A ruined Vacation

"Climb a mountain, They said," Sven growled through clenched teeth "It'll be fun, they said..." he grabbed another hand hold and pulled himself a little higher "I don't think a single one has ever climbed a FUCKING MOUNTAIN!" he shouted as his foot slipped for the umpteenth time. "I'm going to kill each and everyone of them if I make it back, I swear to god..." He continued to climb for a few dozen more feet before hammering a pinion in to the cliff face and sighed as he looked up "A few hundred feet to go... and it's only noon, Great. " and then he looked down to assess his handwork.

The landscape below him was beautiful; There was an abundant amount of plant life, which made climbing easier earlier on, with a nice stark beauty to how it clashed with the barren, grey, rocky wasteland that roughly circled the patch of paradise. "I will wonder till the day I die why this place is so..." Sven paused for a second to think of the word "...Alive. The rest of this place is a barren rock." he looked down at the roughly central point of the greenery, a sort of half-outcrop-half-plateau in the cliff face with a waterfall he could still faintly hear as it showered the plants... and noticed some thing strange. He squinted his eyes for a better look, "That's... unusual..." he craned his neck forward for a better look at the faint outline of a castle. "I don't think there has ever been a castle out here..."

The castle doesn't look like any he's seen before; It was see through and had a green-ish tinge to it, through the haze he guessed It was mostly white, or an off shade of grey, with gold and black roofing with spires that had suns, and moons, and flowers... it also had a drawbridge... not to any real point because it had no water beneath it, the waterfall was near the other side of the structure and flowed right underneath what he could only guess was the keep, the Castle also hung over the edge of the cliff like a shiny green see through abscess. "I must be going nuts..." he shook his head, turned, and started to climb once more.

|*|

As Queen Chrysalis sang to herself about how "A girl could have it all." Twilight Sparkle crawled over to Cadence and whispered "Quick, go to him while you still have the chance!" and her horn lit up as she blasted the hard green goo from Cadence's hooves. Cadence looked at Twilight and smiled a small, hopeful smile as her eyes shone a love for her little sister-in-law that words could not express and walked to her husband-to-be, and smiled sadly as her eyes shone a love that made her love for Twilight look like a pale imitation in comparison... and saw no reaction in Shining's glowing green eyes. Tears fell down her face as she moved her head forward, rubbed her love's face, then pulled him close to embrace him and broke down a little. As she cried her horn crackled with a strange magic and a heart made from love manifested and moved in front of Shining Armour's face and popped. Shining's eyes returned to their normal, not glowing, blue selves and he shook his head then he said:

"huh, wha- is... is the wedding over?"

Then the Queen landed in front of them and with a triumphant voice declared, whilst grinning evilly "It's ALL over!"

Twilight looked at her brother and said urgently  "Your spell! Preform your spell!"

Shining looked a Cadence as Chrysalis flew up in the air laughing and declared "What good would that do? My Changelings already roam free!" as she pointed at them damningly.

Over the chaos from outside Shining shouted "No!" and tried to charge his Shield Spell... and almost passed out "My power's useless now... I don't have the strength to repel them..."

Cadence walked up to Shining, embraced him once more and said with determination "My love will give you strength!" Chrysalis, completely confident, walked over to a window and laughed.

"What a lovely, but absolutely ridiculous, sentiment." Chrysalis stated as she brought her front hooves on the window sill. Shining look a Cadence, determination clear in his eyes, and charged his spell once again. Cadence brought her horn close to his and a resonance took place as she charged her horn with magic as well, supplying him with what magic he needed; An Aura surrounded them as they lifted off the ground and a light began to shine from them, strong enough to cause everypony in the room to close their eyes, then Chrysalis turned to see what the light shining out through the window behind was coming from and gasped in surprise... then spell was released and a pink bubble expanded from the two lovers and as the Queen lifted a hoof to cover her face while screaming "NO!" and was sent flying through the window and out of the city, along with her once-invading army.

|*|

"That is really strange... Were those horses?" Sven shook his head as his vision cleared "I think that tall one might have been a bug... Wait... What's that noise?" hearing a strange hybrid between a band of off-tune bells and a thunder clap, Sven looked from the pinion he just put in the cliff to where the castle-mirage thing was and wished he hadn't. A Pink bubble was expanding quickly from where the castle was, it seemed like it was getting faster as it moved along. He looked at this for a moment before a thought registered "Oh... I'm about to die, aren't I?" he said to no one in particular as the bubble sped towards him. "Well can't say I lived a good life... or a long one... or a fulfilling one... actually my life had been pretty sh-" then the bubble hit him.

He covered his face and closed his eyes, that bubble was as bright as a laser machine at a rave party, and when he opened them he was so stunned at the the beauty of the terrain below him, he didn't even notice as his backpack fell off of his back and down the cliff; the greenery extended for miles, no longer rounded up like some herd animal by the bleak landscape that had surrounded it, but free to roam on it's own; then he looked at the castle again... it wasn't see through, or green... and it would have been beautiful too, except there were fires here and there, and a few buildings were damaged, though the draw bridge made sense now, being that the water actually went underneath it...he thought he saw movement down there but he wasn't sure, so he leaned forward to get a closer look, and flailed as his equilibrium was thrown off like a bouncy ball in a clothes drier. He went to grab the rope to steady himself, but when he pulled there was no tension... at all. His head twisted so fast he could hear the wind in his ears and saw that the pinion he just hammered in was gone and he thought with a self-deceptive calm "Well... here I thought I just might have survived." as he scrabbled at the cliff face looking for a hand hold, and finding none, then fell into the abyss behind him. He screamed like a little girl.

He fell a good 50 feet before hitting the mountain again and the force knocked all the air from his lungs, turning his little girly squeal of pure fear to a weak wheezing of stark terror. Thoughts rushed through his head as he flipped head over heels and bounced from rock to rock to his doom, thoughts like "I wonder if it's a hallucination, or if it's real..." and "I thought I was going to die from food poisoning." and the most foremost thought "Who will feed my cat?"

He bounced down the hill for a bit, continuing to think wildly scattered thoughts, before noticing he was closer to the city then he thought he should be and he went to say "I'm moving WAY too fast!", what actually came out was the little girl scream again as he bounced like a volley ball. He went to tuck his body into a ball and thought "If it helps, good... if it doesn't, at least I can look like a peach colored, spike-less, broken Sonic the hedgehog before I splatter oh-so elegantly on the rocks below." but when he went to tuck in half of his limbs didn't react... Then true and absolute terror set in, if he could even think he would have thought that the last level of terror was like a jump scare in comparison to this new level; it was like hopping from the beginner difficulty to the difficulty you have to beat the game on the previously hardest difficulty without dying even once to unlock. The screams Intensified and he rolled off of a rock that acted similar to a ramp, in that it sent him flying over the wall of the city... Right into the third story window of someone's house. Then there was nothing.