Twilight rose from her bed without taking her eyes from the window. Normally, after a full night’s sleep, the sun would be shining through it, just about reaching the edge of the bed. She had relied on the sun waking her when she had been staying at the castle, learning magic from Princess Celestia. She knew how the sun should look in this room.
But there was no sun. The sky was dark, the stars obscured by clouds the color of fresh bruises, with no hint of the coming sunrise. This alone might have been possible to explain away—sleeping in a place she hadn’t seen in over two years, somewhere both familiar and unfamiliar creating disruptions in her sleeping pattern—but there was no explanation for the vast canopy that covered Canterlot.
In place of the walkways and buildings Twilight should have been able to see, there was a dense jungle. Trees grew in place of streets. Towers were covered in creeping vines and moss. Twilight pushed open her window, and the sounds of a rumbling storm greeted her. The horizon was obscured by rain. It would take all the weather ponies from all the surrounding areas to orchestrate a storm like this, and the time it would take to organize… impossible for a single night. She closed her eyes for a long moment. Perhaps when she opened them, she would wake from her dream.
When the forest and the storm remained, that left only one option: report to Princess Celestia. She opened the door to her bedroom and found the stone hallway strangled by roots and vines. It was almost unrecognizable as somewhere inside Canterlot Castle; it was closer to the Everfree Forest. Creepers wound along the walls, blocking any light from the sconces—assuming the candles could remain lit in such a confined space. A massive root had pushed its way through the floor, cracking the intricate jigsaw of tiles. The smell of plants—of wilderness, of being outdoors—was everywhere. Warm air flowed from the corridor, heated by the biomass, mingling with the cold breeze from the storm outside.
Twilight stepped into the hallway. She gave a brief thought to the spell that made light, and felt a strange sensation in the tip of her horn. It reminded her of the feeling of trotting up one too many steps in a staircase and putting a hoof down where the last step should have been. The passage around her remained dim, lit only some luminescent fungus growing along the big root.
“What…?” she said to nopony. Twilight really concentrated on the light spell, harder than she had since perfecting it so she could stay up late reading under her covers. A very faint glow emerged for a second, wavered, and then faded. She frowned, and closed her eyes to picture the room she had just left, blocking out the plants, the storm, the darkness. All of her magical strength focused, she tried teleporting back into the bedroom, and felt something like an impossibly heavy weight tied around her midsection anchoring her in place. She staggered and fell against the mossy wall, sucking in air. It felt like being hit by a train.
“Okay,” Twilight said out loud, trying to lead her thoughts away from being nauseous, “okay. No magic. Okay. No sunlight.” She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Okay. That’s no reason to panic.”
Yet, a bitter little part of her whispered.
Back in the bedroom, she opened up the armoire in the far corner. It should still be in here, surely nopony would have moved it… aha! Underneath a pile of folded blankets was a lantern. She had read many books by its glow prior mastering the spell for light, and it had been stowed away unused ever since. It even had a half-melted candle and a tinderbox tucked inside. She fumbled with the tinder, long out of practice, but managed to set a flame burning after a couple of awkward attempts. The lantern lit the bedroom, and Twilight was suddenly transported back to being a filly, recognizing the way the room looked in the shaky flame.
She pushed away the thoughts of the castle once again being a daunting unfamiliar place and of being without her magic, and took the lantern handle in her mouth. Okay, she thought to herself, now to find the Princess.
This journey was the longest it had ever taken her to reach the throne room. The vines and roots were so thick on the walkways that every step was treacherous, even with the lantern to light the way. Vines that looked like they would break easily would tangle or trip, and others that looked like they could be stepped on snapped and buried a hoof in a gnarled mess. Every time Twilight would jolt or snag, the lantern would swing back and forth, making wild shadows dance among the creepers. The second set of stairs proved especially difficult as the huge root wound its way down most of the staircase, forcing Twilight to inch between it and the outer wall with barely enough room to move on the narrowed stairway. Once her hoof slipped, and for one heart-stopping second she thought she was going to tumble the rest of the way down, but she managed to brace against the big root and stop herself. Heart beating fast, she made it to the lower level unscathed.
The walkway that toured around the gardens was a little easier to navigate, plants pouring into the freedom of the open air, but the gardens themselves were unrecognizable. The neat rows of flowers were replaced by giant trees, their branches broad enough to scrape against the castle walls. Rain sluiced down weathered roots that began up their trunks far above Twilight’s head and disappeared into a dense network of ugly plants with broad leathery leaves and trumpet-like flowers in an unhealthy shade of orange. They formed a canopy at about flank-height, perfect for concealing ground covered in treacherous ankle-snapping roots. Twilight followed the open walkway; she had to step carefully around the odd vine or two, but compared to the stairs down it was practically galloping through an open field, and she quickly reached the archway at the entrance of the throne room. She ducked under a trail of moss and stepped inside.
In the throne room, more trees stretched all the way to the high ceiling, their branches bursting through the giant picture-windows. Colored glass lay among the roots. Twilight crossed the large hall, past the empty throne coated in ivy to the alcove behind, to the door that opened on the endless winding stairs up to the Princess’ bedchamber. The door was slightly ajar, but when Twilight went to push past it she found it wedged in place by a snarl of roots. She tried to work a hoof into the gap to pry the door open and slipped against the moss-slick surface, losing her balance and dropping the lantern. Twilight heard the sound of glass breaking, then the room went dark. A piece of the lantern rolled into the door, striking it with a dull thud that echoed through the throne room. As if in response, branches stirred in the wind.
Twilight groaned and went to pull her hoof back. It caught in the doorway. “Oh, come on,” she muttered. She closed her eyes and exhaled loudly, and when she opened her eyes she found it wasn’t as difficult to see as it should have been on a clouded night. She tried to turn to see where the light was coming from, her trapped hoof knocking and scraping against the door. More luminescent fungus grew up the trunks of the trees in spiraling tracks. The sound of rustling branches came again, with something else mixed in. Something that sounded like…
Slowly, Twilight turned her attention away from the trunks of the trees to around their base. Glowing eyes were watching her, and a low rumbling growl filled the room. She suddenly became very aware of her breathing, and how loud and fast it had become.
The first timberwolf emerged from the murky trees. Its eyes shone with an inner brightness that outstripped the flickering light of the doused candle. It was followed by two more, while others skulked in the darkness. She could smell their breath, a damp rotten odor like dead trees full of feasting fat grubs.
That’s impossible, her mind stupidly insisted, timberwolves don’t live in Canterlot.
Before another thought could come to her, the alpha lunged.
Twilight jerked away as best she could, the timberwolf’s jaws snapping down on air where her hind leg had been half a second before. She tried to buck at its head with both legs, but she was positioned all wrong with her head up against the wall, and only glanced its muzzle. The two others circled on either side. Twilight kicked wildly into her blind spot, trying to keep the largest one in view. Hunting behavior, her mind spoke up, unable to keep the thought away. Hunting behavior. They are hunting.
And then the shape came out of the darkness.
It was something much larger than any of the timberwolves, that much was clear when it descended on the one right behind Twilight. The sounds of scuffle and struggle cut through the growling. Twilight tried to turn herself to see what was happened, tried to wrench herself free, but she remained stuck. The shape was dark, and now it stood between her and the timberwolves. Dark, with stars like the night sky in its mane.
Twilight watched Princess Luna rear up on her hind legs, transfixed. Her wings were flared, and at that exact moment lightning lit the sky and turned the Princess into a massive black silhouette cast over the timeberwolf pack. Time slowed, the moment frozen in the air along with the Princess of the Moon. Then it came to an abrupt end with Luna’s hooves crashing to the ground like thunder. The timberwolves scattered, melting into the dark shadows of the trees.
Luna turned to Twilight, towering over her. Twilight could see her taking long, even breaths. “Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you require some assistance?” she asked, lifting an eye to the overgrown door.
“Yes.”
With Luna bracing against the door, Twilight was able to pull her hoof free. She examined her leg; there was a shallow cut she hadn’t felt while she had been struggling that was beginning to sting. “This is really happening, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It is no dream,” Luna replied.
Twilight found she could feel her heart still beating fast. She knew timberwolves could be dangerous, but only to ponies that stumbled too deep into their territory. This was Canterlot! And just how many had there been? It seemed like there were hundreds of glowing eyes in the darkness. She hoped with a fluttery desperation that her memory was incorrect.
Luna was inspecting the door to the stairway. “I had planned to check on my sister, but it appears the way is barred.” She placed a hoof against the door, pressing on it to test its strength. “Perhaps together, we may be able to kick it free.”
“Wait, your magic doesn’t work either?” Twilight asked, a sudden knot constricting her stomach.
“Only at a fraction of its intended strength. My abilities are severely limited.” She glanced at one of the broken windows. “Though, perhaps flight would be unwise” As if in response, thunder rumbled from the clouds.
“Uh, yeah,” Twilight half-heartedly agreed. She could just manage to fly level on a calm sunny day; the howling winds of the storm would probably send her into a tailspin the moment she got airborne.
Luna positioned herself to face away from the door, then looked at Twilight. “Upon the count of three?”
The tower stairs were deeper and wider than the ones leading down from Twilight’s room, so the vines were easier to avoid and the moss less likely to be the cause of a near-fatal slip. Twilight kept stealing glances at Luna by the light of the fungus, but her expression remained unchanging, unreadable; if she was concerned for her sister, she didn’t let it show. How many years would it take, she wondered, to hide my emotions if somepony I loved was in danger?
When they came to the room at the very top, they found it much the same as the rest of the castle: overgrowing with wild plants, and quite empty. The rain falling on the open balcony and the cold wind that came with it made the room seem like an abandoned ruin.
Twilight looked around, hoping her eye would land on some clue among the overgrowth. “I don’t understand,” she said, mostly to herself, “have you even heard of anything like this ever happening? I know I never have. Where would you even begin trying to figure it out?”
“Perhaps,” Luna said in a soft voice, “there.”
She was looking across the balcony. Twilight stood beside her. Through the haze of rain, the shape of a gargantuan tree loomed. It towered over the landscape, reaching up into the clouds, its branches spread out wide enough to create a shelter from the storm over what must have been all of Ponyville. It looked like a giant umbrella. It might have been funny, under different circumstances.
“Where is that?” Twilight asked, indicating the base of the giant tree, although she feared she already knew the answer.
“It appears it is growing from the Everfree Forest,” Luna said.
“What is that?”
The drumming rain made Luna’s pause seem incredibly long. “I have no idea,” she said at last.