you. The only reason we aren't suicidal is because we know the world will kill us first."
"I... can't imagine what kind of life this might be," Sunset said, fearing a bit for her own friends as well.
Both her and Shining looked worried at Maëva. She had a very detached tone, as if she was truly used to this. Yet, she had been hesitant about crossing the portal. But they didn't know that. She still had a hard time believing she was truly out of this nightmare, it hadn't registered in her brain yet.
"I think I can do something," Twilight finally said, after inspecting the mirror. "The link is weak, but it should work!"
Sunset turned her neck, but was stopped on her tracks with the body not following.
"I can't move?" she said, intrigued.
Maëva looked at her, then at her legs. She lifted one, then the other, turning to the portal. She noticed, a bit relieved for herself:
"I think I'm the one in control of it?"
"So, all I have is a neck and a head?" Sunset summed up, raising an eyebrow.
"Afraid so," Maëva said, figuratively shrugging for lack of shoulders to do it literally. "Sorry."
"I mean, things are probably worse on the other side either way..."
Twilight cleared her throat to get their attention back. And it worked, as they both looked her way.
"You're going to have to touch the portal again," she said. "We got Sunset out, so it should work by now."
"Tail again?" Maëva asked.
Twilight nodded. She got into position once more, while Sunset wondered:
"Aren't you afraid that it could spread to Equestria if the link gets stronger?"
"I am," Twilight quietly responded, looking back at the mirror. "Maybe breaking the link was Equestria's own way to protect itself. That could explain why Maëva's world only has one-way portals. But it's not going to stop me."
Twilight almost jumped when her brother put a hoof on her shoulder.
"I'm going to warn Cadance and the others," he kindly said to her. "Should I write a letter for Equestria as well?"
"Yes, thank you, Shining," the princess let out with a reassured smile. "Send it to Starlight, she'll spread the word around."
The white unicorn nodded, heading for the exit right away. Twilight turned back to the portal and Maëva, who was still waiting.
"Go on," the alicorn invited. "Touch the portal. Whatever happens, I'm ready for it."
Sunset took a deep breath, fearing what would follow. But Maëva wasn't scared. She'd seen worse. Gaining another head with someone else's consciousness in it didn't seem as dramatic as losing her arms.
So, she touched the mirror again with her tail. And nothing happened.
She waited a bit, looking at Twilight with a question in her eyes, while Sunset was still holding her breath. But the alicorn didn't say anything. She didn't look away from the portal.
Suddenly, the surface began to glow. Like last time, waves formed. Ripples. But they seemed a lot more pointy than previously. Troubled.
"Huuu..." Maëva slowly said.
"Don't worry," Twilight reassured with confidence and determination. "Nothing bad will come out."
"If you say s-"
The mirror went bright again, blinding everyone. A purple and blue puff of smoke erupted from it, but Twilight immediately raised a shield in response, dissipating the smoke in an instant.
Everyone was then able to see the electrical sparks climbing Maëva's tail, up to the base of her neck, focusing into a bundle of flesh and scales that immediately grew into yet another head.
The newcomer shook its long and new neck, opening the eyes hidden behind round glasses.
"Am I... on the other side?" they asked, looking around, only for their eyes to fall on Twilight.
"If by that you mean dead, then not yet," Sunset replied.
The new head suddenly moved away, caught off guard by that weird voice so close. They looked at Maëva and Sunset.
"Wha- A hydra? Why am I a hydra!?"
"It's a long story," Sunset said, even though she didn't even have the full story herself. "Welcome to your new body."
"Nice to meet you," Maëva added.
"Excuse me," Twilight said, walking forward, looking up at the new head. "But... who are you?"
The princess didn't recognize the voice, but that was normal. Even Sunset's was so deformed she hadn't realized it was her.
The third head looked at her with disbelief, stuttering for a second:
"Well, I'm... you."
"Me?" the alicorn repeated.
"Twilight?" Sunset asked, surprised.
"Do I know you?" the head said, turning to her.
"Yeah, it's me. Sunset Shimmer."
"Sunset!? I thought you had abandoned us! Everyone thinks that!"
"I was stuck in the portal! I would never abandon you or the others!"
"Wait, wait," Twilight said, flying up to them. "What happened? Sunset just got here, how's Canterlot High?"
"Well," the other Twilight hesitantly said, still confused but not as much as one could have expected. "The... world is falling apart. Bad things. Everyone looked for a safe place, the school has become some sort of a bastion."
"Hold on," Sunset interrupted. "How long has it been since I left?"
"I'd say about eight months?"
"Is everyone alright?" Twilight inquired.
"I wouldn't say alright..." her counterpart winced. "Some people have vanished. Rainbow Dash has been missing for a month, Big Macintosh and Sweetie Belle too, just to name a few. But, we manage. That's actually why I came here. Everyone thinks some kind of magic caused this."
The princess of friendship was thoughtful, despite all the worries on her face. She muttered:
"Well, if that's the case, it's probably going to happen again..."
"What!?" Sunset and the other Twilight said.
"It already happened twice," the princess expressed with a grave tone. “We'll need to find what's wrong."
"Twice!?" the third new head shouted.
Maëva cleared her throat, gathering the attention of the three others.
"Sorry to interrupt but..." she said. "I understood that there are two Twilight Sparkle? Could you explain that?"
"Oh, right, sorry," Twilight said. "Canterlot High is a close copy of Equestria. Most of the ponies here also exist out there, in human forms, with different lives."
"I see," Maëva nodded, turning to the newcomers. "So you're the Twilight from that other world? That explains why you wear glasses and she doesn't."
"And you are?" the person involved asked.
"Maëva. My world began to fall apart fifteen years ago, just like yours. I just got here in that... body."
"Oh..."
"AAAAAH!"
All three heads turned to Twilight, who was facing the portal with total dismay. Or rather, what was left of the portal. The central part looked like it had faded away. There was no mirror in the magic mirror.
"It broke!" Twilight shouted with desperation. "The link broke!"
Author's Note
I know it might not be that great. I always need months to take a step back and really improve a work. But I wanted to go back on my old (and by old, I mean 10 years ago, when I began writing in 2013. Boi was my writing bad at the time) schedule of trying to have a chapter a week for a new story.
09 - When I was a Little Filly
"That's actually my first time going on a boat," Maëva noticed, looking over the magical rail and into the sea below. "I thought I would be seasick."
Her sentence was punctuated by the sound of Sunset throwing up in the water.
"How can you vomit...?" Twydra wondered in disbelief. "We don't even feel anything below our neck, how is the stomach sending things to you?"
"I don't want to think about it..." Sunset answered with a pale green face, on the verge of throwing up again. "I wasn't even sick the last time I was on a boat, I don't get it..."
"Don't worry, we'll be there soon," Twydra reassured.
"Wha' be dis weakness ye be showin', camarade!?" Flurry suddenly shouted from behind the helm, wearing her most outlandishly cliché pirate costume, tricorn, eye patch and everything. She had even painted one of her legs to look like wood. "Dis ain't how adventurers shall look like!"
"You can tell she doesn't go out very often," Maëva said to the others in a half-amused, half-impressed tone.
"Worlds are collapsing..." Twydra muttered, slightly offended.
"Let her have this," Cozy sighed, a pissed resignation painted all over her face, as she was standing next to them, in a marine officer outfit. She had no say in wearing it.
They were sailing into the sea, Flurry using her magic as a sonar to locate the sunken island they had seen on the map.
"How much magic does she even have?" Maëva wondered. "You've told me alicorns have more than unicorns, but I have trouble visualizing it."
"She could hold the boat for one week, probably, if she wanted to," Cozy explained in a monotonous voice, still feeling uncomfortable in her suit, even if she was doing it for her friend. "The only time I saw her exhausted, magically speaking, was when she fought Twilight for a day, just to train."
"And Twilight is the Element of Magic, right?" Maëva said, trying to remember what she had been told. "So like, a representation of magic itself. And Flurry went toe-to-toe with her for one day, I see."
Cozy nodded with a little smile, somewhat happy that Maëva was understanding. But her smile vanished when she heard a repeating sound. Flurry was storming her hoof on the floor, bobbing her head in rhythm.
"Ah, that's my cue, sorry," the pegasus said, suddenly flying up to the alicorn.
"Huh?" Maëva and Twydra both said.
To their surprise, Cozy and Flurry joined together and began to sing a sea shanty. And, despite the poor attitude the pegasus seemed to have up until now, she smiled the whole way through the song with her friend. A song about their bond, and their past.
Maëva glanced, with questions in her eyes, at Sunset, who was still feeling sick but looked back at her in a way that meant "Yeah, that tends to happen around here, don't worry". Either way, the song was enjoyable.
Flurry's sonar detected the remnant of the island a few minutes later when she exclaimed "We found our target, mates! Drop the anchor!"
"Why don't you just use your m-" Maëva began.
"I said drop the anchor!" Flurry cut with authority. "Be ye formin' a mutiny against yer cap'n?"
Twydra rolled her eyes, but Maëva complied and reached for the capstan, pulling on the lever to let the anchor loose. The sound of the magical chains echoed for a bit, before it stopped, and it took a little bit longer for the boat to do the same.
"Alright!" Flurry said, suddenly abandoning her pirate accent, heading down to the main deck. "Let's go for some scuba-diving!"
"Who wants to have a bet about hydra buoyancy?" Cozy proposed, getting rid of her clothes.
"What do you mean?" Maëva asked, uncertain about the meaning of the word.
"Do you think your body floats or sinks?" the pegasus elaborated with a bright smile.
"Sink," Twydra almost cut. "There's no way a body like that can float, unless we are able to take a really deep breath."
"Let's try it out!" Flurry happily said, her horn glowing. "First, a mask for everyone!"
A spherical bubble appeared around every head, including Cozy's and Flurry's, and they all began to speak with a weird muffled voice.
"Great," Sunset congratulated. "How do we head down, now?"
Flurry looked at her with a happy smile. In the blink of an eye, a slight worry appeared on Sunset's face, and on Twydra's and Maëva's as well. Their fear was doubly confirmed when, first, Cozy deployed her wings half a second later and, secondly, when the boat disappeared entirely.
The hydra crashed into the water and found that, indeed, their body was sinking. After a little panic, they all calmed down and looked at each other. Maëva peddled her feet in the water, but didn't feel like it made any difference in their trajectory towards the bottom.
It only stopped when Flurry and Cozy joined them under the water, Flurry holding the hydra with her magic to prevent them from sinking too quickly.
Cozy seemed to talk, but they could barely hear her, as Flurry gestured to indicate that, pointing her own ear. Cozy rolled her eyes and extended her hooves towards her friend, as if to say "You're kidding me!". At least, that's what Maëva understood from this exchange, but Flurry seemed to get more out of it, her face enlightening as she adjusted something in her spell and spoke:
"Test," all suddenly heard in their own little magical bubble, as if she was screaming. "Is this working?"
"Too loud, Flurry," Sunset winced, making everyone else cringe as well.
Flurry's magic turned around her horn turned a bit, like a knob, and tried again with a much lower volume:
"Now? Is it good?"
"It's fine," Twydra said with a sigh of relief.
"Sounds like a radio," Maëva thought out loud.
"That way we can talk," Cozy followed. "Now, how deep is that island?"
"About four hundred meters deep," Flurry said.
"You'll need to protect us from the pressure," Twydra warned.
"Yeah, right, I'll do that now."
The bubble on their heads spread from the base to cover their whole body in a thin magical layer, glowing in yellow light.
"Hope that won't attract some sharks or something," Sunset worried. "Let's head down."
The two ponies swam downwards, while the hydra was simply released from the alicorn's grip and began to sink.
"Do you have, like, giant monsters in your seas?" Maëva asked, curious.
"What do you mean by that?" Sunset said, arching an eyebrow.
"I don't know, krakens, leviathans, mythological things and whatnot. You have pegasi, hydras and unicorns, so I'm just curious."
"We have legends," Flurry answered, her horn lighting the way through the obscurity that began to encircle them. "And here, that means there's a chance they might exist. But I don't recall anyone ever saying they saw a sea monster, aside from sea dragons and alike."
"Huh..." Maëva said, pondering this possibility. "Are they civilized?"
"They can talk, if that's what you're asking," Flurry replied with a smile, looking towards the bottom.
Light from the surface was almost gone by now, leaving them surrounded by nothing but darkness, cold water and the occasional sound, coming from some far away sea creature. Otherwise, things were quiet.
Maëva felt uneasy, going down without any control, sinking in the shadows. She couldn't see one meter below her feet, she didn't even know if there was something to see. No fishes were around. From the corner of her eyes, she noticed Cozy Glow progressively swimming closer to Flurry Heart. Was she scared?
"That's deep..." Sunset whispered with a fascinated voice.
"Not that much," Cozy replied, glancing at them. "Oh, you have to be kidding me."
All followed her eyes, seeing Twydra shaking and staring at the void with a quivering breath, terrified.
"Hey, hey, Twilight," Sunset called, bringing her head in front of hers. "It's fine, okay? We have magic."
She barely listened nor saw her, saying in between her breathes:
"It's dark... It's so cold..."
Flurry rushed to her as well, waiving a hoof in front of her.
"Twi? Are you okay?"
"Warm her up and get more light," Cozy advised.
Her friend obliged without question, their surroundings becoming enlightened in her magic, while the hydra felt the coating around them becoming warmer.
It somewhat seemed to work, as Twydra's eyes focused on the alicorn in front of her, realizing where she was and what was happening.
"S-Sorry," she said, shaking her head.
"It's fine," Flurry reassured with a kind smile. "The depth can be frightening."
"Usually it's not, for someone who heard the call of darkness once already," Cozy innocently added, resuming her diving.
Only Maëva really paid attention to what she just said, Sunset and Flurry too busy checking on Twydra. The third head blinked a few times, taking in a deep breath, before saying:
"I'm good. Sorry about that."
"Alright, great," Flurry said, relieved. "We're almost there."
As she said that, below them, the seabed appeared. Getting closer and closer, white brownish plains of wet soil and sediments
With a surprising grace, the hydra landed in a slow puff of smoke and sand, which spread around them, before settling again. They all looked around, as Flurry was still pushing her horn bright, scaring the nearby confused crabs, but nothing really jumped out.
"Now what?" Maëva said. "We search around?"
"Yeah, I guess," Sunset nodded.
The alicorn took the lead, and they all followed, Cozy swimming with her wings, while the hydra was just walking on the seabed. And Maëva contemplated, for the first time, the bottom of the ocean.
The soil was strewed with more rocky terrain here and there, signs of this land once being emerged in the form of old rotten and withered roots, but also...
"A paved road...?" Flurry noticed at the same time, hovering closer to the ground, intrigued by the ancient structure.
Small randomly shaped rocks, definitely assembled in a straight and wide line. Though the work seemed way more crude than the ancient city they had visited, indicating the place was probably less important. But they had found a trail.
The small group followed it with care and curiosity, spotting little things they supposed to be milestones, with small indiscernible inscriptions faded by time and erosion. Until, suddenly, Cozy softly said:
"There's a town..."
All the others had to squint to realize that, indeed, structures were visible in the distance. Guided by Flurry's light, they entered the town. A village of ancient stylized but modest houses, made out of polished stones. It was more of a little settlement than anything, they could only count six houses and what seemed to be a temple, towering over the rest of the ruins.
The edifice had an Ancient Greece vibe to it, with tall columns made of stone, but the roof was a half-sphere. Maëva's eyes were drawn to it, and she quickly picked up that something was off with the columns. Or rather, what was in-between them.
"Oh wow, the spell lasted that long...?" Sunset noticed too, impressed.
Indeed, a thin magical membrane was separating the inside of the temple from the rest of the world. And behind it laid a different obscurity, one that Flurry's light easily pierced.
"There's air," Maëva realized.
The group headed for that strange place, the two ponies sliding in between the columns, while Maëva and the rest had to find the largest gap possible and squeeze their body through it. It took a bit of help from Flurry's magic, but the hydra managed to pass.
The temple was only one large room, surrounding some kind of tall obelisk. The first things that caught Maëva's eyes were the six silvery rectangles disposed in a hexagon all around the monument, one of them broken. The second things that caught her attention were the numerous bones laying on the floor, from fishes, but also four of them who were from pony-like creatures. Except they had long tail-bones.
"Wow, that's creepy," Flurry admitted, nudging the bones with one hoof. "You think those fishes just went through the barrier without realizing and choked in the air?"
"Why are there bodies here...?" Sunset wondered, looking at the strange remains of those strange ponies. "What are they even?"
"Thornies," Cozy bluntly said, looking at one of them. "At least, that's what I call them. Never heard an official name."
"For Celestia's sake, how many things do you know, exactly!?" Sunset growled.
"Not much," the pegasus distractedly replied, glancing at the silvery rectangles. "At least, nothing relevant here. And we're all about to learn a lot more."
As she said that, a dim red light suddenly spread in the room. They all turned around, only to see Twydra's head willingly poking against a small stone engraved with runes, lying up against one of the columns. A voice came out, different from the one they had heard in the ruins up north.
"Can't believe I have to use this spell. Sullirian's ideas are as crazy and foreseeing as ever. That's probably why he left this place early. If you listen to this, you're a little bastard for bringing us all into your rebellion, even if we all believe your calculations are correct."
The voice sounded angry but resigned, and seemed to belong to an old mare. She kept on speaking with her bitter tone:
"But if it isn't you, I suppose I should help those who need it. The Cleaners are above us, they made the island sink anyway, there's nothing more we can do. They're waiting for us, Nagalili already went out and was almost immediately thrown into the void. So, if you're not Sullirian and you managed to get here, you're probably aware the Four Counsels are denying or hiding the truth. Here's what you need to know: The worlds are unstable. We've put the pillars that keep them up and next to ours, but they're not perfect. The pillars might crack and fall, collapse, and bring down the worlds with them. Sullirian is working on a solution, he's probably at his hideout at the Shadowy Hills as I speak-"
The voice suddenly got interrupted by another one, coming from further away, mumbling:
"This is stupid, I'm taking one of the portals."
"As you wish," the first voice simply said, before resuming her story. "There's no one beyond the void. No one conscious, at least. We made our neighbors, but the threads are still from us. If anything would happen to them, the pillars would collapse, one by one. Who knows what's down there, in the void. And when their inertia runs out, they'll be gone... And-"
The voice stopped again, but this time no other sound followed. The rune ceased to glow, spreading a bit of confusion in the listeners.
"Either the rest of the message got corrupted by time," Flurry said. "Or that magic can't hold too much information. Either way, I think that's it."
"What was this all about...?" Sunset whispered, squinting, trying to make sense of what they had heard.
Twydra glanced at Cozy, who was also frowning, but not in a confused way.
"You got something from that, didn't you?" the third head commented with a disparaging tone.
"It just confirmed what I thought..." Cozy replied, still thoughtful. "Some of them knew something was wrong, but the others didn't listen and hunted them for that. That Sullirian guy is, without a doubt, the one you've heard in the ruins of the Empire. And he tried to do something about it."
"Well, he wasn't very successful," Sunset commented, raising her eyebrows, unimpressed. "Otherwise, we wouldn't be here."
"Or his solution only worked for a time," Twydra nuanced, still wary of the pegasus. "Maybe something broke his solution."
Cozy's eyes slowly went down, her expression switching ever so slightly from thinking to atrociously realizing.
"So, people got trapped here by those Cleaners," Flurry summed up. "Those things made the island sink, and the, err, Thornies you said? They got stuck here, after raising that protection around the temple. And one of them left by a portal."
She turned to the six mirrors, happily supposing:
"If we go by this logic, those things are portals. They even look functioning, aside from the broken one."
"Do you think we could take them?" Maëva wondered. "Or am I going to grow another head?"
"Hmmm..." Flurry thought, circling the pillar with the five still-working mirrors. "I wish auntie was here."
"What good would taking them even bring?" Twydra thought out loud.
"If we see how things are going, maybe we can figure out a solution," Sunset said, Flurry agreeing. "We've studied magic, maybe seeing the problem up close could help."
"Or you'd end up in a collapsing world, with no way of returning somewhere safe, with no magic," Cozy proposed, with a tone indicating she thought that was stupid idea.
"Pff, as long as we warn auntie before, things will be fine," the young alicorn said, waiving a nonchalant hoof.
Cozy stayed serious, more than before even, but her eyes filled with a touch of begging as she looked at her friend.
"Do not force me to follow you there..." she said, her tone grave yet not commanding.
"You're not forced to," Flurry pointed out, her ego speaking. "If you want to stay there, or go back up, I'll give you the necessary bubble for that, while we explore solutions."
She stared at her with smug eyes, as if she was expecting the pegasus to yield. Yet, Cozy's gaze didn't change one bit, and they stayed like that for a moment.
Sunset was quicker to understand what was happening, though she didn't really believe it, but Maëva was a close second. Cozy wasn't saying Flurry would force her in some physical or rhetorical way. She was telling her that, if Flurry went in, she would have to follow her, despite knowing fully how bad of an idea that would be. She would not abandon her, even if the princess was to jump head first into her downfall.
Twydra didn't understand what that eye-battle meant.
The young alicorn finally looked away, annoyed and hissing at a low voice:
"Fine, fine! I get it, things are serious... I swear you're worse than my mom, sometimes."
Cozy let out a sigh of relief, before turning to the hydra.
"Alright, touch the portals now."
"Huh?" the three heads said, looking at the pegasus.
"Maybe there's someone stuck in there too," she explained very seriously. "We can't abandon anyone like that. I'm not asking you to go through the portal or anything, just touch it."
"Sounds awfully dangerous," Twydra commented, while Flurry pouted.
"It doesn't suck people in," Sunset reassured, seeing where Cozy was coming from.
Maëva also agreed to that thought process, even if she had joked earlier on about gaining a new head. Having someone lost in-between the worlds was too great a risk, especially if the portals were to break.
"If it tries to suck you in, I'll stop it," Flurry said, still pissy but ready to help. "I'll grab you with my magic."
"Thanks," Maëva said, even if she didn't think this would be necessary.
She turned to the mirrors, Sunset confident and Twydra not so much.
"First one!" Maëva said to give herself some courage.
She tapped the tip of her tail on the top of the borderless silvery surface, as she had done to free Sunset and Twydra from the Crystal Empire's portal.
A little silence installed itself in the atmosphere, everyone expecting something. But nothing came.
"Check, I guess?" Maëva said, moving a bit to be in front of the second portal.
She tapped it as well, this time interpreting the lack of response way faster and moving to the next one, passing by the broken portal, and tapping the third mirror.
"It's going to be on the last one, isn't it?" Sunset sighed, before a sudden flash of light blinded her. "Aaah!"
Twydra and Maëva had to turn away, the middle head shouting with a victorious tone:
"Aha!"
The glow from the mirror forced everyone to close their eyes, but Maëva felt the energy flowing through her tail, just like the other time.
A puff of silvery smoke erupted from the mirror, as the light died out, and coughing was heard.
"For crying out loud, those portals!" a deformed hydra masculine voice said. "What a collapsing load of bollocks!"
Maëva froze, as the other heads were turning back to look at the newest arrival, on the leftmost side of the body, next to Sunset.
"Hello there," she greeted her new neighbor.
"What is t-AAAAAAAH!"
The new head jumped back, opening wide scared eyes, trying to recoil as far as he could.
"Yeah, something like that," Sunset nodded. "Sorry to scare you."
"There's no point in trying to run, you're attached to us," Twydra informed.
The newcomer looked at them with terror, then at himself, seeing the long neck linking him to the others, confused.
"What in the name of Geuzav is that!?"
"What in the what?" Twydra said, arching an eyebrow.
"Where are my arms!?"
"You don't have them anymore," Sunset sighed empathically. "It's a long story, but please calm down."
"W-Why can't I move!?"
"Only Maëva can move it," Sunset explained, nodding towards the main head. "I'm Sunset Shimmer, and the farthest one, that's Twilight Sparkle. But we call her Twydra. Er, long story too."
But the fourth head was barely listening. Instead, he was looking at Maëva with a slight frown, and she was staring back, eyes wide open.
"Maëva...?" he repeated.
"Enzo...?" she asked in disbelief.
Author's Note
There's something off in my writing in this whole fic I feel. I'm under the impression that I'll have to go back and fix almost everything. I don't know. It's the most "first-drafty" first draft fic I've done in a long time. (I re-read though. But massive changes are rare)album Aetheria by Forest Rain (totally didn't participate in the choirs for the first song)
01 - When you're Rife with Devastation
"That sounds like a bad idea..."
"I'm telling you, Maëva! It's one of the portals to Equestria!"
"That's why it's a bad idea!"
Maëva, a young blond adult lady, looked at her friend with legitimate concern, while she was way too hyped up by her own discovery. The two childhood friends were both standing in a cavern only lit by their flashlights, at the foot of a tall rocky wall. Not too far from their home, but far enough that Maëva had never even been aware of that cave.
"And it's up there?" said Maëva, flicking her light to the chimney-like hole in the ceiling. Large enough to fit four people.
"Not my fault if the ancient mages put the exits in random places," Éma replied, shrugging.
"How did you even find it? Like, I know speleology is your thing, but how did you even have the idea to look up?"
"Heard a weird noise, sent a drone."
Éma dropped the gear she was carrying and started to unpack. Maëva looked at her, not knowing if she should be despaired or amazed. She was like that, very much spontaneous, always getting into adventures on her own, maybe disappearing for weeks, before resurfacing again, with stories to tell.
Éma got a few stakes out, a rope, two ice axes, making sure everything was in perfect condition. She knew the risks. That's why she also tied her long black hair, to not have them in her way.
"I don't think I'll go through it," Maëva said slowly.
Éma suddenly stopped what she was doing and looked at her friend, shocked.
"Are you serious right now!?"
"Look, I know things are bad, but-"
"Bad!?"
Éma stood up, grabbing Maëva by the shoulders, staring her in the eyes.
"Listen, I know you're optimistic, but the world is going to shit. I know you still think your brother is alive, despite the island sinking. But there are literal monsters out there, I refuse to see you stay in that hell! You could be dead tomorrow, and we’ve both seen enough people die already, I don’t want that to happen to you. This portal is our chance to escape the freaking doom the Collapse brought!"
Maëva looked at her friend, saddened. She understood where she was coming from on that one, but...
"Why can't we talk about that place to everyone? It’s selfish if we’re the only ones to go through."
"Because the portals can fade if too many people use them too fast," Éma said, letting go of Maëva’s shoulders and going back to her belongings. "Don't worry, I've left notes here and there. People will find this place after we're gone. But we need to think about ourselves first. Now put that on."
She handed her a harness, before taking one for herself, getting the snap hook ready with expert hands. She hammered the first stakes firmly in the rock, flashlight held in place in her clothes.
Maëva sighed and put on the harness, readying herself. When she was done, Éma had already climbed two meters, each step higher achieved with precision. She followed her, reluctantly.
Éma was right about everything, but Maëva didn't want to simply... leave. It was her home. Her place. Where she had grown, saw her family live. As far as she knew, the portal could work both ways, but some couldn't. And she knew so little about that place, Equestria, aside from what the legends from a few millennia ago told. At the time when the ancient mages came, before vanishing soon after. If it weren't for the few portals found here and there, those stories might have just stayed that: stories. Although, as far as Maëva knew, a lot of information was kept from the public.
Fifteen meters higher, Éma's hand finally reached a flat surface. One last effort later, they both arrived at the top of the rocky wall.
The cave was a bit wider here, dark and echoing with the sounds of the two friends moving their gears. The walls looked pretty dull, at least from Éma’s point of view, but the remarkable thing was right in front of their feet.
Maëva first thought it was a pool. But on closer inspection, surrounded by small blue and silvery crystals glittering under the flashlights, she realized it wasn't water. It was stone. Very smooth stone. A gray tone, where the light bounced as if it was clear ice.
There was something mystical about that place. Maëva had heard tales, seen drawings, but never one portal in real life. An ancient gate to another world, waiting here for centuries, millennia even.
"Are you sure it's safe to cross...?" she slowly asked, as Éma was checking on her package.
"Kind of."
"We will end up as, like... ponies, right?"
"Yeah, something like that," Éma distractedly answered, looking for something in her bag.
“What if they don’t accept us…?”
“We’ll see when we get there.”
The place was suddenly shaken. An earthquake almost caused Maëva to fall back through the abyss they had come from. But it didn't last. Everything went back to normal as quickly as it had started.
"Another meteor..." Éma muttered. "That one wasn't far off."
She looked at the smaller bags she had brought. She handed one to her friend.
"Here. In case we get separated during the transfer. There's enough to last a few days. And to keep warm."
Maëva took a look inside. Vegetables, water, and a... coat? Yeah, that was a coat. Just one made for a pony. How had Éma even got one?
"Thanks. But isn't there like a second portal on the other end? We should both come out that way, right?"
Éma knew way more about those than her, so she was wondering why her friend was taking so many precautions.
"Well, it's hard to know," Éma sighed. "Most people that went through one in recent years never came back. So we don't know if they arrived through another portal."
"Wait, they didn't come back?" Maëva suddenly worried. "Why?"
Éma looked at her, embarrassed and thoughtful.
"Well, they came out the other side alive, that's pretty certain. But there's a problem."
"Which one?"
Éma went by Maëva's side, leaning a bit on top of the portal, inviting her friend to do the same. Which she did, cautiously.
"You see," Éma explained. “They couldn't come back because the portals we found since the old days are probably failed ones, made by the ancient mages."
"Failed ones?"
Éma nodded, taking in a deep breath, before saying:
"Only one person can go through them. Afterwards, they just deactivate. So, no one can come back through the portal they used."
The information took a little moment to be processed by Maëva's brain. Not quite certain to understand, she gave a confused look to her friend, still leaning above the portal. Éma looked back at her, saddened.
"I'm sorry."
Maëva felt a hand pushing her in the back. She fell, head first, into the portal. She barely had time to yell the name of her friend that everything became blurry.
Colors began to twist around her. The world swirled like a whirlpool. Her body was stretched. Her cry of terror and confusion became distorted as well. She held her bag as much as she could, as the whole universe around her lost consistency.
Then, black.
Then, white. Snow.
Silence.
Noise. Shattered glass.
Void.
Touch.
Maëva's head hit a floor. A rocky one. She actually knocked herself out.
Opening her eyes wasn't painful. Realizing she had a head carrying those eyes was. But she could see quite clearly, although her mind was a bit clouded.
She was in a house? No, the remnant of a house. Snow was falling on the paved floor. She saw walls around her, windows, holes in the walls.
She tried to get her head up, only to hit the ceiling with so much strength she actually went through it.
"Wha-Huh?"
She shook her head, getting rid of the stone bricks on it, still processing.
"Who makes houses that small...? Oh what!?"
Something felt wrong with her mouth. It felt larger than usual. And her tongue was... pointy? She ran it on her teeth, only to realize she didn't have any. Something clicked in her head and she remembered. The portal. The push.
"Éma!"
She looked around. She was in the middle of some tundra step, with snow slowly falling all around. The ruins she was in were actually just an isolated thing. Not even a house worth of height.
Moving her head around, she noticed something. Her neck was really more flexible than before. Ponies had that?
She looked down and finally understood that something was wrong. Her neck was long. Too long. Oh god, it was like a snake. And at the base of it, that body was disproportionately large. She could only feel two feet and she... Wait, no, that was impossible... But...
"I don't have any arms!?" she shouted.
She looked at her whole body, using her comically long neck to check every part of her body. Nope, no arms. Just a large round belly supported by two dinosaur-like feet. A long tail with points on its end, and points on her back. She was some kind of monster.
"What the- How!? I was supposed to be a pony!"
While she didn't understand why the transformation had failed, she understood that the house she had landed on wasn't small. She was big. Too big. Standing up, she heard a little crack on the floor. She looked and saw shattered glass. As well as the remnant of a circular crystal frame. Oh no! The portal!
She moved away, but it was too late. It was gone.
"Oh no, no... Éma...!"
She couldn't do anything. She couldn't even try to reassemble the pieces: she didn't have any hands to grab them!
She got scared. What was she doing here, all alone? Her friend was definitely not coming, now. She was lost in a snowy tundra, only seeing distant mountains, in another world, in another body.
And she was cold. Way too cold actually. She didn't have any clothes on, nor even a spot of fur. Only scales and she knew reptiles aren't too keen on staying in the cold.
"The coat!" she thought, looking around, only to find the bag Éma had given her, right under her belly.
No. It was too small. She couldn't even open it. Maybe she could with her tail?
With much effort, trying to focus while in the northern cold, she managed to direct the tip in the bag. Thank god it was small enough. She got the coat out and realized quickly. Yeah, it was barely the size of her foot, that wasn't going to keep her warm. And all her other stuff had disappeared, clothes and even the flashlight.
"Shit! What do I do now!?"
She put it back in and wrapped her tail around the bag to carry it. She got her head as high as possible, looking around for a solution. Whoever had built that portal, it wasn't occupying this place anymore. Nor were their descendants.
She saw something on the horizon. Something was glowing. White and bright, like a star.
"I need to find some people..."
It took a bit of effort to lift her own massive body on one foot. Then the other. It felt so clumsy to walk like that. Well, until she realized her tail was there to balance things out.
One notable plus side is that each step covered a large distance. The downside being that her belly was so close to the ground that it was actually touching the snow.
"What the hell am I even...?"
She had expected to change. A part of her had been ready for it. But that was too much.
It took her about ten minutes to finally understand what she saw from afar. It was a tower. Like one from a magical castle in a fairy tale. Actually, it looked like a magical castle once she got closer, with other smaller towers and all, cyan, white, blue. And pointy as fudge.
Maëva thought she saw something else, between her and the tower. Something white and yellow. She squinted, but it didn’t help much. Those eyes didn't like the cold.
It was small. But growing. Moving? Was it getting closer?
"Is that... A pony?"
She had seen ponies in her world, at least in photos. But this one was... different. Colorful, with shades of purple and blue, and very simplistic. It was also surrounded by a yellow aura and flying right towards her. Wait, flying? Like a pegasus?
The white pony looked angry. And female? It also had a horn, which was glowing. Maëva wanted to wave at her, but remember she didn't have any arms.
The light on the pony horn suddenly gained intensity, and a laser beam shout out of it. Maëva barely had time to dodge, throwing herself on the side, losing balance and falling.
"Aaah!"
"You shall not tread on these grounds, vile creature!" the pony yelled, flying above her, readying another beam.
"Wait!" Maëva pleaded. "Wait! I'm not a monster!"
"That's what they all say!" the horned pegasus said with gritted teeth, before she stopped. "Wait, hydras can talk?"
"I'm not a hydra!"
The pony looked confused for a second, but still wary.
"What kind of trickery is this? Are you a changeling!?"
"No! I'm a human! I came here with a portal!"
Despite her natural distrust, Maëva had no choice but to be sincere. That mare would not hesitate to attack her again, and that magic looked really dangerous. The flying equine frowned.
"A human? Through a portal?"
"Yes!"
"You lying worm! Humans only appear as ponies through portals!"
"Well, I thought that too!" Maëva said, quite angry, trying to stand up again without any sudden movement. "I don't even have arms!"
"If you're a human, then tell me your name!" the pony commanded with authority.
"It's Maëva! And I'm freezing!"
"That's not the sort of name humans usually have..."
The aggressive horned pegasus calmed down a bit and seemed to think, rubbing her chin. She muttered:
"But a hydra would never go that far north... She would die of cold... And no hydra would know about the portal."
"Who the hell even are you!?"
The mare looked at Maëva, seeing her infuriated expression, before realizing.
"Oh, that's right, I didn't introduce myself. Usually you do that, even to enemies, mom told me."
She cleared her throat, spreading her wings to have as much presence as she could, bathing in her own majesty.
"I'm princess Flurry Heart, daughter of princess Cadance and Shining Armor, rulers of the Crystal Empire!"
Maëva took a step back. Or rather, she leaned a bit. Her body wasn't really practical to go backward. She was dealing with royalty? Oh dear, she had been impolite with an actual princess? And one with magical powers?
"O-Oh."
"But I don't understand,” the princess pointed out, now more curious than anything. “If you truly were a human and came through the portal we would have seen you."
Maëva only got more confused.
"What do you mean?"
"The portal is in the middle of the city. And you're not really unnoticeable."
"Well, my portal was in some ruins over there."
Maëva wanted to point her thumb over her shoulder, but she didn't have either of those. She mumbled when she remembered it.
"Some ruins?" the princess asked, frowning again, though less menacingly.
"Yeah," Maëva tried to explain, unsure and still a bit scared. "Like an old stony house. I'm sorry, but could we get to someplace warmer please? I can't even feel my feet anymore."
"Oh, sorry."
Flurry's horn went bright for a moment. A yellow bubble of what Maëva assumed to be magic engulfed them and protected them from the wind and snow. It felt nice and warm in here, as if she was standing inside a house.
Maëva looked at the princess, still a bit wary, but also relieved, now that the winged unicorn didn’t seem like she was going to attack her again.
"Thanks... Er, I mean, thank you, princess."
Flurry nodded briefly, before noticing the bag she was carrying at the end of her tail.
"What's that?"
"Oh, well, it's stuff my friend packed for me before she... pushed me in the portal."
Now that she wasn't alone anymore and not cold, the realization sank in Maëva. Éma. She had said only one person could go through. She had chosen to save her friend over herself. She had never planned on coming along with her.
Maëva sat down, in shock. Everything was gone. Everyone she had ever known. Unless they were to find another portal. And it would only work for one person. Her world.
"She pushed you in?" Flurry repeated.
"Yeah... She discovered the portal and said she wanted to take it with me, but... Well, it's broken now."
"Why would you want to come here?"
Maëva looked at the princess flying in front of her. She was actually quite small. Smaller than her head. But she was an adult, albeit a young one. But something bothered Maëva in Flurry's question.
"You don't know...?"
"Why would I?" the princess said, almost offended.
"Well…" Maëva hesitated. "People from my world supposedly took portals to come here before."
"As far as I know, there's only one portal and no one has come through it in years."
"How many years?"
"I don't know, fifteen?" the princess shrugged.
That didn't add up. Maëva was certain to have heard stories about portals in the last ten years. Éma had recent information.
"That still doesn't answer my question", Flurry pointed out, a bit upset.
"Well. My world is... falling apart. Earthquakes, meteors, people randomly disappearing, diseases, wars started by leaders that don't even recall why they declared it the day after. Something happened and seems to have broken reality. Everything that can go wrong eventually does so."
Maëva had purposefully left out the parts about the Collapse and the monsters roaming around. She didn’t know those ponies. They might just seek and destroy all the remaining portals if they were to become afraid of monsters coming through them. That’s what she would have done in their place. She was already a monster herself, at least in appearance.
"That sounds... Awful," Flurry slowly said in shock. "I didn't know things were that bad at Canterlot High?"
"Say what now?"
"What?"
"Canterlot High. What's that?"
"Well, it's the... Oh, right. You're not from that portal."
Flurry suddenly realized.
"Wait, are you even from the same human world?"
"Huh?" Maëva replied with utter confusion.
"You said people from your world took portals. But how well are those things known in your world?"
"Well, everyone knows about them since ancient times. When your mages came through them."
"Our mages...?" Flurry slowly said.
"Yeah?" Maëva raised an eyebrow, finding her answer weird. "We call them ancient mages, we don't have written records of their names or even anything they said."
"Hmm..." Flurry thought. "Yeah, you're definitely not from the same world. In Canterlot High, the portal is a secret only the people from Equestria and a few others know about."
"I..." Maëva began, before putting that thought aside. "What's going to happen to me?"
"Well, first you're going to follow me. Can't have a hydra running around."
"Stop saying I'm a hydra!"
"What are you then?"
Maëva looked at herself, at a lack for words.
"I... Well, first off, hydras have more than one head."
"Only if the first one gets cut. I can try, if you want."
A golden battleax appeared by magic right next to Flurry. Maëva moved back, scared for her way too long and exposed neck.
"No no! I'll be fine!"
"Shoot," Flurry said, making the battleax disappear. "I never had the chance to try it."
And Maëva was fine with things staying that way. Sadly, that meant admitting she was a hydra.
"Alright then, follow me," the princess said, turning around. "We're going to the Crystal Empire."
"If you say so..."
Author's Note
The deadline is in 4 days and I only have 2 chapters ready out of the 7-8 the story should take. *chuckles* Imma not make it.
04 - Trapped Inside a Pocket World
"So, things are really bad?" Flurry summed up.
"Afraid so," Maëva nodded.
Twilight had gone with the ex-portal to bury herself into her research, desperately trying to find a solution. So it was only the now three headed otherworldly being and the daughter of the princess of love.
"At least you're not on your own anymore," Flurry tried to reassure. "You have people that can explain this world with you."
"I only know what I've been told," said the other Twilight – which they'd collectively decided to name Twydra to avoid confusion.
"Right, only Sunset really knows about this place," the princess conceded. "Now that I think about it, I would have really loved to see how my aunt looks with glasses."
She looked at Twydra, half disappointed, half amused.
"Sorry...?" the third head hesitantly said.
"It's fine. But today has been really interesting."
"I wouldn't say that," they all said in sync.
Flurry had to contain a burst of laughter. And the three of them didn't really look happy about that.
"Right, right. Sorry," Flurry apologized. "You all went through a lot today. Especially Maëva."
"About that, I had a question," the later said.
"Go on?" Flurry invited with a smile.
"What am I- are we going to eat? I haven't had lunch since breakfast."
"Oh, right. I don't know if they have anything planned."
"What do hydras even eat?" Twydra wondered. "Meat?"
"Swamp creatures, most likely...?" Sunset guessed, but that deduction wasn't really uplifting.
"According to auntie, they can also hunt ponies", Flurry added, remembering an old story.
"I don't think that's going to work out," Maëva pointed out, sighing. "I knew the vegetables my friend packed wouldn't be of any use."
"I'll check in with the cook," the princess reassured. "In the meantime, I'm going to show you your bedroom."
She led the way, and the gigantic monster followed.
"Oh wow, you actually got one large enough?" Sunset said, impressed.
"Yeah, but don't expect luxury or anything."
"As long as we have three different pillows, it'll do," Twydra told.
"As long as none of you snores," Maëva added. "Stop moving your heads like that, I can't balance properly."
"Oh, sorry," the two others apologized.
Sunset contemplated her own body moving without any intervention from her side. Her head was just following, without even hoping up and down. Her neck was naturally designed to cancel the motion. Like a chicken.
"It's weird seeing your foot move but having no control over it," she observed. "Nor any sensations."
"You're not missing much on the sensations side of things," Maëva replied. "I feel like a two-legged elephant."
"Maybe one day I'll know how it feels to be a quadrupedal..." Twydra pondered.
"Tadaa!"
All three heads looked at the large mattress in front of them. It was the thing where jumping athletes would fall onto. They actually had a few of them. One large enough for the body, and four others. Coupled with pillows and a few large blankets.
Flurry looked at them with a smile, as they stood in the entrance, a prood hoof lifted. They were in one of the training rooms, rearranged for them. Even the door frame had been removed as well as part of the wall, to let them pass.
"How do you like it?" the princess asked.
"That'll be definitely better than grass," Maëva honestly said.
"Grass can be comfortable when you're a pony," Sunset corrected. "But I agree."
"I haven't had a safe place to sleep in months..." Twydra thought out loud. "At least I'll rest knowing a fire won't start while I'm asleep."
"Oh, you have random fires too?" Maëva asked Twydra, curious. "We had those at the start, but they stopped after two years."
"I'm sure we'll find a solution to those problems," Flurry said confidently.
"Yeah, maybe."
Maëva moved her body without much conviction, turning around to sit quite heavily on the main mattress. The thing barely held her weight, but still felt comfortable.
Maëva looked at the alicorn in front of her, thinking. Before she finally said:
"... Thank you."
"It's not much, don't worry," Flurry giggled, waving a hoof.
"I meant for everything you're doing. I'm a stranger from an unknown world in a monstrous body, yet you decided to help me without even asking anything in return. Can't say my friend and I expected that when we planned on coming here."
"It's only natural," Flurry assured.
"Welcome to Equestria," Sunset added with a smile, which was still very uncanny with that face.
"I'm going to ask the cook what can be done for you, alright? In the meantime, you'll get to know each other a bit more."
Maëva nodded, along with the two others. Flurry briefly bowed, before flying out of the room.
An awkward silence fell. Maëva looked at Sunset on her left, then Twydra on her right.
"So, uh..." she started. "What's Canterlot High? A country or something?"
"It's a school," Sunset explained.
"You're still in school?" Maëva said, surprised.
"I was the head council," Sunset defended. "And Twilight works in a research lab not too far away."
"We often did partnerships," Twydra added.
"Oh, so you're like..." Maëva started, before stopping herself.
"Like?" Sunset asked.
"... Old."
"Not that much. How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"Alright, we're old," Sunset admitted.
"But that means..." Twydra slowly realized. "You were four when the Collapse happened?"
"Yep," Maëva confirmed. "I don't recall my world being anything other than broken. My first memory is from that day, actually."
"Wow..."
"I wonder why it happened to our world so much later..." Sunset thought out loud. "And what started all of this to begin with."
"We haven't found any answers in years," Maëva said, sorry. "The best theories we have is either something in our laws of physics broke, or it's because of magic."
"You have magic in your world?" Twydra asked, curious.
"No. But the ancient mages did. They came from Equestria through portals of their own making. And while the legends aren't really clear – they're legends – it's pretty certain that they could use magic in my world too."
"Which means your world must contain a bit of magic, at least," Sunset concluded. "Or they were able to draw it from Equestria through the portals. Which is somewhat of an oddity."
She glanced at Twydra, who didn't catch what she was saying, lost in her own thoughts.
"Why is that?" Maëva asked.
"Well, here in Equestria, I was a unicorn. I could use magic. But at Canterlot High, I can't. I'm a normal human. Only magical artifacts keep their powers."
Maëva was more surprised by her first sentence than the others.
"You're from here?"
"Yeah, it's a long story," Sunset sighed. "I... ran away. And did some bad things."
"But you were friends with the princess, so people forgave you?" Maëva guessed.
"What? No, I just... Well, she stopped me and offered me a second chance."
"Because you were friends?"
"No!" Sunset defended. "We didn't know each other before those events! And I wasn't kind to her. But she still extended a hand to me. "
Maëva leaned back on the mattress, sighing, letting her head rest on one of the pillows. Sunset and Twydra stayed straight with their necks, looking at her, wondering what was wrong.
"You truly are all naive," the middle head said with an almost envious tone.
"Well, not all," Sunset corrected. "But she... Twilight's just like that. She always tries to see the good in people."
"Lucky you, I guess," Maëva commented, looking at the ceiling.
"Is there something worrying you?" Twydra asked.
"I'm mostly tired."
Twydra and Sunset looked at each other. They would have shrugged, but couldn't really do that. So, instead, they just winced.
Maëva was lost in her thoughts. But not just there. She was lost on mostly everything. She understood those worlds a bit, how this Equestria and Canterlot High interacted, who the people around her were. She had always been good at listening, but her qualities stopped at that. Now, she was there, only representative of her world, coming after the Collapse of another more important and close one. And she couldn't even be alone, left in peace. She had the responsibility of moving those heads around. What kind of day was that?
Her neck was itchy as well. She tried to reach it with her tail, but the mattress was in the way. And she didn't really feel like moving.
"I still don't understand why your world is so different," Twydra said.
"What do you mean?" Maëva asked.
"Equestria and my world are a reflection of one-another. Sure, we are humans and don't use magic, but the people are the same, the names are the same. Yours..."
"Never heard of anyone named Maëva," Sunset confirmed. "It's not even a name that really exists for us."
"Maybe that's why the mages kept a link to yours and not mine..." Maëva mumbled.
"Who are those mages?" Twydra asked.
"Don't know. And no one seems to know, even here."
"It's weird," the third and most recent head thought. "At Canterlot High, there was no memory of people coming through a portal."
"And in Equestria, we knew but no one really cared," Sunset added with a sigh. "Weird thing is, Starswirl banished the sirens to that world, so he knew. Was he one of those ancient mages?"
"We have no memory of their names," Maëva precised, in case Sunset was expecting her to answer.
"That's a bummer..."
"So, like, do you girls wear clothes in your human world at least?" Maëva suddenly wondered.
"Of course we do," Twydra said.
"I feel so naked right now," Maëva realized. "I mean, I was expecting it, but still."
"Trust me, there's worse," Sunset reassured. "At least you're not going from bipedal to quadrupedal. Or trying to write. That's the really embarrassing stuff."
The middle head raised an eyebrow at her.
"How do you even hold a pen with hooves?" she asked.
"You don't," Sunset said. "You use your mouth. Or your magic, if you're lucky enough to have some."
"I wonder what kind of pony I would have been..." Maëva slowly thought.
She was feeling weird. Not just because she was naked. Being there, in this world, was just plainly strange. She was thinking strange. She was... wondering. Looking at the future, at what could have been. She did that in her own world too, thinking about tomorrow, but there was always the possibility that tomorrow might not even exist. And the past was a thing that was best to not be dwell on too much. Especially for the younger people like her, who only knew chaos.
"Good news, we found something you can eat."
"Shh!"
Flurry stopped at the entrance, after Twydra had told her to be quiet.
"They're sleeping," the head with glasses added.
Indeed, Maëva's head was resting on the mattress, eyes closed, with a slow and quiet breathing rhythm. Her consciousness had just drifted away after a few minutes. That day had been a lot. Sunset wasn't fairing better.
"Oh, sorry," Flurry whispered. "When they wake up, tell them that we found some meat-substitute for you girls to eat."
"I... think we're gonna have to stay here for now," Twydra noted. "She has control over the body."
"No problem. If they wake up during the night, just call for a guard or something."
"I think we'll do that, yeah."
Twydra looked at the alicorn in front of her, thinking.
"What?" Flurry asked.
"Technically, you're my niece, right?"
"I... guess so?"
"I don't recall meeting your equivalent in my own world."
The princess frowned.
"Aren't my parents together in your world?"
"It's more complicated than that."
Twydra was still staring at her, fascinated. She moved her head closer, as her own neck was the only part she could control freely.
"They got together, broke up, then together again. I guess that's why I missed out on being an aunt."
"Huh... I can't imagine my father reacting to a break up other than by crying for hours."
Twydra giggled.
"Yeah, that's probably how things played out."
Flurry eyes went from a bit playful to slightly worried. And she asked:
"Is he okay at least...? And my mom?"
Twydra's eyes looked away, bitter.
"They're not your mom and dad, you know..." she said.
"I know, but are they okay?"
"I... haven't had any news for months," the third head confessed. "I wish I'd know, but... I also fear that kind of knowledge."
Flurry frowned, nibbling on her own cheek. She knew she shouldn't feel concerned by that, but. Well, she was.
"Yeah, I understand that..." she sighed.
"I understand that you have quite the troublesome friend?" Twydra said, moving on from that awkward topic.
"Cozy's a good mare," Flurry answered with a slight shrug on the side, smiling. "Ponies give her a bad rep only because she did some dubious things when she was younger."
"So I've heard."
"She's better now!" the princess said, immediately defending her friend.
Twydra smiled, looking at the young alicorn in the eyes.
"She's a good friend?"
Flurry's cheek took on a slight pink taint.
"A very close friend... Closer than most people would like her to be."
A thought suddenly crossed the young princess' mind.
"Does she exist in your world?"
"If she does, I've never heard of her," Twydra confessed. "And with current events..."
"Yeah, I suppose..." Flurry sighed. "It's not even guaranteed that she's a nice person at all. So, maybe it's for the best if you've never met her."
The hydra looked at the princess in the eyes, squinting a bit.
"What?"
"Hmm. Nothing."
Twydra shook her head and looked away, before thinking out loud:
"I guess I should sleep too. Otherwise I'm going to be tired when they wake up and move around."
"I suppose that would be a good idea, yes. Do you need something, like a blanket?"
She lifted by magic the one that was already nearby. But Twydra politely refused:
"I think we're warm enough, thank you princess."
"Alright."
Flurry gently bowed, to which Twydra responded with a polite salute of her own.
"Have a nice rest."
Author's Note
So much for the new chapter every week, huh? F*ck work. Also working on a lot of projects at the same time, fanfictions, translations, books, videos...
05 - And Whichever Way it Falls Down
"So... There's no repairing it?"
Twilight looked really upset, a sad frown on her face.
"Not with my current knowledge," she said to Sunset. "We just know so little about how the portal actually works. Most of our studies were halted by the fact that we might break it. And now, it's gone."
Sunset showed concern. They were all standing near the crystal heart, where Twilight had put the now dull mirror. She'd hope that the artifact would help, but nothing had worked. Cadance was also there, as she was the most familiar with the heart.
"Do you have an explanation for that?" Maëva asked, without much hope.
Twilight shook her head. Sunset looked at Twydra.
"You've studied the magic of Canterlot High. Do you know anything?"
"There wasn't much to study. Most of the magic came from Equestria, interacting with it to conduct scientific experiments was hard. I don't think I know more than she does."
She nodded towards Twilight, looking sorry.
"So... We're all stuck here for now," Maëva summed up. "With that appearance."
"I've searched for a spell to turn you all back to normal," Cadance said. "Hydras are very specific creatures, harsh to work with magic. I don't know what caused you to turn into one, but it's more likely than not that we'll need the same portal magic to turn you back to normal."
"I don't know what normal means to me," Maëva laughed a bit.
"Will I be an alicorn...?" Twydra wondered.
"Probably not," Twilight answered. "I wasn't born an alicorn."
"She was promoted to that rank by Celestia and Luna," a voice suddenly said, further away.
Cozy was flying in their direction but stopped in mid air, surprised, seeing the three heads turning to look at her.
"What is that?" she said, shocked. "I thought Maëva's voice sounded a bit weird."
"That's not a nice way to greet people," Sunset pointed out with a raised eyebrow.
"Things happened," Maëva briefly explained. "People came through the portal."
"Cozy," Twilight stepped in. "Why are you interrupting us?"
It took the young pegasus a great amount of effort to look away from Twydra, answering:
"Gee, princess. That's a harsh way of saying hello."
"Is she serious right now...?" Sunset muttered.
To Maëva's surprise, Twilight and her both seemed wary of Cozy, while Twydra was just intrigued.
"What do you want?" Cadance asked, with the same slightly dry tone that Twilight had used before.
"Well, I'm just here to tell you that we made progress on finding those ruins," Cozy innocently said. "They asked me to tell you they've made two discoveries."
"What!?" Twilight exclaimed. "Where!?"
"A guide is on his way. So, who are they?"
She pointed at the two new heads, as if she had guessed the middle one was the one she knew. The glasses probably helped for Twydra.
"I'm Sunset Shimmer. We never met, but I know you."
"Likewise," Cozy responded with a little nod, before looking Twydra in the eyes. "You?"
"I'm the Twilight from Canterlot High. Call me Twydra, that'll avoid some misunderstanding. Nice to meet you...?"
"Cozy Glow," the young pegasus answered in the most neutral tone she had shown up until now. "Nice to meet you, Twilight."
She was staring at her, frowning, which made Twydra look a bit uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, Twilight couldn't stay in place, walking in circles, scratching her chin with a wing nervously.
"I don't think I can wait..." she muttered. "Cozy, can you point me towards the ruins?"
"It's about this way. They've mounted a little camp."
The mare with a salmon-pink coat pointed her wing in a direction that Maëva recognized as the one she had come from the day before. Twilight got ready to take off.
"Right. I'll go first. You'll go with the messenger, girls."
"Be careful, Twilight," Sunset said, before adding. "And don't leave us out of this."
"Don't worry," the princess answered, taking off.
She quickly disappeared in the distance. Cadance saw Sunset's worried look and tried to reassure her:
"We'll do our best to get back to Canterlot High as quickly as possible."
"I know..."
"If that's any reassurance, your world won't probably vanish like that," Maëva said with a bit of concern. "Mine's been in this state for years. I don't think a day or two will be that terrible."
"Thanks..."
Twydra pushed a little sigh. Cadance looked at them, then Cozy.
"If they need anything, come seek me, alright?"
"Urrr... Can't Flurry do it?"
"I'll go look for her. But for now, they're your responsibility, understand?"
Cozy rolled her eyes, crossed her hooves and mumbled:
"Yes, princess."
Cadance looked at the three heads, saying with a kinder tone:
"Tell me if she says or does anything wrong."
Sunset nodded while Maëva frowned a bit. Why would she? She had talked to Cozy the day before, she seemed like a perfectly nice girl. Mare.
The princess of love walked away, leaving them in front of the castle. Maëva turned to the pegasus.
"Why do people here seem to resent you?"
"Oh, that's a long story."
"The real question is, why wouldn't they?" Sunset mumbled.
Cozy rolled her eyes again, while Maëva looked at the second head with question in her gaze. Sunset explained:
"She tried to end the world. Twice."
"As if it wasn't something we all have in common here," the pegasus sighed with irony.
"I only did it once!"
"Yeah, after betraying Celestia a few years prior."
"Wait, hold on," Maëva cut, a bit lost. "I knew about you, Sunset, but like, Cozy and Twydra too?"
An awkward silence suddenly fell as they realized they were, indeed, all pretty bad, once upon a time. And it was something they had to explain to her, now. Sunset winced.
"We all got corrupted by our lust for power, at some point. I tried to steal Twilight's crown and its power. Twydra got corrupted studying the magical anomalies left by the crown in our world. And Cozy, well I wasn't there so I can't really tell, but-"
"I tried to siphon all the magic in the world to become an empress, then used borrowed powers to try and destroy Equestria."
The pegasus was almost bored stating this. Like it didn't really affect her.
"So," Maëva tried to understand. "Why are people mad at you, and not at them?"
"Because I refused Twilight's hoof the first time she offered me help to become a better pony."
"And she wasn't freed because she felt sorry," Sunset added. "But on a whim, because of someone else pleading for her. And she hasn't really tried to make amends."
"Not towards you, at least," Cozy pointed with a snarky smile. "Because I haven't done anything to you."
"Sure, but still. You gotta admit, we don't know for sure if you truly regret it and if you changed."
"I think being free for ten years without doing any harm, while being close to the princess, should be enough, shouldn't it?"
"Or maybe you're just waiting for the right time," Twydra pointed out. "You're just toying with her and making a fool of her."
Something changed in Cozy's eyes. The bored annoyance in them switched to a very well contained but clearly visible anger.
"Don't say that."
"Yeah, she's right," Sunset said, a bit surprised by Twydra's probably unintentional provocation. "I think that was a bit too far."
"I'm just saying," the third head continued. "If-"
Cozy suddenly flew up to her face, staring at her angrily as she hammered each word distinctly:
"Don't. Insult. Her intelligence."
Silence fell. Twydra was a bit scared by Cozy's eyes. They had lost her uncaring and mocking sparkle. They were wide open, empty of any emotions, aside from a threatening yet calm furor.
"S-Sorry..."
"I won't say it twice," the pegasus slowly warned.
Hearing her icy tone, Maëva suddenly believed a bit more the fact that this mare had, in the past, tried to destroy the world. Then, another realization came to her mind.
"Wait, you were freed ten years ago?"
Cozy Glow's expression immediately returned to its normal state, as if nothing had happened, while she looked at Maëva.
"Yes, why?" she said with a sincere smile.
"But you're eighteen...?" she assumed, since it was Flurry's age.
"Physically, yes. I was frozen in stone for about seven years, as a punishment. So I kept my age for all this time."
"... You were eight when...?"
"Yes, I was a very precocious filly."
Cozy giggled, to Sunset and Twydra's shock. Her change in emotions had just happened so fast. She followed:
"But yeah, that's why people kinda hate me around here. It doesn't really matter to me. Still, I'm glad there's now someone that doesn't hold that kind of prejudice against me."
She looked at Maëva in the eyes with what appeared to be kindness. Which was just throwing her off even more with what had happened before.
"There you are!"
All four turned to see Flurry coming in, flying. She stopped at Cozy's height.
"You're back from your research?" the alicorn asked to her friend.
"Not for long. Now that you're here, I can actually leave. I only came back because I need my lenses."
"You're not wearing them?"
"I told you already," Cozy over-exaggeratedly sighed. "It's a pain when you don't have magic."
"Ask me, then," Flurry proposed, almost offended.
"No," she categorically replied. "Anyway, see you! I have knowledge on collapsing worlds to find!"
"Wait! You-"
But Cozy had already left, flying away quickly, into the castle. Flurry grumbled.
"That pegasus..."
Maëva cleared her throat and the princess remembered their presence.
"Right, sorry. Is there anything I can do?"
"Actually, yes," Twydra suddenly said. "Can you bring the history books you have on the Crystal Empire and the mirror?"
"Sure. I'll bring you the ones auntie came with."
She went into the castle by the main entrance. Sunset looked at the head on the other end.
"You think you'll find something useful?"
"I don't know. But the me here has probably read them. If they contain important information, we might as well be more than one to know about them. Two brains are better than one."
"I feel like there's a joke to be made with that sentence in our current situation, but I can't find one," Maëva said with a distant voice.
"Found anything yet?"
Flurry yawned, sitting against one of the castle's pillars, looking at the three headed monstrosity. They were still in front of the castle. Twydra was leaning forward, looking at a book through an oversized magnifying glass put here by the young princess to allow her to read the small words written on the book.
"Not much, really. Can you turn the page?"
Maëva obliged and used the tip of her tail to go to the next page. Twydra followed:
"As far as I can tell, it's supposed that there was once more than one portal. It's not known if they lead to other worlds or just some place other than Canterlot High. But the ponies who wrote that book could only find portals that had been switched off. So they weren't even sure those were portals. They just looked like it."
"Maybe the one I took was one-way only?" Maëva supposed. "So from your end, it looked turned off?"
"Is it still intact?" Sunset asked.
"No, I stepped on it by accident."
"The simple fact you were able to step on it instead of going through shows that it was already not working in the opposite direction," Twydra pointed out, still reading. "I don't get it, they don't mention anywhere in the book where they put the alleged portals. They have to at least say where they found them."
"That book is from a time when Sombra was ruling," Flurry clarified. "Either he wanted that knowledge removed, or they didn't want him to have it."
"It's that old!?" Sunset shouted, astonished since the book looked pristine.
"Yeah well, getting banished for a thousand years with the rest of the empire does help. Magical restoration did the rest. I'm sure my aunt knows a hundred spells to get a book looking perfect again."
"... Make sense," Sunset admitted.
"So..." Maëva deduced. "Even back then, the portals were considered ancient?"
"If your world is anything to go by," Flurry answered, "that book was written at least a thousand years after the ancient mages came to your world."
"That... sounds old."
"Can you turn the page?" Twydra asked.
Maëva used her tail again, before her attention was taken away by a stallion running towards them. Flurry stood up. The colt in armor bowed politely, before announcing:
"Your highness, I've come to report that we found two archaeologically noticeable sites probably linked to the portals and the other worlds. We mounted a camp and I am here to gather more resources and our experts."
"Cozy already told us. The princess of friendship is on her way as we speak. Thank you for your message."
The guard bowed again, taking the time to catch his breath. Flurry looked at the hydra. All three heads nodded.
"Very well," the princess said, turning back to the guard. "You will escort our guest to the site with the rest of your expedition."
"Yes, princess."
"Wait here," Flurry followed, ready to take off, talking to the guard but also to the hydra. "I'm going to look for the other ponies dispatched to study the sites. I'll be quick"
And with those words, she was off in the city, leaving them alone.
The guard glanced at the hydra with a bit of fear in his eyes.
"We don't bite, don't worry," Sunset sighed, realizing how much she hated not being able to cross her arms and lean against something.
Author's Note
We're going somewhere. It's just taking me more time and writing than I anticipated. (as usual I'd say)
Oh, btw, the results of the contest are in . Apparently, an unfinished start was worthy of third place, so I'm kinda happy about that ngl.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Stay tuned.
06 - Know that it won't be Resilient
"Could have really used a warmth spell or something," Sunset grumbled.
"We should have asked the princess," Twydra said.
"We can always ask princess-you," Maëva pointed out.
They were forming the end of the line going to the first archaeological site. About twenty ponies were walking in front of them, which got Maëva wondering how actually "major" this discovery was, to bring so few people. Then again, the city she had seen was a lot smaller than the cities she knew of. And it was a place of power. Maybe the population was a lot thinner here. They were looking like a civilization at the beginning of an industrial era, not counting magic. So, maybe a population boom would happen soon?
Maëva didn't know much about history. But Éva did. Maybe she would have had an explanation, if she was there... But she had never planned to come.
"You alright...?" Twydra suddenly asked.
Maëva shook her head.
"Yeah, sorry. I was just..."
"Thinking about home...?"
Despite the lack of uniqueness in between their faces – outside of Twydra's glasses – emotions were easy to convey on a hydra head. So the sympathetic smile Twydra sent to Maëva was somewhat more comforting than one could expect. The middle head took in a deep breath and looked at their destination, getting closer and closer.
"Friends, mostly," Maëva answered. "Well, just one. I hope I'll see her again, one day."
"I hope you get to see her too," Twydra said in a kind voice. "From what you've said, portals to and from your world are plenty, so maybe we'll find another one in the ruins."
Maëva didn't reply. Hope was still such a foreign concept for her. She had said that word out of habit. Everyone used it in a half-cynical way, back home. So she was stunned to realize that, for once, she had used it honestly. She truly hoped to see Éva again. There was actually a place in her heart that was holding onto that wish. And it felt weird.
"Looks like we're there," Sunset said.
Maëva looked up, seeing the line of ponies reaching a somewhat rudimentary camp consisting of a fire and a single tent. But she recognized the landscape, and the bricks laying around. That weird rectangular rock, it was the house she had appeared in, the day before.
Twilight was there, talking with a guard. But once she saw Maëva looking her way, she stopped her discussion, thanking the guard, before flying to the hydra.
"Do you recognize this place?" the princess asked, talking to the middle head.
Maëva nodded, answering:
"It's where I appeared. There was a mirror in this house. I passed through the roof with my head."
"That confirms what I heard," Twilight said. "I'm afraid the portal here was broken. The researchers will try to find others here, but I think we should go to the other site in the meantime."
"Why's that?" Sunset asked.
"Because the first team told me they couldn't open it," the princess explained, looking at her. "Magic is involved."
Twilight led them further north, about two hundred meters from the first site, to the foot of a small cliff. The Crystal Empire being the mountainous land it was, those kinds of bumps in the ground were commonplace. But this one was special, for its side was engraved with old scriptures. Symbols and glyph Maëva couldn't decipher. And it looked like Sunset and Twydra couldn't either, nor the guards. But Twilight read:
"For those that have stumble d upon the worlds, the path will open. For the unaware, keep that door close d . And for seekers of a solution, remain cautious. "
"How can you even read that?" Sunset wondered. "I thought proto-ponish hadn't been translated properly."
"Progress was made," Twilight explained, feeling quite proud of herself for not needing a book on this one. "This is still very much an approximation."
"So, this place was sealed off a long time ago?" Twydra summed up.
"It appears so," Twilight confirmed. "I hope we can learn by whom. In the meantime, we can all enter."
Before Maëva could ask "how so?", Twilight landed right in front of the cliff, putting her hoof right in the middle of the wall, on a weird symbol. The engraving glowed a dim blue, before a semi-circle revealed itself in the rock, glowing as well, forming a three meters high arch.
The rock began to fade, letting all four of them see the long corridor behind. Its walls were finely sculpted and less worn out by the throes of time.
"What did you do?" Maëva asked Twilight, curious.
"Those who have stumbled upon the worlds," Sunset quoted. "It means it opens to the people who traveled with the portals. This is a good sign, the same civilization built this and the mirror."
Maëva thought a bit and guessed:
"But we are seekers of a solution too, aren't we?"
"And that's why I'm leading the way," Twilight explained, stepping forward. "I know how to be cautious, trust me. Now, follow."
"We'll have to lean," Twydra noted, lowering her head.
Maëva mimicked her and began following Twilight while still thinking out loud:
"But are we the unawares? Or is that just for people that haven't gone through a portal before? I mean, it would be weird for the door to open and yet be advised to keep it closed, but still..."
"I think your second solution is the correct one," Sunset said, looking around, admiring the simple but quality work done on the walls.
Twilight's horn glowed a beautiful purple, lighting the way.
"At least it's warmer here," Twydra noticed with relief.
But that only made Twilight frowned as she realized:
"Which is weird... This place has been lost under permafrost for a while, it should be cold here, maybe even more than outside."
"Magic?" Sunset suggested.
"Maybe..."
The hallway led them to a large circular room. What surprised the four of them most was the presence of almost untouched furniture everywhere. Few tables, a chair, two drawers and lots of shelves with large rectangular objects laid on them. Maëva first thought they were books, but quickly realized they were just big sculpted pieces of rock.
"I thought this would be a temple," Twilight said, looking around them. "But it mostly looks like... A house."
"Or a research lab," Twydra pointed out.
"But... Those are ruins from a time before Equestria even existed..." Sunset muttered. "It sounds wrong for it to be a research lab."
"We don't know much about the culture before the princesses," Twilight told, flying off to inspect the shelves closer. "We have the story of the tribes, but was there anything before that? Were they as primitive as we think they were? Or merely the remains of a collapsed society?"
"Or, an isolated but very advanced population could have created the portals," Twydra suggested.
"We do have similar legends, back home," Maëva realized. "Ancient people, very advanced. Some even say their technology was gifted by the old mages."
"Maybe, maybe..." Twilight cautiously muttered, more interested by what she was looking at. "Are those...?"
She picked up one of the stones from the shelves and held it in front of her, squinting. Sunset nodded to Maëva, silently asking to move up to the alicorn, which Maëva complied with. Once close enough, the leftmost head was able to look at what the princess was observing.
"Runes?" Sunset said, surprised, seeing the small engravings on the rock. "Storage runes?"
"I think they're... text," the alicorn muttered, astonished. "Hold on."
She quickly turned on her horn and coated the stone with her magic. The runes glowed a dim gray, but it didn't last long. Yet, Twilight didn't seem that disappointed.
"It's text! Those are magic books!" the alicorn exclaimed.
"Where's the text?" Maëva curiously asked, as she was not seeing any and guessed those three symbols couldn't really be called a text.
"There's none. It's either a blank one, or it's been erased."
Twilight quickly grabbed another and repeated the process, then one further away, both with the same results as the first one.
"Either that person didn't take many notes, or they erased them all," Sunset concluded, looking at the unfruitful results.
"What about this one?" Twydra suddenly asked.
They all looked her way, following her eyes. On one of the tables, another one of those pieces of rocks was deliberately placed in plain view.
Twilight landed in front of it, taking it in her magic, throwing one more analysis. The runes glowed a bright blue, before turning red. Yet, this time, they stayed on.
"It's denying me access," the princess said. "I think it doesn't like my magic."
"Can I try to touch it?" Maëva asked.
"I was about to propose that," Twydra nodded. "For those that have stumble d upon the worlds, the path will open. "
"But I went to another world too," Twilight argued.
"But you weren't from another world," her alter-ego responded. "Maëva and I are not from here."
Twilight lower lip raised a bit, in a doubtful manner. Yet, she considered the idea and handed them the rock with her magic.
"Go ahead. We're here for answers."
"Use your tail," Twydra counseled, looking at Maëva. "You don't want your head touching it if it explodes."
"It could explode?" Maëva repeated, arching an eyebrow.
"The message at the entrance said we should be cautious if we're seeking a solution," Sunset reminded. "It could be a trap."
Despite saying this, all of them wanted to try and see what would happen. This place felt so weird, mystical yet unsettling, and they were all very curious. Maëva's life spent in a world where every "tomorrow" was a "maybe" also meant her risk-avoidance wasn't as high as some others. So, without hesitating much, she reached for the rock with her tail and touched it.
Immediately, the red glow turned blue again. The rock was engulfed by the aura emanating from the runes and old ponish letters appeared in the air above it. Twilight rushed closer to read them, but fell over almost instantly when a voice came out of the rock.
"Hydra. Hydra? I see. Possibility number eight it is."
The voice was deep, probably belonging to a young stallion. Twilight got a hold of herself and came back to the rock, while the three heads were leaning on it to listen carefully.
"I don't have much time," the voice continued. "They are about to find me. I need to go. If you find this and it's not the twelfth of Siunarion yet, I'm probably in one of my hiding spots. South of the Ghastly City, below the Shadowy Hills, or on the island west of the Story Bay."
Sunset glanced at Twilight and guessed, from the look on the princess' face, that she had no idea as to what those places were. The voice continued:
"If the number I told you is greater than five, then things are getting much worse than I thought. One world is probably already gone. You need to hurry. I won't be able to intervene anymore, they hate what I found. We both need help."
The letters disappeared, the voice died down, the glow stopped. Silence fell in the room, as the four of them were puzzled by this discovery. Sunset glanced at Twilight, asking:
"There's nothing called Siunarion in Equestria, isn't it?"
"No," the princess said, thoughtful. "That sounds like the name of a month. But not one we have. That message isn't recent, it's from before Equestria. But it sounds like the person behind it somehow predicted a hydra would come."
"He didn't sound certain," Twydra pointed out. "He said if the number I gave you is greater than five , that implies he didn't know in advance."
"Or rather, that he had a bunch of possibilities but didn't know which one would come up," Sunset added.
"And he gave us the number eight," Maëva said. "That doesn't seem like a good sign, isn't it?"
"No, it's not," Twilight confirmed. "But we don't know much more. He did, but we don't. And looks like he was chased for that."
Twilight flew to the shelves, picking stone-books at random, opening them without any results. She looked around for any other tangible elements.
"Everything was deleted," the princess followed. "But his chasers never came to this place, they would have erased the last book otherwise."
"Maybe they got him while he was running away?" Maëva tried. "He had other hiding spots, we just need to take a look there."
"That won't work," Sunset said with a wince, still looking at Twilight for confirmation.
"Why not?" the middle head asked.
"None of those names exist on our maps," Twilight explained. "Story Bay, Shadowy Hills, wherever they are, we don't call them like that anymore. But everything isn't lost either. The Ghastly City may not exist anymore, but we have a place called the Ghastly Gorge."
"And he talked about an island west," Twydra added. "Does Equestria have many islands to the west?"
"There's two, near Luna Bay," Twilight said, rubbing her chin. "But he's oddly unspecific if it's one of the two."
"So, next stop, Ghastly Gorge?" Maëva summed up.
Author's Note
I'm sorry the progress on this one is so slow. Can't seem to focus on one project.
07 - We won't let fate Break our Spirit
"This is silly," Sunset mumbled.
"This is highly impractical," Maëva added.
"We don't really have any other choice," Twilight argued. "We don't know how a hydra's body might react to a teleportation, so we can't use that. And it's too far anyway. Now, don't move too much please."
The alicorn pulled on the thick belts she was strapping around the hydra's belly and necks. Maëva and the others were indeed just laying on an empty flat-car at the Crystal Empire's train station. The massive trunk from which the heads were coming from was so large it didn't fully fit on the car. But, they hadn't found any other mode of transportation for them.
"What happens if there's a tunnel?" Maëva asked, seeing that they were much larger than the train, even if they were to lay on the side.
"It should be wide enough," Twilight reassured. "Just, don't lift your head too much, okay? All three of you."
"Okay," Twydra nodded.
Sunset sighed, complaining:
"It's gonna be a looong ride..."
"How long?" Maëva asked.
"About fifteen hours," Twilight explained, finalizing her work, making sure everything was correctly held together. "The Ghastly Gorge is located a bit south of Ponyville. There's no station there, but the tracks pass right next to it. We'll stop the train at it so we don't have to walk."
Maëva was more concerned about the fifteen hour thing. That would be a long time to just lay and do nothing. Sure, Twydra and Sunset were easy enough to talk to, but still.
"You're leaving?" suddenly said a voice.
Maëva and the others looked up, seeing Flurry Heart flying down towards them.
"We're going to further our investigation," Twilight explained.
"Oooh, can I come?" the young princess asked, landing on the car, next to the hydra.
"I'm not your parents, Flurry," the purple alicorn pointed out. "Why don't you ask them?"
"Heeeeh..." Flurry said with a bored face, looking away.
Twilight rolled her eyes, before saying:
"At least leave a note for them or something."
"That doesn't sound like you..." Sunset said to Twilight, arching an eyebrow, thinking she was too compliant.
"Trust me," she replied with a resigned look on her face. "I've been her aunt for long enough to know she won't take no for an answer."
Flurry giggled, covering her mouth with one hoof, defending herself:
"You make it sound like I'm a bad niece!"
"Well, maybe you aren't all the time," Twilight playfully replied. "But I remember a few occasions where someone had to be saved from her parent's wrath after doing some shenanigans."
"That was a long time ago."
"Sure," Twilight said with a little smile on her face. "Six months was a long time ago. Now come on, take a seat inside, we're about to depart."
"I think I'll stay with them."
Flurry nodded towards the tied hydra.
"As you wish," Twilight said. "Don't do anything dangerous."
"You know me," the young princess replied.
"That's exactly why I'm saying this!"
Twilight went to the head of the train, still laughing a bit. Flurry took place on the flat-car, right next to the three heads.
It didn't take long for the train to start moving. They all heard the locomotive whistle, the engines picking up momentum, as they passed by the station. Maëva looked at the princess, asking naively:
"Why are you coming?"
"I'm bored," she plainly answered, watching the city getting further away, before she put her eyes back on the middle head, smiling. "And I like you."
"Huuu, thanks?" Maëva said, caught off guard. "Shouldn't you warn your parents, like Twilight said?"
"I've already done it, don't worry," Flurry reassured with a smile. "My mom knew I would follow you and this whole story anyway."
"And Cozy Glow?" Maëva asked. "She is doing research on the portals for us."
"She'll find me, if she wants to."
There was a good amount of confidence in her words. Which Maëva found both admirable and a bit harsh, purposefully leaving her friend without telling her, all while being certain she would be able to find her anyway.
"Anyway," Flurry said. "Where are we going?"
The journey was long, but at least Maëva was able to learn more about this world, and Twydra too. Things are easier to picture when you have an alicorn that can magically project you a map of the land and reenact important historical events.
Yet, after a while, things inevitably got boring. Sunset had begun her nap about one hour in, and Twydra soon followed. Maëva and the princess discussed for a bit, but they too fell in Luna's arms. The night falling halfway through their travel didn't help.
They were all woken up by Twilight, coming to see them.
"We're here!"
"About time..." Flurry grumbled while stretching her wings. "It's night..."
Maëva opened her eyes, about to answer, but suddenly froze. Twydra yawned, while Sunset's head went slightly up, looking around her. Twilight was busy undoing their belts and Flurry caught Maëva looking at the sky with a mute surprise.
"Something's wrong?" the young princess asked.
The middle head slowly got out of her day-dreaming, but still wondered with a distant voice:
"Is this how your night sky usually looks...?"
Flurry looked up, seeing the usual darkness and the stars around, with the moon, present as ever.
"Yeah, I know, pretty boring, isn't it?" she said with a sigh.
"Boring?" Maëva repeated, astonished. "You call that boring?"
"What is it then?" Flurry asked with an arched eyebrow.
"You have stars!" Maëva replied, shocked and almost outraged by Flurry's reaction. "So many of them, the sky isn't just an empty void! There's light, your sky is purple! Your moon is so big and bright!"
"I... guess you could say that?" Flurry said, looking at the others, seeking a little help.
"I understand her reaction," Twydra nodded with empathy. "Since the Collapse in our world, the sky has been gone as well."
"It doesn't even look close to what it was in mine before," Maëva said. "I've seen pictures, but from what I've been told, most people couldn't even see the night sky properly because of cities."
"If you go in Canterlot, it's about the same effect," Sunset reassured. "You won't see many stars in the streets."
"Girls?" Twilight suddenly cut, gathering their attention. "We have a mystery to solve and worlds to save."
"Right," Maëva said, getting up and off of the car.
She looked around. They were in a grassy plain, with what she supposed to be a forest in the distance. She looked at the other side of the train and saw that they were near a cliff. The Ghastly Gorge was right next to them, barely a couple of meters away.
"How do we head down?" Sunset asked, coming to the same observation.
"We stopped next to a path," said Twilight. "Everyone is ready?"
Maëva stretched her legs, numbed by the journey, before she nodded. Sunset and Twydra were also ready, while Flurry was already hovering over the gorge.
"Then let's go."
They went down a narrow slope carved into the side of the cliff, Twilight ahead with her horn casting a purple light all around them, Flurry flying around.
"I've been doing research while we were on the train," the princess of friendship explained. "It turns out the Ghastly Gorge was formed by a river a few thousand years ago, unlike the Galloping Gorge, which is still an unexplained feature. But what puzzles most geological experts is that it's way too deep for such a small river."
"Sooo, magic was involved?" Sunset guessed, being used to that kind of explanation.
"It isn't a seriously studied hypothesis," Twilight confessed. "But we might find something that proves the opposite."
As they went down, Maëva looked at the bottom of the gorge. A thin stream of water was running at its lowest part, glittering under the moonlight. Night felt so different here, wondrous, almost like a dream of its own.
"What's that hole for?" Flurry suddenly asked, casting light into a huge cave on the side of the cliff.
"Careful!" Twilight yelled, scared. "Those are-"
Flurry got her answer when a yellow eye the size of a foal opened in the cave, less than a meter away. The young alicorn yelled, only for a quarray eel to jump out of its hiding spot, jaws opened and ready to swallow Flurry Heart. She quickly flew away, hardly dodging it.
"... quarray eels' nests," Twilight finished in a sigh.
"T-Thanks," Flurry said, panting, a hoof against her chest. "Do those things not sleep!?"
"You have eels on earth?" Maëva rhetorically asked.
"We have hydras," Sunset pointed out.
"Right..."
It's true that this wasn't the most surprising thing here. Following Twilight, and cautiously avoiding the holes in the walls, Maëva and the two heads accompanying her arrived at the bottom of the gorge.
"So, what now?" she asked. "We randomly search through the canyon? At night?"
"Pretty much," Twilight confirmed. "I'm really worried about that number we were given, I feel like we don't have much time."
"There's a problem, though," Sunset said.
"Yes, I know..." Twilight hopelessly sighed, looking away.
"That is?" Flurry asked, a question shared by Maëva.
"This place isn't the great north," Sunset explained. "Ponies do come here every once in a while. If there were ruins, they would have been found a long time ago."
"So... We came here for nothing?" Twydra asked, not that she was believing it.
"Maybe we'll find some clues," Twilight tried to convince herself of. "We know that we are searching for something, unlike everycreature who's been here before."
"What about the eels nest?" Maëva suggested.
All turned their heads to her, not really getting the point she was trying to make.
"We'll try to avoid it?" Sunset guessed.
"No, I mean..." Maëva stopped for a second, searching for a way to explain it the best she could. "The eels have been living here for a while, right? And no one would get close to them, nor their nest, in those holes. What if what we're searching for was behind?"
Twilight's face illuminated, understanding the implication. She thought out loud:
"No one would have found it, it would have been avoided! That could make sense."
"So, we're just going to remove some creatures from their nest?" Sunset said, arching an eyebrow.
"I could ask Fluttershy to help us," Twilight supposed. "But it's the middle of the night."
"I'm pretty sure we could deal with them easily," Twydra said, as if it was obvious.
"I agree with that," Flurry added.
"What do you suggest?" the other alicorn asked, curious.
The young princess simply nodded towards the hydra, as Twydra replied:
"Look at us. I don't think they'll try to eat something twice their size."
"Don't count on that too much," Twilight warned. "They can be dangerous creatures and you'll have to move head first since the tunnels are small."
"I'll just add a shield," Flurry said, before being struck by a new idea. "Oooor I could finally put my battleaxe to use!"
"Shield will do," Twilight sighed. "Lead the way, Flurry. But I won't be responsible if you get eaten, you'll have to explain that to your parents yourself."
"How would she-" Maëva started, not sure to understand.
"Works for me!" the young alicorn said, happily trotting towards one of the holes in the cliff, horn ready.
As soon as she stood in front of it, a quarray eel jumped out of it, maws wide opened and teeth out, only to close them on a yellowy transparent rock-solid shield.
"Hi," the princess said with a smile, facing the confused creature trying to chew on her shield. "We would like to visit your nest, but don't worry, we won't take anything belonging to you. Careful, you'll break your teeth if you keep on doing that."
The creature didn't seem to really comprehend what Flurry was saying, too busy biting the magical sphere.
"Don't harm them," Twilight warned.
"I know, I know," Flurry said, waving a nonchalant wing. "I have a spell for that."
A beam of light was cast towards the eel, making it freeze for a second. It released the shield, looking even more confused, though unharmed, then suddenly, its eyes were filled with little hearts and the creature immediately rushed back into its cave.
"There, we're good for a few minutes at least," Flurry proudly said, climbing into the hole.
"What was that spell?" Maëva whispered to Sunset.
"Probably a love spell. She's the daughter of the princess of love, after all."
"So that eel is going to...?" the middle head asked with a bit of disgust.
"Don't think about it too hard," Sunset recommended. "It's nature."
"You're following or what!?" Flurry suddenly called from inside the tunnel.
"We're coming!" Maëva answered, moving her large body through the barely wide enough entrance, Twilight following in her steps.
Flurry's horn was glowing better than a flashlight, and in all directions. But this reminded Maëva of the last time she had been in a narrow cave, with someone lighting the path for her.
As she lost herself in her own memories, she didn't pay any attention to the walls of the cave, first roughly dug in the rock by the eels, draining water and alike, with numerous branching paths left and right, a whole gallery unveiled itself. But Flurry Heart proceeded straight ahead. Behind, Twilight was engraving arrows with her magic on the floor, indicating their path of arrival as well as to which way they went with a smaller arrow.
But then, the tunnels opened up. The walls along their way became carved with runes, symbols, abstract landscapes worn out by time.
Sunset and Twydra both looked at it with a mute fascination, but Twilight was straight out excited. She felt the breeze of the past passing on her coat, a floor that no hooves had tread on for millennia, a truth waiting to be discovered. And, in front, Flurry was just glancing left and right, seeking for the next source of danger and unknown.
As they made their way deeper, Twilight felt her hooves become wet, and she began to understand what might have transpired here. As she realized that, Flurry in front suddenly exclaimed:
"Oh wow!"
Maëva got out of her drifting memories, coming back to a vision straight up from an adventure movie. The tunnel led to a gigantic place, carved in the rock, that Flurry quickly enlightened with her magic.
It was a gigantic circular city, or at least what was left of it. Twenty meters high, from the ground to the roof, which was curved like inside a cathedral. The walls spotted numerous small openings, windows and doors, seemingly leading in the empty air, just like the enormous towers supporting the structure. They too were hosting dwellings and probably old amenities, surrounded by streets and squares. Everything was overgrown with moss, mushrooms and cave plants, whose roots spread over the buildings and onto the small streams of water flowing down the avenues.
But what prevented the group from judging just how big this place must have been was that most of it had collapsed. Only one pillar was left standing, right next to another crumbled one. The roof of the cave had fallen down onto the pavement below, and most of the city was trapped under rocks, inaccessible.
The three headed hydra was finally able to stop leaning, and they all marveled at this ancient construction. But Twilight, after having trouble going around them since they were blocking the tunnel, was the most shocked of all.
"I... can't believe it..." she muttered.
Flurry, on the other hand, wasn't looking that impressed at all, as she noted with detachment:
"Well, I hope our target isn't under the rocks."
"This is a massive discovery!" Twilight said, jumping with excitement, little sparkles in her eyes.
"Aaaaand, we lost her," Sunset and Flurry sighed at the same time.
Maëva was about to ask what they meant by that, but she was cut short by Twilight suddenly flying off into the city, looking at the windows and the dwellings, as well as the crumbled ruins.
"Welp, we might as well look around too," Flurry concluded. "Even though I'm not sure what we're looking for."
"Let's try and find the same runes as the one we found in the north," Sunset advised. "Maybe our mysterious stallion left a clue to find his hiding spot."
"But he did say south of the G hastly C ity ," Twydra pointed out. "We found the city, but not what's south of it."
"True, we should search for something in the south," Maëva approved. "Though... Where is south here?"
"Auntie probably has a spell for that," Flurry said, looking at Twilight flying through the ruins.
The young princess saw her haunt squint, as if she was bothered by something the others couldn't see. Aside from Twydra, who muttered:
"Something is off here..."
"What is it?" Sunset asked.
"Look at the habitations," the head on the right said, nodding towards the walls. "There are doors standing in mid-air, there's no stairs, no threshold to land on. Were the creatures living here all pegasus? Alicorns? Why live underground, then? And even then, we'd expect something for them to land on, at their doorstep. But none of that here."
"Maybe they didn't lock the doors, so they entered their houses flying?" Sunset guessed.
"But the entrances aren't really wide enough for winged creatures," Maëva noted, also finding this very curious.
As they were asking themselves those questions, Flurry was still observing her aunt. Twilight had landed in one of the streets, looking at the pavement with an unreasonable interest, more precisely the slightly over-elevated thin middle-lane that cut the street in half. She then looked up at the wall in front of her, thinking as if she was on the brink of figuring out something. Which didn't take long, as she briefly tapped one of the bricks in the middle lane, and it began to glow.
Flurry took off, going towards her with a burst of interest, while a white magical line shot out of the brick, and straight to the foot of one door, high in the wall, linking the two. The line suddenly spread into a translucent ramp, leading from the street to the house. Flurry stayed in mid-air, near her aunt.
Twilight took a step on it, and began to climb the ramp. It was, for all intents and purposes, fully solid. She jumped on it, to make sure, while her niece commented:
"Only a magically advanced civilization could do that."
"It's better than Equestrian magic," Twilight agreed in a whisper, still standing on the ramp. "But to base a whole city around it and have it last so long... Either, they were geniuses of magic and that kind of thing was easy for them, or they were very specialized."
"But they made the portal," Flurry added. "So, they were advanced. Which only begs the question: Where did they go?"
"And why was the threat of worlds collapsing something they couldn't accept, or couldn't fix?" Twilight wondered, in a contained excitement.
While they were discussing, the three-headed creature left behind went on a bit of a walk in the large street-ring circling the city.
"No offense, but I can't wait until I'm independent again," Sunset sighed, looking at her body taking steps she didn't mean.
"I mostly miss my arms," Maëva said, heading for the south of the ruins.
Other tunnels led to this place, or departed from it, depending on how one might view it. Maëva was heading for the farthest one, thinking south might be that way.
"Magic seems so useful as well," Twydra added. "I don't get how you abandoned your horn, Sunset."
"Hands are pretty, well, handy too," the leftmost head replied, arching an eyebrow, finding that a bit odd coming from Twydra, with her history with magic. "And I had most of my friends at Canterlot High anyway."
"Sure," Twydra agreed with a distant voice. "Friendship is a form of magic on its own, I guess..."
Sunset giggled, thinking she sounded exactly like Twilight from this world.
"Hey, hum..." Maëva suddenly interrupted, stopping her stroll. "Is this normal?"
She was staring at the wall, and both heads followed her gaze.
In place of the usual dwellings, there was a gap in the wall. A long slit, as if the rock had been cut open by a giant blade, in a part of the wall with no windows or doors nearby. And, behind the ten meters high slice, Maëva could see something. A small, red glow, slowly pulsating.
"I think we found something," Sunset muttered, looking above Maëva's head, before turning away, shouting. "Twilight!"
The alicorn came in flying, still a bit too excited and smiling, as the heads moved back.
"What is i-Oh!"
Twilight looked at the slit too thin to let anyone pass through and saw the light behind. After examining the opening up and down, she cast a little ball of light into it, and while it did reveal a bit of a room behind, the light was immediately stopped and thrown right back at Twilight's face, hitting it and throwing her flight off for a few seconds.
"What was that!?" she shouted out of surprise.
"Repealing barrier would be my guess," Sunset said with a little giggle.
"Someone protected this place against magic, but not against the trials of time," Twydra concluded.
Twilight frowned, looking around, feeling the wall with her hooves. Flurry, who had just arrived by Maëva's head's side, looked at her aunt inspecting the structure, before she rolled her eyes and turned on her own horn.
A bolt of yellow light went straight for the wall, coating a huge square portion of it in the princess' magical aura.
"There, we know where it reaches," Flurry stated with a slightly smug tone, feeling pride in outdoing her aunt. "Now we-"
She was cut short by the whole net of magic going straight back on her horn and face, covering them like a used towel. She quickly got rid of it, looking pissed, which was only made worse by Twilight's little stare, with a smile that said "See? That's why you take precautions". The princess of friendship then said with a self-righteous voice:
"So, after elaborately studying the structure, I've deduced that the place is engulfed in a protective enchantment meant to repel magic spells and preserve the whole structure, including the rocks. It is a very advanced magic, which explains why it lasted for so long, though I don't really know why the wall was shattered like this. It does seem to be the result of a strong and sudden movement in the rock, as if the enchantment had failed for a moment. Maybe a brute force attempt at breaking the spell."
Twydra frowned at the last two sentences, asking:
"Is it the place we're looking for?"
"Well," Twilight said, spawning a magical compass right next to her. "We are at the southernmost point of the city, so this could be it."
"So, how do we go in?" Maëva asked. "If it's protected?"
"It is protected against magic and natural movements in the rocks," Twilight answered. "But it is not protected against physical force. The enchantment doesn't cover that."
"Oh, great!" Flurry said, looking at the hydra. "Go on, bulldoze your way through!"
"Bulldozers exist in this world...?" Maëva thought to herself, before saying out-loud. "I don't have claws, remember?"
"You have a tail," the young alicorn argued.
Maëva looked at her long appendage. It was indeed quite massive, but still, would that break a wall?
"I'm not sure about that," Sunset winced.
"Me neither!" Twilight shouted from far away, as she had gone without anyone noticing. "Now, duck!"
All four of them turned, barely in time to see a gigantic rock flying their way. Flurry teleported herself away, while the hydra just about had time to dodge the projectile. It flew right above its heads, crashing into the wall and creating a larger opening.
"Are you crazy!?" Flurry shouted to her aunt, half angry, half amazed.
Twilight landed right net to the hydra, adjusting her mane with style and confidence, declaring, looking at her hoof with false modesty:
"I've also calculated the exact amount of force required to make the wall crumble. Couldn't risk breaking something important in the process."
Maëva straightened up her head, while Twydra and Sunset were still scared panting.
"I should feel my heart racing!" Twydra yelled in shock. "I am scared but my body doesn't react!"
"Oh. Guess the heart depends on me?" Maëva realized with nonchalance.
"How are you acting so calm!?" Twydra said. "We almost died!"
"Force of habit...?" Maëva replied, shrugging as best as her non-existent shoulders could.
"I would have stopped the rock if you hadn't ducked away," Twilight reassured. "I'm not that careless."
"Right..." Sunset said with no belief towards that fact.
"Now, onto exploring!" Twilight happily declared.
Maëva looked at the now large hole in the rocks. A dark place awaited them and, in the middle, she could see it, that thing with a red pulsating glow. It was a map.
Author's Note
It feels a bit weird to have a story where it's mostly dialogues. It's a real change from what I usually do.
08 - As we Sink into the Void
"No messages left this time," Sunset concluded.
The hiding spot was nothing more than an elaborate home office, with its "regular" entrance being a hidden passageway in one of the eels' tunnels. A few books here and there, some blank ones, others about magic. At least, from what Twilight could understand. Old ponish had been very well transcribed for common terminology, things that could be found in every trace of the past like the weather, household items and so on, but not for formal scientific language. Before this discovery, most archaeologists in Equestria weren't even sure such a discipline had existed back then.
So, in this dark place, the only understandable thing that remained was that map. Set in a stone, with numerous runes written all around it – grotesque runes at that, according to Twilight. "As if it was a first practice to a new kind of spell," she had even said. The map was, as Maëva had been told, pretty close to what Equestria looked like now, although the streams and mountains were all in the wrong place.
Yet, as the middle head was staring right at it, that small pulsating red glow felt ominous. It was on the west side of the map, on an island. An island that didn't exist, according to Twilight, yet it was there.
The young princess was also looking at it, flying right next to Maëva's head. The hydra had just touched the map, with no results this time.
"Didn't you say the guy that made this talked about a place named Story Bay?" Flurry asked." With an island to its west?"
"He did," Twydra and Maëva confirmed at once.
"Because that island is awfully close to Tall Tale. And there's a bay there instead on that map."
"It could be a sunken island," Twilight admitted as if she had already thought about it, coming back to the map. "This civilization seems to have had a lot of troubles with water. I can tell, judging by the little streams of water in the street and the puddles we met on our way in, that this city was doomed by some kind of flood. Or it was the nail in the coffin."
"A sunken island..." Maëva thought to herself in a whisper, reminiscing bad memories.
"Does it ring a bell?" Twydra asked.
"The island where my little brother was sank... A few months ago..."
For once, Maëva was showing genuine grief. Her eyes were distant, her voice less detached, and it only worried her companions even more.
"I'm sorry..." Twilight said.
"It's fine," Maëva replied, shaking her head a bit to go back to the present time. "It was bound to happen at some point. He always wanted to visit the world, to travel and see what was left of its beauty. He said he had fun imagining what it could have looked like before the Collapse."
Flurry looked at the middle head with a sad concern, thinking about something, briefly glancing at her aunt who had seemingly come to the same conclusion. So, Flurry gently said to Maëva:
"I don't think I've asked you but... was he your only family?"
It sounded silly. So absurd, yet so obvious. She had been in a world where anyone could die any day, where earthquakes were as prevalent as rain, where your friends could get eaten up in front of you. A world where islands would sink. Of course, at some point, her parents and relatives would probably be...
Sunset knew the answer already, for Maëva had already talked about that before.
"He was..." Maëva said, before clearing her throat, realizing she had a really pitiful tone. "That's why I followed my friend to the portal. I had nothing left, aside from her."
From one awkward topic to another, the ambiance didn't really brighten. And Maëva noted the embarrassed faces around her.
"I'm fine," she reassured. "I am used to it. Honestly, I should thank you all, you've actually given me something to hope for. Maybe not for my world, but for yours, Sunset and Twydra. I really wish we find something in those ruins that can help you make the Collapse stop."
"Thanks," Sunset kindly said with utmost sincerity. "But I truly wish we can do something for your world too. It sounds so different from ours, I hope we can visit it someday."
"As a hydra, we would get nuked instantly," Maëva laughed.
The others didn't know what "nuked" meant, but laughed nonetheless. At least, Maëva was laughing. Though, it didn't last.
"There doesn't seem to be any portals around here," Twilight noted with a slight sigh after this small interlude. "But I'm sure I'll learn more with those books, once I can decipher them."
"Hey, I have an idea," Flurry suddenly said. "You go back to Canterlot with them, you work on it with the specialists of old ponish. Meanwhile, we go to that sunken island."
Twilight raised a doubting eyebrow.
"And leave you in charge of everyone's safety?"
"Whaaaat?" Flurry asked, way too shocked and hurt for it to be sincere.
"I'd rather have Sunset take things in her hooves," Twilight followed, not buying it.
"Don't count on the hooves part too much," Sunset replied with a little smile. "But other than that, you can trust me, Twilight."
Flurry folded her legs, pouting.
"But I'm a princess, and she's not."
"And sometimes, a princess must realize she's not the best leader available for a specific task," Twilight pointed out.
"Urh..." Flurry sigh with exasperation.
Twilight flew right in front of her, feeling her niece might need things to be a little more explicit.
"You'll listen to Sunset, do I have your word for it?" Twilight firmly asked.
"Yes..." the young alicorn mumbled, looking away.
Twilight's face only got closer to Flurry's, with an accusatory stare. They both knew what the aunt expected and, for a second, Flurry looked truly embarrassed, until she finally said:
"Cross my hooves and all my plumes, if I lie, my mother looms."
The three hydra heads looked at each other with a shared confusion, but Twilight seemed happy with it, as she moved away from her niece a bit with a bright smile.
"Great! Then I'll be seeing you!"
The princess immediately flew away with her loot of books levitating by her side, adding from a distance:
"I'll tell the train driver to turn around! And be careful with the eels on the way out!"
Sunset and Flurry pushed a sigh at the same time, the former simply saying:
"Twilight when she finds a book..."
"Yep..." the young alicorn added.
Twydra gave them a side eye, frowning a bit, which Sunset caught and immediately replied:
"No offense, of course. It's just funny to see a princess acting that way."
"Yeah, sure," Twydra replied with a slightly offended tone.
Maëva cleared her throat, gathering their attention as she asked:
"Shall we get going then? We have a missing island to find."
Eating while strapped onto a train had probably been the worst part of this whole journey, and the hydra had to endure it once again, this time for another sixteen hours, until they arrived to the west city of Tall Tale. A place that the map actually showed as a bay.
They weren't in the city per say. Letting a hydra roam free in the streets would have been the best way to cause an unnecessary panic. Which was a shame from Maëva's point of view, since she could see the tall buildings from a distance and thought those were much more like the ones from the big cities in her world.
Not that many were left standing in them, as far as she knew, but still.
Instead, the little group was standing by the tracks, in the middle of a small forest. This time, in the afternoon.
"So, we're on a land that didn't exist back then, looking for a land that doesn't exist anymore," Sunset summed up. "Anyone have any idea as to where we could start?"
The three heads instinctively looked at Flurry Heart, who took a step back.
"Don't stare at me like that, I don't know what happened! I'm sure if auntie was there, she would have a ton of theories about that, but-"
"Well, first, there's a river nearby," Twydra pointed out. "And that one was also on the map, so maybe it's sediment deposits which are responsible for the shore advancing in the sea and closing the bay."
"Say what now...?" Maëva asked, squinting.
Flurry was also thinking with a facial expression that was close to "Wait, I think I actually remember something like that." while Sunset nodded:
"Make sense, I guess. Thousands of years have probably passed, so the terrain had time to change naturally."
"But what about the-" Maëva started, before being interrupted by Flurry suddenly raising a hoof, straightening her head like a deer who hears a twig crack in the forest.
"What?" Sunset asked.
"I just heard something..." the princess distantly said, cautiously looking around. "Like..."
The silence of their surroundings was suddenly cut by the sound of something tumbling through the branches of the trees. Or rather, someone, judging by the little "ouch!" and "ow!" it made. Before they knew it, a salmon-pink pegasus fell right in front of the little group, crashing on the ground.
"I'm not made for long-distance flights..." she mumbled against the soil.
"Cozy?" Flurry said, surprised, walking to her. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, I just flew for too long..."
The young alicorn helped her friend to get up, while Maëva silently admired the fact that Flurry had some kind of Cozy-radar that allowed her to sense her arrival in advance. But Sunset wasn't that enthusiastic about it.
"What is she doing here?"
"Well, obviously she was looking for us," Flurry said, looking at Cozy. "I'm surprised by how fast you came, though."
"I was told you were headed for the Ghastly Gorge two days ago," the pegasus explained, brushing off some leaves stuck in her feathers. "I figured that by then you'd be around here. But I didn't expect you to be that fast."
All in the group, aside from Flurry, looked even more suspicious of Cozy. Even Maëva understood that something was off.
"How did you know that we would be here?" Twydra asked.
"Because I knew you wouldn't find the Shadowy Hills, so the island was the only place you could go next."
"That doesn't fully answer the question," Sunset replied. "You knew the Story Bay was around here?"
"Gee, you're not the only one with a map, you know?" Cozy said, rolling her eyes out of exasperation.
"You know we have a map!?" Twydra exclaimed with wide eyes.
"Yes, yes," the pegasus sighed. "And a whole bunch of other things, but I can't tell you right now. I'm not certain about anything, and I don't want to influence your own conclusions. But I think I've actually found the Shadowy Hills by accident."
All three heads looked baffled, while Flurry only giggled before following:
"You'll tell us about that when you think it is time then. We're currently looking for a sunken island."
"I'm glad we have your magic to help us, then," Cozy said, turning to her friend with a smile. "I don't think any of us can breathe underwater."
"We should get going," Maëva suggested. "Before someone finds us and runs away screaming for their life."
Sunset was about to protest, but she looked at Twydra to make sure that she wasn't the only one with a problem here, only to see the third head reluctantly bobbing side to side and sighing, as if to say "whatever, let's just go". So, despite being the official leader here and having trust issues with Cozy, Sunset stayed silent. The two ponies opened the way, and Maëva followed.
The most logical thing was to get to the shore, since they were looking for an island. Though, beyond that, they didn't really know what it might look like.
After a bit of walking along the coast, avoiding the port of Tall Tale nearby and the city altogether, Twydra suggested that, if the island had sunk, it should still be somewhat higher than its surrounding, and so a map of the local seabed could be useful.
"But I don't see why I should be the one going to town for it," Flurry objected to her friend after a small discussion.
"Because you are a princess," Cozy exposed. "If I go, they're going to ask me who I am, or worse, recognize me. Either way, they will say something along the line of why should I give a map to a stranger? But you, they'll be all too happy to help a princess."
Flurry looked away, grumbling, forced to internally admit she was right, saying:
"Fine. Wait here then."
"Take your time," Cozy invited, to the three heads' dismay.
"I'm sick of waiting," Sunset sighed, as the princess was taking off to the city. "The train ride was already boring enough."
"I don't know, I kinda like it when nothing happens," Maëva thought out loud.
"Yeah, that's a change for sure," Twydra added with a bitterer tone directed at Sunset.
"Sorry," the left head apologized. "I don't know what you two have been through."
"Alright," Cozy said, turning to them, suddenly looking serious. "Now that she's gone, we can talk. What did you hear in those ruins?"
Of all the times Sunset would have crossed her arms if she had some, this would have been the one time she would have done it the hardest.
"Oh so now you're showing your true intentions," she said, raising an eyebrow at the least.
"Flurry just hates rehashes, that's why I waited," Cozy boringly explained. "Do I have to repeat the question?"
"He gave us the number eight," Maêva tried to remember. "Said that anything above five was pretty bad news, that we didn't have much time. And then the names of the places."
"He also said that one world was probably already gone," Twydra added, staring at the pegasus.
That last part made Cozy frown and she suddenly looked thoughtful.
"Any idea about which one they're talking about?" Sunset asked. "Is Maëva's world soon to be over?"
"No, I think he was talking about another one," Cozy distractedly said. "From what I've gathered, there are at least three worlds outside of Equestria that were, at some point, linked by portals."
"Three?" Sunset said as she raised her head with surprise. "To think that we only knew about Canterlot High."
"The third one I couldn't find much about," Cozy explained. "But it appears to be the first world that was reached by portals."
"But by gone, he means..." Maëva started.
"Gone," Cozy said with an emphatic sigh. "Ceased to exist. With everything it ever had in it. And I fear the next one might be yours, Maëva. Then, it'll be Canterlot High."
Sunset was outraged at this revelation. She shouted:
"Why didn't you say it sooner!?"
"Because I said I'm not sure about anything," Cozy muttered through gritted teeth. "Those things take time to research, that's why I'm with you now. Now if you'll excuse me."
The young pegasus headed for a nearby tree, lying against it as she continued:
"I had a long flight and I need some rest. Warn me when Flurry is back."
Sunset arched an eyebrow.
"Really? You're going to sleep now?"
"Hey, let me enjoy a rest during a sunny afternoon. We don't get many of those in the Crystal Empire. Especially ones with the sea in the background. "
Cozy closed her eyes, getting comfy against the tree, facing the shore. The three heads looked at each other with a bit of confusion, lost by how the conversation had suddenly ended.
"Sooo, what do we do?" Maëva asked Sunset, since she was in charge.
"For now, we wait," she replied, before biting her cheek. "Can't believe a whole universe disappeared... Without us ever knowing about it."
Twydra's eyes went to Sunset, as a terrible thought had come to her mind.
"... How do you think it looked for its inhabitants? Painful...?"
"A relief, I'd say," Maëva sighed. "If their world has gone, so have their problems."
"That's a bit harsh," Sunset pointed out, raising an eyebrow, finding that extremely out of place from Maëva.
But the middle head looked at her with a strange bored resignation, answering:
"If their world vanished, it probably collapsed before mine. Which means some people in there spent even more time amongst catastrophes, plagues, wars and monsters. Some even their whole lives, with no solutions, no hope in sight, as everything was getting worse. I can't even fathom how worse things could go in my world, but I'm sure glad I'm not there to find out."
"Monsters?" Twydra repeated. "You didn't talk about monsters."
"No one wants to talk about them," Maëva sighed, sitting on the ground as much as her cumbersome body allowed her to. "They appeared... I'd say five years after the Collapse. Randomly coming into existence and disappearing a moment later, without a warning, snatching people along their way."
Twydra's and Sunset's eyes filled with worries. Would that happen to Canterlot High too? Why? Were those monsters the culprits?
"What do they look like?" Twydra risked.
"Weird things, coming out of bad horror stories," Maëva said, her eyes growing distant. "We had big ones first, as in skyscraper-tall. Well, actually we've never seen one of that size in full, only an arm or a gaping mouth would appear, sometimes, crashing down a building or two, before vanishing, never to return again. And nothing made sense on them, long articulations, growths everywhere as if they were some kinds of twisted trees, skin that one could swear was gray yet looked black. Eyes circled with teeth, mouths with irises, just... just a whole lot of scary things, really. Nightmare fuel."
Behind her somewhat usual indifference, Maëva's voice was tainted with a bit of fear, actual fear. Those were unsettling memories for her, not just stories. And the two – or rather three – others listening to her could only empathize. She continued:
"They were coming and going so fast, we couldn't really fight back. No weapons were ready in time. And it stopped, out of nowhere. Then the smaller ones came. They stayed a bit longer, but really it was the same. Just, with house-sized creatures, jumping on people with their strange spring legs, long arms and such. I saw one of them eat a neighbor's cat. And another one ate the neighbor about two weeks later..."
Slightly leaning forward to look at her, Twydra and Sunset exchanged a concerned glance. No wonder Maëva was so weird about dangers and alike. Would those kinds of things come to Canterlot High too?
"... How do you adapt to that...?" Sunset asked, shocked and horrified.
"We don't," Maëva plainly answered. "Thankfully they are not that common. In my town, we had one probably once every month, on average."
"That... still sounds like a lot," Twydra pointed out.
Maëva didn't really have anything to reply this time, instead she just raised her head a little while taking a slow breath in between her non-existent teeth, resisting the urge to say "it is what it is". She still put things into perspective:
"Your world has begun to fall quite recently, so I don't think it will affect you before we sort all of this."
"I hope so..." Twydra muttered. "We've had enough already."
"That'll be fun, if we go to your world to fix the issue," Cozy suddenly said, eyes closed.
"I hope you can bring your magic with you if that's the case," Maëva replied. "If things have gotten worse..."
"We'll see."
It took about two hours for Flurry to come back. A time during which Cozy Glow truly fell asleep, and so did Twydra, while Sunset and Maëva were busy talking about their respective lives. They both realized that, being from very different worlds with drastically opposite circumstances, their future prospects growing up had not quite been... the same. Which made the discussion a bit awkward, for Sunset especially. Thankfully, Flurry came to their rescue.
"Found a map!" the young alicorn proudly said, flying in downwards to the little group, carrying a piece of paper by magic. "And I think our goal is very obvious!"
Maëva stood up and looked at the map displayed by the alicorn. Both her and Sunset had to come really close and squint to see anything, since it was pony-sized, not hydra-sized.
Maëva had never read an ocean map, but this one was pretty explicit. The shore was east, with shallow waters, and the contour lines clearly showed the seafloor going down as it went deeper into the ocean. Aside from one very specific location. The lines drew a series of concentric ellipsoids, showing a raised spot in the sea.
"I can't read the scale, is it big?" Sunset wondered.
"Less than a kilometer in diameter," Flurry answered. "That explains why there's no story about it sinking, it wasn't that big."
"How are we going to get there?" Maëva asked. "Can hydras breathe underwater?"
"No, we'll use magic," Flurry explained.
"I should have guessed that..." the middle head said with a bored face. "Is magic your answer to everything?"
"Yes," Sunset and Flurry replied at the same time.
"Well, at least magic in all its different forms," Sunset nuanced, bobbing her head. "Friendship, love, chaos, and so on."
"Ah, right, you told me about that," Maëva remembered.
"We'll just have to wake up the two sleepy ones and-"
Flurry suddenly stopped mid-sentence, looking at the rightmost head with surprise, whispering:
"How is she doing that?"
Maëva and Sunset followed her gaze, only to see Twydra's head, perfectly standing straight as if she was awake, yet she was still sleeping. A big snore confirmed that.
"Because hydra heads are supposed to take turns sleeping," Cozy suddenly said, one eye open for a few seconds already. "The body can move and the heads will follow."
"You knew?" Maëva asked, surprised.
"I had a hunch," the pegasus shrugged, before stretching against the tree.
"How many things does she know but won't tell exactly?" Sunset mumbled with a contained resent.
"I think we still have to wake her up," Flurry pointed out, flying up to the sleeping head. "Ayo, Twydra?"
"I'll fix it!" she suddenly jumped, awakening, before looking around, confused. "I... Where...? Oh, right. Hydra, third head."
"Welcome back," Sunset said with an empathetic smile. "We have our map, we know where to search."
"Oh, that's..." she yawned. "That's great. Sorry, can't cover my mouth."
Cozy suddenly took off, flying to the shore, saying:
"Let's go now. Good luck with the spell, Flurry !"
"On it!" the young alicorn replied, right behind her.
"Follow them," Sunset told Maëva. "I'm sure those two will forget about us if we're too slow."
Maëva began to walk, up to the shore. But the two flying ponies went beyond and, once above the sea, Flurry cast a spell. A big, yellowy translucent boat appeared in mid-air, heavily falling on the waves, splashing the hydra on the shore. Sunset and Twydra winced, closing their eyes because of the salty water in it, but Maëva was looking at the magical boat with shock. It looked like an old galleon, but that thing was big. Flurry landed on the deck, shouting at them:
"Get on board now!"
"Alicorn magic, I swear..." Sunset mumbled.
A large plank deployed itself from the deck and drove itself into the sand at the hydra's feet.
Author's Note
Busy with a lot of things currently, including participations to the Cozy Glow contest.
