Teetering on the edge of the looming forest Twilight paused and took a breath. She was nervous, practically shaking, at the thought of entering the foreboding forest. The extra dark just-before-dawn sky helped matters little. She took a few deep, calming breaths and pulled out her ultimate in calming tools: a list.
Her voice rang unsteady in the early morning air as she quietly mumbled the contents of her list back to herself. Twilight hadn’t been keeping track of how many times she had done this, but if she had she would realize this was the thirteenth time she had read the list aloud on the walk over alone. The pre-daylight hour had been chosen specifically so she would have the most time possible to get to, explore, then leave without having to wander the Everfree at night. It was a good decision, she assured herself, but it did have the somewhat unfortunate downside of letting her anxiety stew in the near-silent darkness of early dawn. As much as she appreciated them, the chirping of crickets and birds did little to still her racing mind.
Much of her anxiety stemmed from the destination of her adventure. The Everfree Forest had been distantly known to her while in Canterlot as a source of infinite frustration at scholars and explorers alike. Intellectually Twilight understood that this forest was dangerous, significantly more so than the already tumultuous Equestrian wilds. From sources she had read, what limited ones there were on the dark forest, she knew that it was home to all manner of dangerous creatures. The deadly assortment of both magical and mundane flora and fauna were only lightly documented, but still heavily warned of. Were that all she knew she would have likely completely ignored the Everfree Forest for as long as she lived.
Much to her academic frustration; however, that was not all she knew. Deep in the forest, near its projected center, was the Castle of the Two Sisters. Sources stated that there should be ruins within its vast woody expanses, it wasn’t hidden knowledge that the seat of Equestria’s power was originally in this forest. But the historic impossibility of entering, traversing, and indeed; making it out alive, made it an incredibly undesirable destination. Most significant questions about that particular era in history could be answered by the local friendly immortal. After all, it really wasn’t worth scholars risking almost certain death just for a chance to research some dirty old stones.
Well, it wasn’t worth it to almost every scholar. A particular purple phenom had it on a first hoofed account that the distant Everfree Castle was practically brimming with ancient knowledge. Moreover, she knew a relatively safe path to get there. The Everfree was somehow even more dangerous at night, to the point where the guards of Ponyville spent nearly their entire local career just watching the treeline after dark. If she and her friends had managed to traverse it in the dead of a pseudo-apocalyptic ‘eternal’ night then Twilight was more than confident in her abilities to traverse the lethal forest during its less lethal day.
With a final deep breath and renewed confidence Twilight Sparkle took her first step into the Everfree Forest. The already limited sounds of the early morning seemed to muffle as she passed the threshold. Freshly confident though she was, she couldn’t help the chill that ran down her spine with the realization that she would be utterly alone. Somehow, despite the ancient threat and very much nonzero chance of failure, her friends at her side had managed to make her first plunge into the Everfree that much less intimidating.
Still though she plunged deeper, deeper and yet deeper into the forbidding forest. Without her friends at her side Twilight couldn’t help her mind as it drifted towards anxiety. Even though she was infinitely more confident about this second expedition she couldn’t help but think about all the previous documentation that she had read. There were dozens of journals detailing centuries of expeditions into the Everfree forest. Twilight was certain now after her first plunge that much of those journals had to be exaggerated. She snorted with incredulity as she recalled one of the more outlandish claims; a pegasus named Harsh Vibe who spoke of the sun and moon moving on their own. Twilight had found it ridiculous even at the time, the grounded realism of the Journal up to that point being the only reason she didn’t dismiss it entirely. A peering glance up at the crack-of-dawn light that filtered through the canopy all the proof she needed.
The purple pony slowed just a bit and pulled out the map she had made in preparation for her journey. It wasn’t a true map in any significant metric, more like a series of guidelines and notable landmarks to look out for. Aside from a measure of approximately how long each leg of the journey should take, it was really little more than a crude line and a couple of sketches. She frowned at the map, then the samey looking forest around her, then back at the map. Cartography, she decided, was not among her talents. Still though, it should be more than enough to make her way there and back. Despite the difference in illumination the forest around her did look vaguely familiar, and if worse came to worst she could always just climb the biggest tree and try to orient herself with Canterlot.
Her train of thought was derailed by sabotage as she suddenly thought about what Spike would do without her. She frowned at the intrusive thought but failed to shake it. She had her reasons for not telling anypony about her departure, and they were good reasons too, but the danger intrinsic to her mission called to mind those close to her. Spike was foremost among them; her friends she knew would be fine. Though likely impacted, her brother and parents were entirely self-sufficient adults. She wondered, not for the first time, if her dragon companion would return to Canterlot to live with Velvet and Light; or if he would stubbornly remain in Ponyville. Perhaps awaiting Twilight’s return that he knew in his heart would never come.
She had left a note. Everypony knew that the Everfree was dangerous.
She shook her head, finally chasing away the rancid thoughts with nicer ones. The Everfree was dangerous but she had survived it before. Knowledge was worth danger. The best things in life are achieved through struggle. Plus, even though the forest was spooky and dark, it had a specific sense of beauty. With a determined trot Twilight continued onward, making note of details in the forest around her as she let her mind theorize on what exactly she would find at the castle.
If her internal sense of time was right it was nearly an hour into her walk when she heard a distinct ‘crunch’ sound from her right. Twilight’s head snapped towards the noise and she took a cautious step away. Empty forest as far as she could see. Not that she could see much in the unnatural and dark wood. She stood perfectly still scanning the trees and mentally chanting any useful spells for nearly five minutes. Eventually, slowly, she began to calm down. She was a little unnerved that she hadn’t seen the twig snapper but for all she knew it could be an as of yet undiscovered species of bird whose calls sound like branches snapping. Somehow Twilight doubted she would be so lucky but pressed on nonetheless.
From that point on Twilight was far more vigilant of any shift in the shape of the forest. She devoted her entire mind to the analysis of her surroundings and would pause or slow down as needed to confirm her safety. She was confident of her path, confident in her skill to evade whatever hazard the forest threw at her, but that didn’t stop her from exercising due caution. All sources pointed to one thing; that as you delved deeper into this forbidden wood it would try to push you out with renewed fervor. Many of the most wild Journal entries and scientific documentation had come from those deepest in the Everfree. She recalled too, with a shudder, that most of these documents were recovered by secondary expeditions. Reports of camps suitable for dozens of ponies utterly empty, and tales of eerily detailed pony statues found deep within the forest gnawed at her anxiety.
And yet, while her step faltered, she pushed on anyway. Those ponies did not have a clear destination. Those ponies all unanimously were in the forest overnight. Those ponies did not have the relative safety of a known trail, and those ponies could not keep the low profile that a single pony could. Twilight kept low, slow, and vigilant.
With her mind focused as it was, Twilight ironically missed most of her travel. As it was she was somewhat startled to find her vision taken up by a certain shoddy rope bridge, and beyond it a distinctly massive castle. She did a double take at the castle and realized that she hadn’t seen much of it at all on her first visit. She looked over the monolithic structure before her, still somehow mostly intact even after a thousand years of utter neglect.
The structure itself was really more of a stronghold encasing a central castle, though the core of the building was consistent with typical post-discord revival. The central structure consisted of the throne room, element chamber, and several other rooms. Twilight’s mind deduced the rest of the core castle’s structure was probably some kind of entertainment hall and a series of personal suites for traveling dignitaries. As for the rest of the fortified complex, Twilight was less sure. To the immediate right and left of the core castle were once two, now one tall tower(s). At an immediate guess Twilight suspected them to be the Princesses personal quarters, but wasn’t entirely sure. Beyond the right tower, the one that was standing, was a layered block structure that took up nearly the entire east wing of the castle. If Twilight knew one thing about architecture it was where to find the library. The building that looked like huge cubical stone bricks stacked at an offset, with massive vaulted windows inlaid in the gaps, simply screamed at Twilight with the promise of old books. To her it was a picturesque depiction of post-Discord era libraries and her rising giddiness wasn’t even slightly dissuaded at the fact that all the windows were long since shattered. So what if a few windows were broken, while Twilight couldn’t be absolutely sure without getting closer the structure itself was likely sound; this architecture was designed by Starswirl the Bearded himself after all.
Prying her vision off of the library she did a quick scan of the rest of the complex. Much to her dismay a significant portion of the rear half, what she could see of it, lay in complete ruin. What she could see of the still standing structure, mostly its leftmost portion, wasn’t much help either way. She couldn’t make heads nor tails of the long and tall buildings. Servant quarters perhaps? Storage? It didn’t matter, she would find out soon enough after all!
Her previous anxiety and general creeping dread were completely abandoned for a newfound sensation of lightness and glee. She was halfway done and there hadn’t even been any inclement weather. With a still reasonable amount of caution Twilight strode across the creaky rope bridge. Now that she was here pretty much specifically to do so she analyzed the bridge itself as she crossed. A notepad and quill appeared from her saddlebags and she began to jot down interesting details. From a cursory examination and a light identification spell she couldn’t find a single enchantment in the bridge itself. She began to hum and noted the bridge’s apparent impossible resilience as good old-fashioned Earth Pony engineering. It was a common expression among archaeologists that once Equuis was a cold rock at the end of time, some Earth Pony building somewhere would probably still be standing.
Twilight stepped on the tip of the drawbridge that she had crossed once before to get beyond the walls of the vast castle. In her book she absently noted that the nearby valley and a pony made moat, not to mention being in the middle of the Everfree Forest, the Castle of the Two Sisters was remarkably well defended. Her note-taking abruptly stopped as she simply stared at the remains of the great Everfree Castle. Had seen the main entrance hall before of course, but now she saw it in the daylight and took it in with detail. The first, and most obvious detail, was the massive and perfectly circular hole that stole nearly a quarter of the building away. Without even casting a spell she could feel very old remnants of great power. Twilight recalled with a grimace that this castle was the last battlefield between Celestia and Nightmare Moon. Observation grounded her giddy mood and she stepped into the castle proper with something approaching reverence.
Now that she had remembered, she couldn’t help but notice the signs of battle everywhere. As she walked up the grand staircase she noticed signs of damage that could not possibly have come from simple erosion. Lines of crumbling rock wider than her torso were scattered everywhere, some places bearing holes big enough to climb into. There was subtler damage too, damage not only implicate of elemental attacks that crumbled and melted stone; but damage to the weave of the arcane itself. Twilight felt it uniquely unnerving to pass to multiple magical dead zones while she walked through the great hall towards the throne room. Dead zones, or null zones, were usually very temporary. The sheer magnitude of colliding forces required to make them last for an hour, not even to mention a thousand years. It made her nervous just to think about it.
Twilight continued through the vast antichamber. To her left and right were small vaulted hallways that worked through the outer wall. On the other side of the room were once a pair of massive double doors, but they had long since fallen to reveal the throne room at the end of a long hall. The rest of the room was likely once meant to house art and beautiful architecture. Unfortunately half of the room was lost to time and erosion, and the other half was lost to a really big hole. Twilight simply marked the room as ‘mostly demolished’ and continued on towards the hall.
As she stepped through the still open doors of the throne room one thing stuck out immediately. The vast chamber was cut directly in two, the right side being completely encompassed with pale silvers and blacks with the left being golds and whites. Normally Twilight would have enjoyed such symmetry but it was dampened for her twofold. Firstly it was telling of a very literal divide between the two Princesses. It was one thousand years of hindsight sure, but Twilight couldn’t help but feel it was obvious there was a disconnect. The other, and somehow more telling reason for her discomfort, was that the golden throne on Celestia’s side of the room was little more than a pile of dirty slag. What were once likely a starkly contrasting pair of thrones, the other a still standing monolith of onyx, were now symbols of utter failure.
No wonder Celestia abandoned this place in a hurry. Putting herself in Celestia’s shoes, Twilight did not blame her in the slightest.
Pulling herself from her stupor Twilight began down the right path, deeper into Luna’s wing, and towards the Library. Despite her note taking Twilight was not here for anthropology. Though she wished she had all the time in the world to meticulously comb through this snapshot in history, Twilight knew that the bulk of any salvageable information would surely be among the books.
She had been right. Oh by Celestia she had been so right. The Everfree Castle’s Library was absolutely gargantuan. Originally she had almost been let down. From the outside the building looked sturdy, but not necessarily big. From the courtyard, as seen through internal windows, it almost looked small. But she was so, so very happy to be wrong. Aside from some obvious but minor spacial dilation enchantments built into the bookshelves to allow for more of them than there really should have been, one would be remiss for mistaking the library as more of a social space. That was, of course, until Twilight looked down the stairs. Even with a reasonably powerful hornlight spell she couldn’t see the corners of the subterranean room, but what she could see was possibly the single richest collection of tomes she had ever seen in her life. Given that she practically lived in the Canterlot archives, that was saying something. When she saw the second staircase that lead even deeper, she nearly fainted.
The purple pony was now sitting on an incredibly dusty, yet surprisingly comfortable, plush chair near the entrance to the ground floor. She had sat down originally to take a brief break and eat something, but now she sat surrounded on all sides by towers of books. She had simply picked up all the ones she found interesting on her way to the chair, with a slight focus on historical texts, and was now happily reading away.
The books here were all archaic, but luckily for Twilight Equish hadn’t drifted much over the last thousand years. Even then it was slow going to get through the rather dense books. Originally she had only been skimming them but she soon stumbled on a fascinating book about the mostly forgotten arcane art of prophecy. Doubly interesting to the scholarly bookworm, this textbook of prophecy focused on the art through the lens of foreshadowing. Written by ‘Verily Given’, it was mostly an instructional manual on various ways ponies could attempt to see the future. It spoke of great oracles doing mystical rituals, tales of ponies reading the future through cards, of gypsy ponies leaning over crystal balls. It even talked about certain prophecies of the past that had come to pass. According to the book, Celestia and Luna’s ascension was one of the oldest original prophecies that had come to pass. “Translated from old Ponin, ‘When pain is implicit in the minds of all, and love is replaced with war, the world will be imbibed in Eclipse. Twin sorcerers shall come forth, and begin the cycle of gods.’” Twilight copied the original Ponin as a note, but chuckled lightly at the implications throughout the translation.
So focused on one of her greatest joys she had picked the worst spot in Equestria, perhaps in Equuis, to zone out. As it was, she violently jolted back to reality by the harsh buzzing of an alarm. She quickly disabled the time-keeping enchantment and righted the stack of notes she knocked over. A quick glance at the nearest window was all the confirmation she needed to prove that it was, in fact, time to go. She had set the alarm before she even left her home knowing she might get distracted. She had even set it a little later than was the most safe allotment of time to walk back to Ponyville. But as Twilight gazed at the piles of books, most of them not even opened, she couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of irrational hate towards the enchanted clock.
She let out a deep sigh and muttered, “Oh well, next time I’ll bring a wagon.”
She stood up and stepped off of her plush seat, then froze. She did not have the instincts of a warrior pony, she barely had the instincts to swallow after chewing, but she suddenly felt very... observed. She did a few quick 360s, gazing out at the library through her literary prison. She noticed a few things which stuck out at her. Mostly, that the bookshelves had been moved. Several shelves looked like something big had pushed them aside. Her eyes followed the path of destruction along the now widened allies until it suddenly stopped about five yards from where she was standing.
For a moment longer she just stared. She knew she was a deep reader but all that wood moving... there was no way. There were even a few dozen books scattered on the floor; how could she possibly have not noticed. And there was the creepy sensation of being watched again! She refocused on the spot where the destruction stopped and sparked her horn to life. She was nervous, sure, but with a huff she cast a simple detection spell. If she was being hunted by some invisible creature she would at least know which direction to run away from. Besides, it wasn’t like her little voyeur had done anything yet, it was an entirely reasonable possibility that whatever had been moving around behind her was entirely benign. She followed the pull of her horn around the room for a moment then felt the tug go...
She looked up.
Floating a mere ten hooves away from her, barely out of her normal field of vision, was what she could only describe as a nightmare. The thing was a rounded ball of flesh with four tentacles, two from each side. The tentacles each ended in a differently colored eyeball, and the thing’s core only possessed a grinning mouth of razor sharp teeth. It hovered there silently for a moment as Twilight was paralyzed with fear. Then all four of its half lidded eyes shot fully open and its mouth was pulled downwards in something approaching a frown. All at once the thing reared back its body in the air and howled an impossible scream that seemed to threaten Twilight’s sanity more than her eardrums.
Out of sheer panic more than anything she tried to take a step away from the creature, only realizing as she came tumbling down that she was still surrounded by several horn-high piles of books. She landed on the ground in a graceless heap and immediately careened her head to face towards the monster. The thing had extended its upper left eyeball and Twilight immediately noticed the glow of magic. The sight grounded her and her mind finally caught up to exactly what was happening. She wasn’t entirely positive what would happen if the creature got a hold on her but she was certain it wouldn’t be good.
Twilight concentrated and fired off a line of directional telekinetic force while she stood. Through some combination of skill, talent, and dumb luck her purplish white beam of force struck the creature’s eye stalk just as it fired off its own spell. Twilight was at this point fully running down the hall, but she noticed the line of fire produced from the creature’s own arcane arts. Her mind was going a million miles an hour, desperately trying to recall everything she knew about combat magic, creatures of the Everfree, and what kinds of magic monsters were supposed to be able to cast. None of it was sticking; however, as Twilight fully dedicated her entire body to only the single thought of ‘run away as fast as possible’.
She ran back towards the throne room and was nearly to the door when she suddenly felt a dullness spread from her spine. Her entire body was spamming and contracting. The purple pony’s body, having been paralyzed in the middle of a full gallop, was sent horn-under-hoof tumbling several hooves before stopping in a statuesque heap. Her vision was rather conveniently a only partly obscured sight of the creature hovering at the end of the hall. Or, actually, it was unfortunate as the unicorn came to realize. The thing was getting closer, and had extended yet another brightly glowing appendage.
She tried to cast another spell, but to her horror whatever this paralytic enchantment she was under extended to her horn. Twilight struggled, twitching and panting on the floor, but she couldn’t even scream. She watched in horror as a quintet of icy projectiles impacted her, though where exactly wasn’t clear. In the corner of her vision she could spy the blunted end of some kind of frost magic spear, but her body refused to obey. She was sure she had just suffered some sort of brutal impact but her body only sent a dull thrum of pain throughout her entire body. That and the agonizing twitching sensation of her muscles fighting against each other.
She watched the creature as it inched closer to her and began charging yet another of it’s eye lasers, the one that had shot the fire. Much to her continued horror, she couldn’t even shut her eyes. Forced as she was to watch her inevitable demise she briefly wondered what that loud thumping sound was. It wasn’t her heart, that was way louder and beating way faster.
Twilight gazed on in a now rather abject sense of terror. The creature’s fiery tentacle flashed at the penile of its charge. Then ‘woosh’ it... was knocked rapidly off course? The hammering sound had reached her, and then charged past. As Twilight saw the figure she quickly realized why she hadn’t been able to identify that rhythmic thumping since the armored biped’s walking made a sound unlike anything she recognized.
It stopped now only a few hooves ahead of her, but it was getting difficult for the injured pony to focus. Though darkness was creeping into her vision she fought to stay conscious, praying to Celestia that this creature was friendly and not just trying to get first dibs on her soon-to-be corpse.
The creature itself was covered head to hoof in a set of incredibly finely crafted bluish green plate armor. It held a bow in its talons which it fired off at an extremely rapid pace, faster than any archer she had ever seen. The bow was made out of some kind of dark wood that the creature expertly fired with pinpoint accuracy. Of the nearly dozen shots fired in only the few seconds she had seen it, eight of them impacted the blob. Two of which impacted the eyes themselves, rendering the hostile mass of flesh partly blind.
It was firing another volley of those ice shards. Twilight wanted to scream out, tried to cast a shield for the armor, but still found herself utterly paralyzed. Though, it seemed as if her fears were unfounded. The armored creature didn’t even try to dodge, and yet the three hoof long projectile icicles shattered on impact. Her vision was fading now, and if she had a choice in the matter her eyes would be closed. As it was, it was all she could do to watch the battle unfold while her breathing slowed.
Her armored defender had closed the distance at this point, several more beams glancing off its armor. Oh, it wasn’t holding the bow anymore. A long, glinting broadsword had now... been plunged into the. Floating. Thing.
Twilight’s eyes were closed now. The last thing she saw was the armored biped rip a huge sapphire from the thing’s mouth.
--
Twilight wrenched her head from the water she was laying in, taking in deep greedy breaths. She was awake, alive, but where in Tartarus was she? She gazed from her spot, propped up on her front legs, but still partly laying in the chest deep water. All she saw, as far as she could see, was endless stars. Despite her movement the water she lay in was perfectly still, reflecting the stars above projecting the illusion of twined infinite skies.
The still water revealed little, and so Twilight pulled herself all the way up and began walking towards the horizon. An errant thought wormed its way into her mind, and so she cast a detection spell for any magics at work here. Concerned as she was for some kind of illusionary trick she was somewhat caught off guard when the probing spell came back as divination. She scrunched her muzzle in confusion then recast the spell. This time it came back as a confused mix of schools. Odd. Very odd.
She looked up again, gazing at the moon hanging low in the sky. Impressively huge as it was she absently hoped it would help to shed some light on her mysterious surroundings. Looking down into the perfectly still water she puzzled as to a sense of wrongness. Squinting again she realized something, the water was a flawless mirror of the sky except for the fact that it lacked a moon.
No, that... couldn’t be right. Something was very wrong here. Wait. The water was changing. A deep streak of crimson was being dragged towards her, projecting waves of crimson across the surface. Before her eyes she saw the red stop. The waves of the water shifted, turning to the waves of a deep red mane.
Something hard gripped her hindleg and she let out a brief yelp before she was pulled impossibly deep into the shallow water. She tried to struggle but she was being pulled deeper and deeper. The relentless force tugging her along felt as though it was going to sever the limb with speed and drag alone. She was dragged farther and farther into the depths, the moon slipping away until it was the last star left in the sky.
‘CRA-BOOM!’ Twilight shot awake, cold sweat clinging to her fur and a sharp pain shooting out from her chest. The pain grew rapidly and she quickly lay back down where it slowly settled into a dull throb.
Her mind caught up through the haze of sleep, aided by a sudden awakening and the ‘bumpbump bumpbump’ of pain that rose and fell with her heartbeat. She was in a bed. A comfortable bed. It was raining.
No, that wasn’t quite accurate. More specifically, it was pouring. The torrential downpour outside frequently lit the sky only to show slivers of the single heaviest storm Twilight had seen in her entire life. Even as she looked out, she was vaguely worried that the thin window would shatter at any moment from the force of the storm. ‘KA-THOOOOCHM’, a flash of lightning that hung in the sky like a scar revealed slightly more of the outside to Twilight. Through the trees that blew and bent as easily as fur under a leaf blower she realized that she was still in the Everfree. The surrounding yard was littered with oddly shaped buildings and strange structures, but lit as they were through many layers of storm she couldn’t even begin to guess as to their function.
She turned her search to the inside of the room. The only thing she could make out in the pitch black was a subtle line of light from under a door on the other side of the room. She waited for a moment, hopeful that another bolt of lightning would illuminate her surroundings. Then she let out a very embarrassed sigh and lit her horn, mentally reciting the simple hornlight spell. She then modified it somewhat, going through the additional motions to congeal and disconnect the light. Once the softly glowing anti-gravity fluid coalesced at the tip of her horn she gently pulled it off and placed it in the middle of the room.
The first thing she took note of was herself. From what she could see, she was attached to an iv that dripped a pale pink liquid into her left fetlock. She was also bound in many places by thick gauze but was otherwise still intact. The wrapping was thickest around her chest and right foreleg, but from what she could tell she wasn’t missing any pieces. She let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding then... proceeded to lament the fact she didn’t know any personal diagnostic spells. Of the many cantrips and incantations she knew, medical spells had never seemed particularly necessary. Actually, now that she thought about it, she didn’t even know any healing spells strong enough for more than cuts and bruises. She shuddered at the thought that even if she weren’t paralyzed, she would have been completely incapable of keeping herself alive. She sent out a silent thanks to... whatever exactly it was that had saved her.
She thought on it for a moment, but through a haze of fear and a half-remembered dream she could only recall the rapid ‘thunk thunk’ of a biped. An armored biped, wearing... armor. She couldn’t make out any detail, no crests or colors that would normally adorn a plate-armored knight.
She huffed at the memory, a mystery to be solved later, and returned her investigation towards her surroundings. It was plain to see that, a far cry from a hospital or a rudimentary triage, she was in a bedroom. There was a poster on the far wall that depicted some obscure gryphon band with a name written in indecipherable calligraphy. There was a weapon rack taking up most of the far wall next to the door that held a wide variety of swords, axes, polearms. There were even a few smaller weapons that Twilight couldn’t identify, but she suspected they were designed specifically to be held in the biped’s... talons? So this was his bedroom then. Twilight felt a little uncomfortable suddenly, like she was somehow breaching its privacy, but kept looking around regardless.
Not that there was much more to see, she realized. An end table with a glass of water and a clock. A chest with a polished brass lock. A closet. She did realize that the doors in this place were huge. It was hard to get an accurate size from her perspective but she concluded that Princess Celestia would likely have room to spare.
She had just finished downing that glass of water when she heard the door open. The armored biped, wearing the same teal-ish plate, walked into the room. It pushed a chair over, then sat down in the middle of the room; three or four hooves away from Twilight. The purple pony found some insistent part of her mind was practically begging for her to be scared, but she just couldn’t bring herself to be intimidated. It didn’t seem hostile, had very likely saved her life, and to top it all off the creature was even holding a clipboard.
“Glad you’re awake. Cool mood lighting too, I’ve always hated the overhead light in here.” The thing spoke, its deep and rich voice somewhat undercut by some kind of faint crackling that Twilight couldn’t quite place.
It wasn’t looking at Twilight, instead flipping through the many pages attached to the clipboard. For a moment they both just sat in silence, Twilight in a pensive, observational silence. She was about to speak up when the armor finished flipping through the clipboard, leaning over to set it on the bedside table.
“Right, yeah, introductions. Well it’s nice to meet you purple and stupid, my name is Phoenix.” The masculine voice spoke while he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms.
“That’s... probably fair, but still not nice Mr. Phoenix. My name is Twilight Sparkle. Umm, thanks for saving me.” She had felt a slight rush of indignation at first, but quickly realized that this person definitely had a point.
“Mhumm, yeah I know who you are.” The creature leaned forwards and placed his helmeted head in his talons. “So, you took quite the beating there, and I’m gunna ask you a few medical questions to make sure I put all your parts back together right. It’s mostly just a formality, I don’t expect you’ve got a family history of getting impaled or anything.”
Twilight smiled a bit, then gave a small nod.
“Right okay, so first off let’s make sure your nog is still good. Uuuuh... what’s fifteen times forty three.”
“Six hundred and forty-five.” Twilight responded immediately.
There was a pause for a few seconds while the biped counted on his talons, then shrugged his shoulders and responded, “Good enough. Alright what’s the princess’ name.”
“Which one?”
“Wha- oh. Right yeah umm, both of them.”
“There’s three Princesses, Phoenix.”
The completely smooth, featureless helmet was incapable of providing emotions, but the way it tilted forward slightly made her reconsider the safety of people with clipboards.
The creature let out a long suffering sigh, accented oddly by that crinkle, then responded, “Whatever, all three of them. Name all the Princesses Twilight Smartass.”
She flicked her ear at the crude nickname, then said, “Princess Celestia, Princess Cadence, and Princess Luna.”
“Cool, yeah I was going to ask you a few more questions but you seem pretty on top of your brain game so we’re just going to get onto other stuff.” He pulled the clipboard back off the table and twilight found herself glued to the movements of the armored creature.
It was entirely unlike any creature she had seen before. It looked vague like the depictions of minotaurs, but was much taller and less broad. She thought for a moment that it could be some kind of extremely exotic automaton, but she quickly discarded the idea. Golems were the peak of artificial life, but she couldn’t detect any noticeable magic from this creature so it definitely wasn’t one of them. And there has never been so intelligent a golem, never mind an intelligent and articulate construct. So it had to be some kind of exotic creature wearing armor. Maybe a really small yeti?
“Alright first off,” The subject of her thoughts cut off her thoughts about it, “On a scale of zero to ten, how much pain are you in. Zero being ‘I can’t feel anything’ and ten being ‘Oh god end me please stop the suffering’.”
She shifted for a moment, refocusing on the dull throbbing through her chest and right foreleg. “Probably a three or four? It’s not too bad but it definitely hurts.” In truth it wasn’t nearly the most pain she had been in, though she suspected that if she hadn’t been paralyzed she would have been in far more pain at the time of the injury.
“Good, that’s right about where it should be. I don’t really keep, uuh, over-the-counter painkillers, and honestly I’m not entirely sure what dosages I should be giving you, but if it starts sucking super hard just let me know and I can get something for you...” The creature trailed off after its run-on sentence, errantly adjusting the helmet with a talon.
Twilight could almost taste the awkward tension in the room, but before she had a chance to speak up the creature began, “Right, so, how much of the fight do you remember exactly?”
“Well I was sitting down in the Everfree Library, and I got this weird sense of unease so I started looking around. I saw that freaky... flesh monster thing and kinda, panicked.” She felt slightly flushed, feeling embarrassed at her less than stellar reaction to danger. “I tried to run, but didn’t get very far before it hit me with some kind of arcane paralysis effect. Before I could shake it off it hit me with a barrage of ice spears. Then I passed out about thirty or forty-five seconds after you arrived. I think I remember you yanking some kind of crystal out of it but after I got shot everything gets kinda blurry.”
“Mmhum, yeah that’s about right. That meat thing you fought was called a spectator. They love watching people, but hate getting watched.” He paused for a second, then continued in a far more serious tone. “I feel like it’s really important that get across precisely how close you got to dying. So, you’re supposed to be pretty smart so I’ll skip the part about how your heart, throat, and lungs are probably the most important parts of your body. Behind your brain.” He finished after a beat.
“And I’ll skip right to the part where that thing pretty much destroyed your throat, punctured a lung, and shattered multiple bones. By the time I actually got to trying to repair the damage your heart had already stopped and you weren’t breathing.”
Twilight felt her blood run cold.
“Wha- How. What happened? How long have I been out?” Twilight finished rapidly, beginning to realize that nopony knew where she was. She started to try and rise again, but was blocked by the arm of the biped.
“Slow your roll there. Take a breath. Slow in, slow out.” Twilight did so, the calm, deep voice of her new friend cutting straight through her fledgling anxiety.
After a moment Twilight was more calm, but still wearing her distress plainly. A moment later and Phoenix continued, “You’ve been out cold for four days, as of ‘bout two hours ago. Nobody knows you’re here, and if they decided to go looking through the forest for you, they’re as good as dead.”
“If you’re trying to make me feel calm you’re doing a very poor job.” Twilight said quickly, an uncontrollable shake to her voice. What about spike? What about her friends? Surely they would trust her to return, right?
“I’m not, but lucky you I really doubt the people looking for you decided to rush into the forest. In case you didn’t notice there’s a full scale Everfree Storm going on, and it started barely an hour after I got you home. I would have sent out a message right when I got home, but I was kinda busy making sure your heart kept beating, and after the storm really picked up my radio went to static.” Phoenix leaned back in his chair and let out another deep sigh, straight from the soul.
“Look, I feel for you, but you really need to internalize precisely how stupid you acted a few days ago. Like there’s self destructive, there’s arrogant, and then there’s borderline suicidal.” The armor spoke poignantly.
“I- I’m not. It was just a dumb decision, but I really thought I had it under control.” Twilight felt like anything but in control at the moment, but kept her emotions still. She would not cry in front of the stallion that just saved her life. “I-I just. When me and the girls went through the Everfree it was relatively safe, so I thought I could just follow that path. I... didn’t really think about how the Castle would be just as dangerous.” She closed her eyes, focusing on keeping the shaking under control.
Several long seconds later she heard the voice beside her reply, “I get it. You felt like you had it in the bag, then got caught off guard- it happens. Let’s move on, kinda.”
Twilight looked back up to the armor and spoke the first thing that came to mind, “What are you?” Her underlying curiosity mixed with the desire to talk about literally anything else had caused it to slip out. She immediately blushed hard and stammered out a quick, “S-s-sorry. I-, that was rude of me. T-to ask.”
For his part, Phoenix just cocked his head sideways and said, “I’m a human. Geez, it’s been a while since I’ve given this speech but... whatever.” The ‘human’ sat up a little straighter and gave Twilight his full attention. “So I’m a human, we’re a race of tall bipedal mostly-hairless apes. Great ape family, flat faces, small eyes. I’m not from Equuis actually, I’m a dimensional alien. I got sucked here by a friend of mine and very long story short, I decided that it was a bad idea for me to go home. That was... about thirteen years ago?”
Twilight barely registered it but all of her anxiety and worry was completely devoured by the immense curiosity she now felt. A dimensional alien? Not even not of this world, but not of this galaxy. Not of this universe. A true, honest to Celestia traveler from beyond the pale. Sitting right in front of her. The implications were fascinating, if not a little scary. A dimensional traveler meant... dimensions! A proven theory, right here. A dimension traveler meant dimensional travel, it meant theoretical contact with infinite aliens. That meant- wait.
“W-why can’t you go back? You said the pony that took you to Equestria was your friend right, did you just not want to go home?”
“Yeah Crim, she’s a good bud. Uuh, honestly I don’t understand the details of it, you’d have to ask her or Reba. But, yeah, basically punching holes through the fabric of reality is actually super bad. It’s... something along the lines of, normally that fabric repairs itself but there’s a chance that it won’t. And if it doesn’t, the entirety of both dimensions that got hole punched are pulled through that hole and cast out into the place between places. Boom, two entire realities gone just like that. More people dead that can even be calculated, just because I felt like trying to get home.” Twilight wasn’t an expert on normal pony emotions, much less a dimensional traveler from beyond the stars emotion, but she couldn’t help hear heavy notes of sadness in the voice of the alien.
“But... your friend pulled you through anyway? Why would she do something like that? Just strand you away from your friends. Your family?”
“Eh,” Phoenix picked himself up and waved it off, “She didn’t know at the time. Actually, I was the first one, then she picked up a couple other folks while trying to get me back. After she picked up Reba though, the two of them got into a massive fight and that stupid bird convinced everybody that potentially destroying realities is a really bad idea actually. Rude of her but eh, she’s a friend too now, so whatever.” Gone was the sadness, and it was replaced by a genuine note of mirth. He must be really fond of his friends.
Twilight found herself smiling despite the situation, but before she could ask more about his friends he spoke first, “Anyways, we can talk more later but I still need to give you the actual medical rundown of what I did and what you need to do to stop that from being a problem thirty years down the line.”
He flipped through a couple of pages on the clipboard then continued, “Okay so I want to preface this with a massive disclaimer: I am not a surgeon. I’m not a human surgeon and I’m definitely not a pony surgeon, I’m not even a doctor or a nurse or anything. What I am, though, is careful and meticulous. I was also desperate, but that’s not important anymore.”
Twilight felt the previously jovial mood take a somewhat sinister air. She was fine, sure, and she focused on that. But the information that somepony with no qualifications performed surgery on her was unsettling at best.
“That being said,” he continued, “I am a pretty competent medic. A field medic, not the kind trained to be a medic, but somebody who had to fix a lot of battle injuries while on the field. I’ve had to dig around in myself more times that I ever like to recall, and I like to think I did a pretty good job on you. I’m pretty sure that your pony doctors normally like to use telekinesis and some other precision medical spells to do certain procedures without even opening you up but unfortunately for you I can’t do any magic. Also I had to see what I was getting at, basically those icicles shattered your collar bone, and obliterated your right leg in three places. The flesh was fairly easy to mend, I keep a shit load of healing potions on standby just in case for stuff like that, but bones and nerves and stuff are way more tricky.”
“Wait, my collar bone was broken? You just said you couldn’t do magic, how could it possibly be fixed now? Three days isn’t nearly long enough for that kind of damage to be naturally repaired.” Twilight spoke with confusion evident on her face.
“Yeah I’m getting there, but basically I didn’t do it naturally. While I can’t do magic, I’m best friends with a super cool Zebra lady who taught me a bunch of stuff about potion making. Also me and my buddies spend a lot of money on making sure we’ve got good equipment, that includes medical equipment.”
Twilight nodded with her mouth in an ‘O’. Twilight remembered seeing a Zebra in Ponyville a few days ago, shopping if she recalled correctly. It didn’t stick out much at the time, she saw more than a few Zebras during her time in Canterlot. Now that she thought about it, though, a Zebra hanging out in Ponyville was rather odd since most Equestrian Zebras live more southeast. Or they’re dignitaries in the capital. Twilight didn’t know much about Zebras other than the fact they were good at alchemy, and the Everfree was probably a good place to collect exotic flora.
“So yeah, basically what I did, in order was heal you a shitload. I mean I really dumped like ten c-tier healing pots all over you while I pulled those icicles out of you. Then I poured more of them in the holes, fixed your throat enough, and zapped you until your heart started and you were breathing.”
“Wait, you were serious when you said my heart stopped?” Seeing as it had earlier, she wasn’t surprised to feel it basically stop again. “How did you even resuscitate me, do you carry a defibrillator with you everywhere?”
“Yeah actually. Anyway, like I was saying, I got you more or less patched up, then sprinted the, like, straight hour and a half it took to get home. So after dead sprinting for an hour, killing that spectator, bringing you from dead to not-quite-dead, and then dead sprinting an hour and a half back home; I did the actual surgery on you. Used some tweezers, a saw, a knife, some booze, and some disinfectant while basically just bathing you in healing salves and praying. After a while I got everything more or less stitched up, rationed out an Alpha grade drought of greater rejuvenation, and put you to bed rest. Honestly I’m glad you woke up when you did, I wasn’t really sure how long people were supposed to be passed out after surgery. Kinda started to worry I accidentally put you in a coma. And... yeah that’s it. Now we’re here and you know that bit.”
As Twilight had been listening to that rant, her jaw got lower and lower until it could go no farther. Then her eyebrows went up and,at this point she is the very picture of ‘a shocked expression’. With no small amount of incredulity she eventually spoke, repeating what her hack doctor had said, “That’s it?”
“Hey, come on man, I saved your life. I mean, I said up front that I’m not a doctor, and it’s not like there was anybody else around. It was either that, or I just let you bleed out on the floor of that stupid castle.”
Twilight shrank into the bed, and realized that, while definitely not the safest operation, she was still alive. More than that, she felt pretty fine. Nothing was poking her insides, her arm felt mostly fine, if a little sore, and she wasn’t even all that tired.
“Sorry, I guess I’m just a little tense right now...” She had meant to say more but trailed off.
“Nah, I get it. No harm no foul. Actually, speaking of fowl, I’ll be right back. You’ve gotta be hungry and stuff right?”
“Oh, no, it’s okay. I mean, I am, but I’m-” Before she could even finish her ever so elegant defense the human had already walked out of the room. She just sighed and lay farther back into the extremely comfortable bed. She really hoped that the strange alien wasn’t about to bring her a chicken to eat.
She hadn’t made a habit of spending much time in hospitals, but even if Phoenix had done a painfully unprofessional operation, at least she got to lay in a bed more comfortable than cardboard. She contented herself to lay there and try to get some rest.
She got no more than a minute in before her mind began to drive her mad. While her body was somewhat tired, her brain was in a flurry. She had collected so much new information, so much had happened. So many questions she wanted to ask, about the human and his origins, about his friends, about how long this storm would last, even just about potions and his Zebra friend.
As her mind raced her eyes began to wander again and eventually landed on a bookshelf facing her from the hoof of the bed. She repositioned her hornlight orb spell so that she could read the bindings and started to poke through. There were more than a few in languages that she couldn’t read, and a couple in that bunch that she couldn’t identify at all. Still though, she found more than enough to sate her curiosity. The first three Daring Doo books, a few Tom Prancy novels, a copy of ‘The Mare’, a copy of ‘A Tail of Two Cities’.
Her immediate knowledge of the books stopped there, but there were plenty more than she had heard of but hadn’t gotten around to reading. As she scanned the shelves she also noticed a few distinct oddities. First and foremost were several magic training books for unicorns. There was a pretty solid variety there too, books ranging from little more than pamphlets for foals, to textbooks on more advanced material. Most of the advanced books were geared towards battle magics, ‘Shields 101’, ‘A Stunning Guide by Stunning Strike’, ‘How To Hit Stuff With Your Horn’ just to name a few. That last one was actually by far the most technical of the bunch, Twilight herself had only gone through it pretty recently. Notably though, there were also a number of textbooks that focused on pure esoterica and theory. She could rationalize a warrior wanting to know more about the types of spells he might come up against, but the fact that Phoenix was interested in some pretty complex magical formula was very interesting to Twilight.
The other major thing that caught her eye was a dark set of tomes wrapped in faux-leather. She found them interesting, not because of their binding, but because she had all six books sitting in her own personal collection back at home. And another six books sitting in the public library, also back home.
Before she could get any farther in her thoughts, the door opened and Phoenix walked back in. This time he had a bowl that was practically overflowing with salad in one talon, and a tea set in another. Twilight found the juxtaposition between the armored human and his carried items to be rather amusing. His armor was clearly incredibly well crafted, she had spent a bit during their previous conversations just staring at the intricacy. The bowl, along with the tea set; however, were made out of a dented and battered tin material.
“Oh, yeah sorry. I probably should have knocked huh. My bad.”
“What? No you’re fine, I mean, it’s your room after all.”
“Yeah, well sure, but normally my room doesn’t have a naked lady in it.”
Twilight stared at him for a moment, then squinted and said, “Ponies are almost always naked.”
“Okay true, but that sounds nicer than saying ‘very vulnerable hospitalized mare who recently woke up after a major surgery’.”
Twilight cringed a little bit, then conceded the point with a nod.
“Oh here, I got some food. I don’t normally keep a bunch of... edible stuff so I hope it’s not stale or something. Can salads go stale?”
“Salad will typically get moldy long before it goes stale, unless it contains croutons.” Twilight recited, reaching out to the offered foodstuffs with her telekinetic grasp. Much to her frustration, she couldn’t seem to get a grip.
The human carried on, entire unaware of her situation. “Right, well you’ll be happy to know that this particular salad contains no mold, or croutons, so you should be good to go.”
“Okay, you got me.” Twilight said, cutting off her line of levitation.
“What?”
“No no, you got me. It’s a good prank.” Despite herself, and despite the situation, Twilight felt herself smiling a little bit. “You tell me that you can’t do magic and then jump me with a big horror story about a crazy emergency surgery, only to reel it in by counter-charming my own magic to make me worry.” You had to wake up pretty early in the morning to slip one past Twilight, but few considered her love of reading when making plans. Especially strangers. Actually pretty much only strangers but that was aside the point.
“I’m... not pranking you. And your magic is fine, seriously try it on something else, you were trying to pick up the salad right?”
Now more confused than ever, Twilight shifted her focus to another object in the room, picking up ‘Daring Doo and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone’. Finding that she could quite easily she put it back on the shelf and stared at the human, eyebrow raised in suspicion. It wasn’t exactly difficult to just stop casting a counter spell, even if she wasn’t entirely sure how he was casting magic without it being visible at all.
The featureless helmet was fixed on her for several long moments before eventually speaking, “Oh. Oh I think I get what’s going on here.” He set the salad down on the end table, then set the tea on Twilight’s belly, “Now try it.”
Really only humoring him at this point Twilight picked up the tea set, poured herself a cup of tea, put a sugar cube in, then set it back on the tray to cool.
“Alright, yeah I see what’s going on here. Cool, tin works too. Who knows. But yea, no, I’m not countering your magic or anything. Well, actually, I guess I am but not intentionally. I’m immune to magic.”
That got Twilight’s attention. “What? What do you mean you’re ‘immune to magic’?”
“According to Crim I’m in the 98th percentile of TMI. Basically the only stuff that can take in more magic is heavily processed Orichalcum.”
“You’re kidding me. Total magic immunity isn’t even a calculable data set. There’s barely anything in the world that has even variable levels of magic immunity. Magic resistance sure, but immunity is just ridiculous.”
“Look, you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want. If you really want to find out for yourself, hit me with your best shot.” At Twilight’s unimpressed look he continued, “I’m serious, as long as you don’t blow up my house you can clock me square in the jaw with your craziest spell.”
“Okay fine, but only because you’ve got me curious. And I’m not going to cast anything dangerous on you, I’m just going to try and push you over.” With those words Twilight sparkle, student of Celestia, bearer of the Element of Magic, lit her powerful horn and gave the human a light shove.
The telekinetic force dissolved on impact, but it did so much in the way it would on a kinesis shield. Still not entirely convinced, Twilight redoubled her efforts and pumped more than enough magic to fully knock over a grown stallion. Much to her ire, it simply had no effect. As though she hadn’t cast the spell at all. She originally had no intention of striking the human per se, but she was quickly growing frustrated. With a figurative kick into second gear, and a literal followed spell matrix, she cast a simple but powerful Blunt Force Trauma spell. What the spell should have done was knock Phoenix clear across the room and into the hallway. Maybe she got a little carried away with the power but it didn’t matter either way, because what the spell actually did was impact his torso in a streak of white light only to get snuffed out, like a candle plunged into an ocean.
With a frustrated grunt, Twilight began casting another type of spell. Surely there was no way the human could counterspell a full strength Explosive Force spell right? Before she could even begin to recite the glyph, she felt a very soft pressure on the tip of her horn and a sensation like pop-rocks all along the appendage. She blinked the blur away from her eyes and realized that the human had pinched the tip of her horn between two flanges of his armored gauntlet. Normally the sensation of getting one’s horn touched was either a very romantic gesture, or a sharp pain. This was... notably neither but Twilight failed to discern what exactly the sensation evoked before Phoenix removed his claw.
“Sorry, I know it’s bad touch and stuff but I told you not to explode my room.” The human said, clearly aware of the taboo.
For her part, Twilight pinned her ears to her head with embarrassment upon realizing that just the tip of his claw was enough to completely stop her spell. Wait-
“Wait, how did you know I was casting ‘Vertical Assent’s EF Concussion’ spell?”
“Wh- You were actually going to explode my house! I can’t tell what spell you were casting, just that you were about to go way overboard! What the fuck Twilight?” The human shouted, wildly gesticulating towards the sky. Having up to this point remained very calm, he was the angriest Twilight had seen him and it was more than a little intimidating. Only now did she realize quite how big the human creature was. It didn’t help that he had taken an accusatory step towards her and was now looming over her.
A sharp bite of panic spread into her chest and some as-of-yet dormant part of her brain labeled ‘prey’ started screaming.
She subconsciously began to breathe heavier, and pushed herself closer to the window. “Sorry! I mean, sorry. I. Like you said, I just got. I didn’t think that. I mean there’s no other creatures that even fall under TMI, I was so sure th-”
The human immediately backed off a step, and said, “Don’t… Worry about it. Sorry too, I just.” He groaned, the groan of somepony who had dealt with one too many unicorn holes. “I’m not really used to hanging out with... normal people. Ponies, whatever. I’m trying to not be super aggro but honestly I’m normally way more of a dick. Just don’t blow up my house. If you really want proof I think I’ve still got the data somewhere around here” At the very least he sounded apologetic.
He took a couple more steps backwards, and Twilight felt her breathing return to normal. Only this time it was accompanied by a pain that hung around in her chest. And embarrassment. Definitely felt a little embarrassed. If the human had wanted her hurt, he could have done literally anything other than the very specific path he took to make her not hurt.
“Look, I’m just. Yeah. I’m immune to magic, or basically immune to it. Anything short of Celestia smiting me down personally and I probably won’t even feel it.” He turned around and walked out the room, leaving with a, “I’ll check in on you later. Just get some rest for now while we wait out this storm.”
After the door was shut, Twilight let out a breath. She had probably overreacted to be honest, but it wasn’t like she was an expert in alien emotions. For all she knew raising his voice meant he was about to strike. But he didn’t, she scolded herself, and now I’ve just made everything awkward. He did his best to save your life. Actually no, he did save your life.
She just sighed again, her mind now as tired as her body. She would fix it later. Maybe give him some book recommendations? Or no, probably just paying him back for the medical supplies would be for the best. She rolled over slightly, curling up just a bit in the big bed, and pulled the blankets up farther.
Hopefully she wouldn’t have any nightmares tonight.
