Life is simple: you wake up, roll around, find some grubs to eat, look for your sun rock and bask in it's glorious, warm embrace. Every so often, you find yourself in a strange glowing circle, and get whisked off to a dark forest, along with four other... things. A few brushes with death with the occasional picking of tiny little bodies off your shell ( in some cases, big bodies) you find yourself back where you lived.
Today, though, was different: you were caught up in another strange glowing circle. Shrugging, you pull out some black eye covers you snagged from a strange, large purple bipedal creature; from what you understood of the other being's languages, it kept talking about office romance (whatever that could be) and TPS reports (ditto). Not that it mattered when it kept throwing its bags at you. You feel the familiar feeling of being sucked into a constricting tunnel of wind and light.
You look around as your feet find their bearings on solid ground. You notice that you're all alone this time. Not even the strange person with various shiny objects was there.
"... Mo'kay."
You shrug and roll around for a while. The ground you are milling about on aimlessly is clearly paved stone, but from the feel of its lack of resistance to your spiky carapace, the floor has seen better days. You uncurl and look around again; you see a large stony, albeit rundown castle. Behind you is a shaky-looking rope bridge over an abyssal ravine coated with roiling grey plumes of fog. You look up again at the castle: you note that the walls closest to the ravine are rather tall. Tall enough to reach over the ravine to walk over as opposed to risking the bridge.
"Hmm."
You walk to the wall and start pounding the ground. The tremors causes the wall to begin to crumble, then lean towards the ravine, and begin its certain fall to a smashing finish. You didn't account for the fact that you were still underneath the wall. Adopting a defensive curl, you brace for the literal wall of pain.
"..."
As the earth around you trembled and the dust cleared, you find that, due to sheer, dumb luck, the masonry closest to the bottom had less momentum than the stones higher up. While Fortune had been with you (not to be confused with a certain pirate hunter), the laws of physics did not seem amused; the stones from the wall had instead broken apart, plunging into the unknown depths of the rift. However, there was a pile a rubble. Scratching your shelled, thorny head, you contemplate your new escape plan.
"Yeah."
Satisfied with your logic, you shape the rubble into an incline. You hobble back about 12 feet and curl up. Spinning around in place, you build momentum. Then, with sufficient speed attained, you roll full throttle for the improv ramp.
"Alright!"
Your flight across the chasm succeeded, but you find that your momentum had been a bit much, leaving you flying across the tree tops of the forest. If armadillos screamed, then surely someone would have heard you.
-----
"By the Moon...?"
The mistress of the night had seen dust rising over the Everfree forest, specifically where... her altercation had taken place. There was also a light rumbling that had accompanied it. She took to flight, winging towards her ancient home.
-----
A rumbling was heard by a certain banana colored pegasus. She bolted up from bed, hiding under her pet bunny's bed rather comically. Said lapin stirred slightly, then drifted back into his dreams of power, vice, domination, and kale. Finally calming down, the meek mare rubbed her eyes and went to check on her animals- thankfully for her, she had been awakened only a few minutes before she normally would to put food out for her woodland friends. Then, there was the sound of tearing foliage and shredding, sundering wood.
-----
Inside her hut, the alchemist was disturbed by loud booms. She knew the sound as-
"An earthquake? Quickly I must go to avoid its wake."
Grabbing her satchel, and staff, the zebra galloped out of her home, only to find that the earth did not tremble, but the reverberations were far away.
"Towards here the tremors did not creep- however, it has ruined my sleep."
Dejectedly, she walked back into her tree, yawning and ignoring the low pitched yelling soaring across the canopy.
-----
Luna touched down in the ruins of her old palace. She shuddered as the memories a millennia old seeped into her mind. Shaking her head, she steeled herself. The great wall on one side of the ruins had fallen over. She was about to dismiss it as a result of structural neglect when she saw small cracks around a crater the size of a pony. Upon closer inspection, there were sharp marks in the ground, like somepony had stabbed the ground repeatedly. She then saw strange lines in the ground that seemed like wagon wheel marks, with only one wheel and moving in erratic shapes and repeated circles in one spot. She saw those tracks went to and up a ramp made of the broken mortar of the wall.
"A most strange sight to behold... perhaps I should consult 'Tia."
-----
After your brief respite from gravity, you crash into a tree. Still curled up, you listen to your surroundings. You hear a scream of fear and the running of hooves followed by the ambiance of various startled animals. Uncurling slowly, you look around your crash site. It would appear you had cratered into someone's home. Not that it bothered you much. You were simply too tired to care. You curled back up into a tight ball and went to sleep.
------
At the library at the center of Ponyville, the demure yellow Pegasus knocked frantically at the door. The library's single sign of life was the gradual brightening of windows. The door was opened by a rather annoyed dragon whelp.
"Ugh, Flutters... What do you nee-EED?!"
He was whisked up into her hooves as she looked frantically into Spike's eyes and she delivered her account of the situation.
"Iwassleepingwhenastrangerumblingnoi-"
Spike put a claw to her muzzle and sighed.
"Please, calm down. You're talking a mile a minute here. Just breathe.
She nodded and took a calming breath. Gathering her thoughts, she tried again.
"Some thing crashed into my house this morning, and before that, there was a loud rumbling coming from deep in the Everfree forest."
Spike scratched his chin thoughtfully. The Everfree forest was chockful of strange creatures, most of which didn't have the interest in leaving its shadows. Even so, the rumbling noise Fluttershy described was an ominous sign if he knew one.
"I'll go get Twilight. You should get the others. Just try to stay calm, okay?"
The canary yellow mare nodded and, true to her name, fluttered off to rouse the other Elements. The young drake waddled up the stairs to Twilight's room. As soon as the door opened, Twilight was busy gathering herself.
"I take it you heard?"
"Yes, now help me get the Elements Spike. Celestia knows what could be coming out of the Everfree now...