(Right, so this is a rewrite of my first ever story. I'm not going to change the plot very much, this is more about updating the style, and level of detail. I know the plot is a bit cliche, so don't badger me about that.)
Your breath comes in ragged bursts as you pump your arms. Half remembered thoughts flit through your mind as you push your way through the thick underbrush. You try to remember where you are, but all you seem to recall is rushing through the trees that now fly past you on either side. A large log lies across your path, and with a grunt you vault over it before pushing your back against it. The ground is soft beneath you, and it feels cool to the touch.
The burning pain in your lungs begins to recede as you catch your breath, but a voice within you demands that you continue running, no matter the cost. You try to fight the urge for a moment, but it overpowers you, and you quickly stand. You don’t begin running right away, though, as you take a moment to look around at your surroundings. No path presents itself, and yet you feel compelled to go in a certain direction. Just before you begin running you look to the heavens above, and there, suspended hundreds of thousands of miles away, is the moon.
For a brief moment your urge to run dissipates, and then you begin running towards the moon, as if hoping to reach it. The burning in your lungs returns swiftly, and soon your breathing is forced and labored, and yet still you run. A branch seems to whip out of the night, and it slashes across your face, leaving a cut along the underside of your right eye. A hand numbly reaches up to the cut to wipe away the blood. You spot another log before you, and as you vault over it you realize your mistake.
Behind the log is a large pit. Your momentum carries you into the pit, and immediately you begin reaching out your arms, hoping to find purchase on something, anything, to arrest your descent. After a few moments of falling you realize that you have yet to feel anything, and in that moment you feel a solid impact as you collide with the far side of the pit. It’s enough to knock the wind out of you, and you curl up in response, no longer able to flail your arms.
The throbbing pain in your chest slowly moves from your chest to your head, and shortly after it lodges itself in your head you feel the last vestiges of consciousness fade. It’s a slow fade, and you feel yourself growing lighter and lighter with each passing moment, until finally a flash of white blinds you, and the world abruptly shifts to black as your body finally shuts down.
******\/\/******
A slow throbbing greets your return to consciousness, and for just a moment you wish that unconsciousness would reclaim you, if only to stop the throbbing. You attempt to open your eyes, but a fine residue has formed around them, preventing you from opening them even the smallest amount. You raise a hand to your eyes, and after several moments of vigorous rubbing you manage to get your eyes open. However, as you open them, you question whether it was worth the effort, since there is, literally, nothing to see.
An intense darkness surrounds you. Try as you might to pierce the darkness, it seems to somehow cling to you, preventing you from seeing anything. Unlike normal darkness, though, this inky blackness seems to foil your every attempt at ascertaining directions. You rotate your body in every direction you can, and yet no position feels any different from any other, leading you to question whether you’re rotating at all. You feel your breathing increase in speed as panic begins to set in, and it’s at that moment that you realize that your breathing is the only audible thing.
You suck in a deep breath as you attempt to cry out, but when you try to speak nothing seems to emerge from your lips. All you succeed in doing is exhaling forcefully. Your breathing quickly accelerates, and soon you feel lightheaded as you begin to hyperventilate. You try to calm yourself by holding your breath, but it’s a failed attempt, since your body seems to be slipping out of your control. With a burst of will you bring a hand sharply across your face, bringing a stinging pain to your cheek, along with renewed self control.
As you regain control of your body you take a few deep breaths, and then you hold your breath. Its at that moment, where you hold your breath, that you realize just how deep the silence is, as your heartbeat seems like the loudest thing in the world. You resume your breathing, and as you begin breathing normally, your mind begins racing as you try to figure out what you can do. Your options are, admittedly, limited. A quick check of your person reveals that you have nothing on, and that’s enough to bring a measure of heat to your cheeks, despite your crushing aloneness.
However, as you come to the realization that you’re in the nude, a strange glowing whiteness appears in the corner of your eye, and you quickly rotate to look at it. Despite the fact that the light is so bright, it doesn’t actually hurt your eyes. As you face the glowing shape you manage to make out the contours of it, and it seems to be a rectangle of some size, but without any reference point its size is beyond your ability to guess.
From the intense whiteness emerges a strange quadruped being. Its shape stirs some memories within your empty mind, and soon enough it strikes you that the creature has the general shape of an equine. However, the blinding white of the rectangle stole any real features from the silhouette. It began moving closer to you, and as it did some features began to grow clearer. Namely, the fact that it had an immense mane that seemed to radiate a faint inner light. And the fact that said mane was waving in an invisible breeze. As the equine creature grew closer you could finally make out some distinct features on the face.
The most striking aspect of the creature was the size of the eyes, and immediately following that revelation was the shape of its face. As far as you could tell its face was far removed from what you generally recalled the faces of equines looking like. You continued to observe the creature as it approached, and with a closer inspection you could see that it seemed to have a faint smile on its face.
However, as the creature approached, the smile seemed to flicker for a moment, and then a sharp laugh seemed to come from everywhere, and nowhere. When you heard the laugh, the smile vanished from the face of the approaching horse, and you opened your mouth to say something when suddenly the entire horse vanished, along with the blackness that had surrounded you.
The blackness was replaced with a starry night sky, and as you looked at the stars they seemed so close, and yet so far away at the same time. You reached out a hand to touch them, and then you felt the familiar pull of gravity as you began to plummet towards the planet far below. You feel panic well up inside you once again, but with a somewhat familiar environment you are able to calm yourself enough to remain in control. With some degree of difficulty you manage to roll yourself over, and then you spread your arms and legs into a wider position, in the hopes of slowing your descent.
The ground is miles below you, and you grimace as you realize that there is little hope of coming out of this plummet alive. In fact, there’s no chance of you coming out of this alive, since humans falling at terminal velocity and hard surfaces aren’t the best of friends. Hell, you’d even go so far as to call them enemies.
Your attempt at humor was in vain, though, as even the best of jokes can’t hope to stop a falling person. However, magic, on the other hand, is quite adept at arresting the fall of a person, and this is just what happened, as you suddenly found yourself within the oppressive blackness once again. The horse from moments ago was there as well, except that this time there was a look of intense concentration upon her face, and there was a glow surrounding the horn atop her head. You have to do a double take as you see the horn, and you find yourself staring.
You open your mouth to try to shout out to garner its attention, but your efforts are in vain, as the creature seems preoccupied with the glow coming from its horn. As you realize your efforts are in vain, you slow them, until finally you stop, and your once waving arms drop to your sides. You feel a strange force run up your body, starting at your legs, and then working its way up. As it reaches your head you hear an audible pop, and then you feel a hard surface beneath your feet, and you pitch forward onto your hands and knees.
Your breathing comes in ragged gasps as you feel like you just ran a mile in six minutes. The wave of exhaustion robs you of your ability to communicate, and so you simply try to regain your composure. As you feel your heart begin to slow, you look up to be greeted by four horses standing a small distance apart, their features hidden by the darkness. The only things you can really make out about the creatures is that they are black, with piercing, glowing, green eyes, and flowing manes of green hair.
Your eyes flit from one to the next, and then you find your gaze settling on the one standing in the middle left. With nothing surrounding you, save for these four horses, you decide that you’d be best served by throwing caution to the wind, and approaching them. As you do so you feel a strange energy run though you, and soon all four horses are looking at you, their glowing green eyes somehow judging you in their emotionless depths.
With nothing to go on, you decide to say something, to see if the horses react, or if they’ll simply stare at you until you wither and die.
“What are you?” Your query, while inelegant, certainly does leave an open answer available. Hopefully, you aren’t wasting your time with these beasts, and they’ll be able to answer.
An answer does come, but not from any of the horses. In fact, it sounds as if they are speaking directly into your mind. “We are The Watchers. We stand guard over this realm, and all the places within it.” You nearly fall down in shock as the words seem to echo through your mind. Before you can retort the voice continues. “We observed you tumbling through the infinite space between worlds, and so we attempted to force you back into your own plane of existence. Our efforts were rewarded with failure, and so we pulled you into our own dimension.”
You nod, almost as if you understood what they were saying. “Alright, but why, may I ask, are you-”
“It’s the most familiar form to us. Also, we can not show you our true form, as it would be incomprehensible to your mind. We also assumed this form in the hopes that it would alleviate some of your stress, since you would likely react better to a familiar form.”
“Right, because talking horse things is comforting.” With a quick shake of your head you look back to the horses, your gaze flitting from one horse to the next. “Anyway, where am I? What was that horse thing that I saw earlier? And, more importantly, who am I?”
Silence prevailed as none of the horse creatures moved. Just as you were about to speak again to break the silence the voice returned to your mind. “You are currently in the limbo for this dimension. Until your fate is decided you shall remain here. However, we already have your fate decided, it is simply a matter of playing out this charade until the Princess manages to locate you.” There is a pause, and then they continue. “As for whom you are, it is a mystery to us. You have no recollection of who you are, and so it is a mystery.”
“Well, thanks, I suppose. Better than nothing.”
“The Princess has located you, and soon she will use her magic to call you back. Heed her council, for she is far wiser, and far more powerful, than you would think.” As the voice continues you pick up just the tiniest hint of amusement behind the voice. “And do try and keep out of trouble.”
******\/\/******
As you slowly become aware of your surroundings once again you crack open your eyes to see the same white horse as before standing in front of you. Her eyes are soft, and full of concern, yet at the same time there is a commanding power behind them. You struggle to your feet as there is, thankfully, a sense of direction here. However, as you rise to your feet you realize that they’re not your feet anymore. They’re hooves, and they’re colored a grayish color.
You look up from your hooves at the now towering figure that you now know is Princess Celestia. She gave you a warm smile as you stood up. “Greetings, my newest little pony. I’ve been informed of your… unique situation. And, in turn, I informed my star pupil, along with her friends. I do hope that you are able to enjoy yourself, as they will do their best to help you.”
The Princess’ horn begins to glow, and as it does you feel a strange pressure run along your body, and then the blackness that has become a familiar friend overtakes you once again.
However, this time the blackness seems different, somehow. More oppressive, and somehow darker. A deep voice laughs softly at first, but with growing volume as the it progresses. It stops abruptly, though, and then you feel as if you’re being watched.
“Oh yes, you’ll certainly be one to watch. Of that I have no doubt.”
******\/\/******
As the blackness receded you found yourself experiencing a feeling akin to falling, but not quite falling. Rather, it is more like a feeling you would experience when being lowered. With a direction to orient yourself, you looked ‘down’ and saw that you were approaching a lit up rectangle, much like the one that had brought the Princess to you. As it grows closer it grows larger, but you are unable to make out any details beyond the plane of pure white light.
As your paced plummet continues you are able to, eventually, hear some sounds coming from the pane of light, but it is too muffled for you to be able to make any of it out. Finally, with a sense of vertigo that threatened to turn your stomach inside out, you passed through the pane of light, and you found yourself in a small study. The books were covered in more books than you could ever hope to read. However, one thing that catches your eye is the fact that these shelves don’t seem to be made of wood. Instead they seem to be grown out of the wood of the wall.
Unsure of what exactly you are going to do you take a step forward. Sadly, although you took the time to look around the room, you didn’t look down at your hooves. You now, as you start falling forward, realize you were standing on a table. As the floor rushes up to meet you, you wonder if you’ll ever get anything done, or whether you are just going to be spending all of your time either unconscious, or floating in mysterious blackness.
(I aim to get this up to date pretty quick, so I'll do my best to get things done in a timely manner.)