Author's Note

This chapter is sort of a long vacation episode where Onyx visits Earth, if you don't wanna read about it and you just wanna know more about his adventures in Equestria you can skip to chapter 38.

Only the first half of this chapter is about what happened in Equestria with a short time skip

Chapter 30 Polar vacation

6 months later, late June Onyx pov

This new year was promising to be awesome, I was 9 years old now, my birthday was calculated to be in late February so I just chose 20 to celebrate it, here it was not like earth where your exact birthday was important, you just needed to know the month and year, I had no exact date of my birth in the frozen mountain I had been born at, I also had grown in size faster over this last few months, I was the same size as my friends now, it was not a drastic change in size but it was progress, and I was happy to not be the runt of the litter anymore.

Speaking about birth, mom was pregnant! We were all very happy and were extra gentle with her, her belly was slowly growing, by June anyone could clearly see the pregnant belly, she was going to be a mom, not just adoptive now, and she knew, she was given only administrative work for the duration of her pregnancy and paid leave for a year afterwards to care for her future offspring.

This half a year had been wonderful for more than that.

Me and dad have bonded much more, we play and we hang out, he teaches me about his ice cream making, I teach him magic in return, he's not as capable as Shining or Cadence but he is pretty good with ice spells and his telekinesis is decent, maybe because he uses it a lot at work, I gave him a few exercises to improve his telekinesis and he is doing them often, I couldn't be more happy about him.

I had told him more about me as time went by, that I was much stronger than I seem, and that I was very well learned in magic, but he was confused as to how, I just told him it would be hard to explain, but I am sort of special, he found my words very funny, soon after I realized too how my words made it sound, and we both shared a good long laugh, even falling on our backs. Yes I just called myself kinda 'special', that's what they call ponies with mental disabilities here.

I also have told mom of my desire to travel to the south pole of my old world, at first she insisted in coming with me but I told her if she came with me, we would be in more danger and need a lot more supplies, double the supplies, and it would be harder to deal with anything if she was there, she was also pregnant and we both agreed she couldn't risk the pups growing inside her.
I told them that it was much safer if I went alone, I was much more suited for the freezing cold, since I was totally immune.

Mom considered this, I told her I wanted to go badly and explore, she ended up accepting, I told her I knew what I was doing, and that the south pole was an empty cold and deserted place for thousands of kilometers. And only penguins lived there, I explained to her what a penguin was, she found the concept of them funny, I told her I may show them to her sometime but this time I would go alone and check it out. After a few hours of bargaining she was convinced, but told me if I saw any trouble I should come back right away.

I promised if I was in danger I would return, good enough.

I had given a few more classes to my friends, only unicorns tho, I didn't know how to help earth ponies or pegasi with their skills, i know it sounds bad but I had the knowledge of an unicorn, and an unicorn supremacist at that.
He didn't care enough about other races to learn about them more than the basics.

School was slowly fixing that, but the knowledge learned on elementary school was basically just games and a bit of fact mixed in, sure it was fun and engaging but I didn't learn anything I couldn't already deduce or just knew from my absorbed memories.

Now, 9am morning of June 26th I had my supplies neatly packaged, a sleeping bag, ski poles, sleeping mat, sleeping bag, about 20kg of dry good quality firewood.

I had lots of different meats, I had various fruits and pickled veggies, I had lots and lots of cheap small gemstones that I could eat, about 10kg of those, enough to last me months.

I also had hard cheeses, something the ponies didn't seem to have or any of the other races imported was rice, sure they had pasta and they had bread, so they had wheat, but they didn't grow rice, something I honestly didn't even remember the texture or taste of by now, but there were many varieties of foodstuffs so I didn't mind really.

I had even dried pasta with me, homemade and dried using a few heating spells and some wind.

I also had 4 dozen of eggs in cardboard cartons in my inventory, in case I wanted an easy meal, turns out eggs are ideal snacks, and can be cooked or eaten raw, they are delicious.

I also had liquid water, but since the ground was made of ice I only had about 5 Lt of it, I could always just melt the ice and drink it, being immune to poisons made me also immune to diseases, that are usually just poisons from microorganisms or your own body fighting them. Even if I wasn't, dragons are incredibly resistant to disease naturally.

I had already told all my friends I was going on vacation by myself, so sadly we wouldn't be able to meet or hang out this summer, they were a bit sad but it wasn't like they didn't have anything to do, I gave my students some homework by sending them a few harmless spells to study and practice.

I had also finished my teleportation circle during this time, now it was working on its own without needing any extra magic, using the high levels of energy in the very air, Canterlot was a high spot of magical energy as the mountain seemed to contain some sort of either high concentration of magically rich gemstones or maybe the population influenced the weave in the area, saturating it with magic.

This were the ideal conditions to cast a spell of this magnitude.

Was in the third floor of the house, preparing the spell mentally for opening the portal, mom was watching at a safe distance, slightly concern in her eyes, I was wearing the Robes of the Occult to decrease my magical cost at casting this spell, in case I needed to return in an emergency or cast other spells quickly.

"Goodbye mom, I'll see you in a few weeks, I love you!" She gave me a loving smile.

"You better, if you don't come back in at most 4 weeks, I'm going in there one way or another and pulling you back, even if I have to enlist the help of the Princess!" Oh come on mom!

"Please don't! I dunno how she will react if she found out I used this spell, I could be in more trouble with her than I ever would at the hands of the humans in this world, they cannot contain me, I can escape anything they throw at me with my magic, but I cannot escape Celestia if she is pissed off, I'm powerless to stop her." She seemed to understand now, she was loyal to the Princess, sure, but she was more loyal to me first, and while I kinda liked Celestia now, she still had ways to go to earn my trust, but I did send her a few letters talk to her about how things were, she didn't answer yet but she probably didn't read all her mail, and had ponies for that.

"O-okay just... Try to return, if you don't return after more than two months... I'll have to ask for her help, but first I'll tell her I used the spell and asked you to go, so you don't suffer any consequences, and no, you can't change my mind!" She said with finality.

"Fine... I don't see why I would stay that long, I'm always able to make myself invisible, I can turn into a flying cloud of vapour, polymorph myself into an animal, teleport or even go into the Ethereal Plane if I'm in serious danger, but the last one I prefer to not use, because it has its own dangers." Well, the time for goodbyes was over.

"I better go now, I need to do this quickly to minimize the risk of being detected by the princess, a spell like this will start to give out energy the longer it's active, so bye mom!"

"Stay safe please"

With that, I focused my mind fully and brought to my mind's eye the complex spell matrix, looking it over and going over it, triple checking to make sure everything was correct, then to the coordinates I added the ones I bought from the Item Shop.

The coordinates were in constant rapid shift, it was not a stationary portal, but it moved at the same speed as the Earth, that explained the numbers, I inputted the coordinates, and focused again on the whole spell matrix, channeling my magic and just like that, I was swallowed by a portal, who opened and closed almost instantly. -35MP 237/272
I was at one moment at my house, and now I was floating midair in the middle of a field of indigo color energy, the flat bubble was large and enough to fit way more than just me and was centered around my point of entry.

I could not see or hear anything outside, I tried moving but I was just floating in place, moving my limbs didn't do anything, I decided to cast feather fall just in case, I was worried about something going wrong or falling to my death, as unlikely as that was.

POV shift, at the same time, Samuel Diaz
Amundsen Scott Station, South Pole

The morning was unusually stormy, a blizzard was raging outside, the local meteorologist Hector told them it was forming but didn't expect it to be so powerful, and it made visibility very poor, on top of that the long night had begun a while ago, a 6 month long period of night and at most twilight, so it was dark even in the mornings, almost all day.

Sam was having breakfast at the cafeteria, overlooking the distant geographical south pole, it was however too snowy outside to see more than a few meters away, the storm raged and winds blew, other colleagues of him, 35 people had stayed over winter, this was his first stay over ever, he had been trying to get a job here for years, and this year he finally did, getting to stay over the winter.

The winter months were brutally cold, as low as -70c during blizzards, and about -30c on regular calm days, today it was extra cold outside, it registered an almost record temperature of -80c.

It was cold enough to kill a man in minutes, during this temperature no one went outside no matter what, even the doors frosted over.

Suddenly, while he read his book and sipped his coffee, a loud bang of lighting made the entire cafeteria turn towards the window, lighting during blizzards was not unheard of, but it was definitively rare, but what shocked everyone was the intensity of it, it made all of the building vibrate for a second, like as if a large bomb had exploded outside, everyone was shocked, some dropped their drinks or whatever they were holding, others weren't scared but still confused.

At this same time he heard it, he saw a light coming from the distance, right at the point of the south pole, a bright light that was very much visible despite even all of the snow flying around in the blizzard outside, a light so bright it felt like it was coming from a flashlight a few meters away from him.

It was a spheroid, indigo in color, shimmering at times between bright purple and blue, like if someone was having one of those vaporware themed parties with bright uv lights and flashing colors.

Everyone at the cafeteria started pointing at it, coming from the other side and gathering near the windows to watch the lightshow, no one knew what to make of it.

Some theorized it to be a mysterious ball lighting type of phenomena, others quickly dismissed it as an especially intense aurora australis.

Some simply didn't say anything and recorded or took pictures of it, it was nothing weird about the pictures, it was just an intense ball of light.

What confused Sam the most was that loud noise that happened right as the light appeared, maybe it was some sort of military test? But why would anyone test something like that here in a place known to have civilians? And where it was agreed upon by all nations to not test weapons or military vehicles, he wasn't sure, but there was something mysterious about this, he hoped whatever caused that bright light wasn't some sort of new scary bomb that would somehow kill them with radiation, a terrifying thought that gave him an involuntary shiver.

A few minutes passed, then the spheroid simply disappeared without a trace, the light going out like a light bulb turned off. Everyone was confused staring and waiting for something to happen, he slowly went back to his coffee, it was cold by now, he sighed and just drank it anyways, if they wanted to live here, they had to conserve food, and coffee beans were a luxury donated by people with good intentions.

He headed to the dish washing station and washed his empty plate and coffee cup, leaving them to dry and headed to do his job, he had to be ready at the clinic in case someone was injured or sick.

POV Shift Onyx

As the spell finally seemed to end, I slowly fell towards the ground, I almost land on top of a flag pole but I managed to grab it and push myself side before i knocked it over, thank goodness, wait... A flag? Oh there's a sign too! Wow this storm... It's really strong! I can barely see in front of me.

But now at ground level I can see there's two flags and a sign that reads Geographical South Pole, mentions altitude, huh, in feet, no idea how tall that is, this two guys are the ones who reached the south pole first?

Ronald Amundsen and Robert F. Scott

They even have quotes here, I found them amusing if anything, I wonder what would have been going through this people's mind, the realization they made it, and the difficulties of their journey to this wasteland of ice and wind.

I felt a sense of respect for this people, doing this in 1911 and 1912 without any advanced technology, maybe they had good tech, but I doubt it, this was sheer determination and perseverance in the face of death, this place was anathema to human life.

I hope they had found success, but I sadly didn't know enough about them, maybe someday I would find out.

I decided to wander around in circles, I had no real idea where to go, but I was enjoying this weather, the only issue was how little visibility there was, after a while I decided to just start making a spiral pattern around the south pole, in my mind this was the best method to find something else of interest, I kept walking like this for about 2 hours, going slowly

I saw something out of the corner of my eye, a dim light in the distance in front of me. I immediately stopped, and started to approach the light, was this some person out here in the middle of nowhere?

How could there be people here? Or maybe it was some sort of weird weather station that was just automated to have lights... I wasn't sure, I approached slowly and the closer I got the more lights I saw, then I realized they weren't just lights.

All I could see from where I was standing were a few distant lights to the left of me, and just a big set of metal stairs painted bright yellow, behind it, a black building loomed over me, it was two stories tall, and suspended over the snow and ice on pillars, it was too dark to tell the colors well, but the stairs were well illuminated, probably to help people get up and down safely.

I assured myself this was safe, I had magic to my side, I casted greater invisibility -20 MP 217/272 on myself, then climbed up the stairs, without worry about the noise my steps made, the blizzard was loud enough as it is.

Once at the top I saw the door had no door handle, probably an emergency exit. Groaning I went around the building, looking for any entrances that looked like the main one, i finally found it, I knew it was the right one because of the flags nearby, and because it was more fancy looking than the last one I checked, this better have a way inside!

I climbed the stairs to the first floor this time, already having wasted precious time of my spell walking around this huge building looking for a way in, I must have about half of it now, but I wanted to preserve my magic so I decided against recasting.

I approached the large thick metal door, it had a handle! Fucking finally! I open and pull, it looked like it would be a pull door.

I walk inside and make sure my tail comes in, this door looks quite big and I don't want my tail squished by a door again, it happened so many times at home that I always now check before closing doors.

I find myself in a room much warmer than the outside, it's like a sort of an airlock system, with one big door that blocks the cold and the interior door that keeps the warm inside the building.

Seems that the doors are about twice my height, I wonder how many people live here, better to be careful and not make too much noise.

I head to the inner door, grab the handle and open it, cringing at the loud clicking noise it makes, quickly getting in, pulling my tail all inside before the door closes, it's much warmer inside, I prefer the outside chilly wind and cold, but this isn't bad either.

Inside there is a very long corridor, with many doors going into other rooms, the walls are white on the left side and have a pattern of gray and blue squares on the right side of the corridor.

Time to take a little look around, and find out what this building was for.