A cloaked figure walked forward, his navy blue boots scraping up charred dirt, and his matching hooded cloak putting out fires as it flew around gently in the wind. He approached another figure lying on the ground, and stopped a few inches away.
“Had enough?” Asked the first figure in a low, gravelly voice.
The second figure coughed, and attempted to pick himself up, only to collapse back into the dirt.
“I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long. Most other mages would have already given up or sunken into madness at this point. However, you and I both know that you can’t keep up this tough guy act forever,” He kneeled down and looked his opponent in the eyes. “So I’ll cut you a deal. You hand over the summoning spell you took from me, then leave this plane, and I promise your mind will remain largely intact,” He smiled. “Should you choose to continue to fight however, I will destroy what’s left of your mind,” He stood up. “Your choice,” He moved back a few steps to give the second figure room to stand.
The second figure weighed his options. He could attempt to leave with the spell, but he would probably be followed, he could give up, but he would have wasted an entire seven hour operation, or he could fight, and probably lose. He stood up.
“Alright then, my turn,” Said the second figure. Strands of translucent red material began to flow from the ground beneath the two, and form a swirling ball of the stuff in his left hand.
More red mana? Thought the first figure. What does he need that for? The second figure generated seven translucent red runes, and crushed one of them in his right hand. The other six vanished from sight as he combined the mana in his left hand with the rune in his left, creating a fiery ball that began to grow rapidly. When it finished growing, the mage threw it at the first figure.
At first, the first figure didn’t move, but then he generated a large blue barrier in front of him. Once the fireball collided with the barrier, the figure enclosed it within the barrier, and shrunk it down to about the size of a baseball.
“You know,” He crushed the sphere in his hand. “I thought you would do better than that,”
The second mage collapsed to his knees. “Shit. They don’t call you ‘The Mind Sculptor’ for nothing,” The first figure summoned forth three blue runes, and crushed one in his right hand.
“Please, call me Jace,” He placed his hand on the second figure’s head, and a blue pulse blasted forth, knocking the second figure onto his back.
His eyes stared blankly into the storm clouds above them, his breathing quickened, and he began to laugh nervously. A state that Jace had seen all too many time before. He had gone completely insane.
Jace reached into the madman’s jacket, and pulled out a parchment scroll sealed with a blue and red wax. The symbol resembled a dragon with its wings folded.
“Now then, Niv-Mizzet is probably going to want this back, although I suppose he owes me for assisting him in the maze…Oh well,” He placed the scroll in his pocket, and called upon the power of his spark. He became surrounded by a blue aura and then vanished
Jace felt the multiverse flying past him at an incomparable speed. If there had been air in the Æther, then his clothing would be plastered to his skin. So thankfully, there was none. He was surrounded by swirling blues, blacks, and greys. Every so often there would be a burst of lush green, saturated blue, and vibrant yellow, lasting about three seconds.
He did some quick calculation in his head. He had just left Dominaria. Which meant that he was about to pass Innistrad. After that would come Alara, and then Mirrodin. Or, that’s what it used to be called. What did Elspeth say it had become again? Ah, yes. New Phyrexia. Well, at least it was still a plane. The same could not be said for Zendikar. Those damned Eldrazi consumed the whole thing.
Jace shook the off-course thoughts from his head, he had to focus on traversing the Æther, or else he’d get lost, and have to ask for directions. And that would just be embarrassing. He passed by New Phyrexia, and made note of the unusually high concentration of what appeared to be red mana. He would examine it after he returned this scroll to Niv-Mizzet.
However, upon reaching the void that used to contain Zendikar, the planeswalker was greeted by something most unexpected.
There was a new plane here. He had never seen any sort of mana concentration like this one, and it seemed as though it had just appeared. He decided that he didn’t need to waste his time in an empty plane, and chose to move on.
However, as he was about to leave its range of influence, he froze in place. It was somehow stopping him from planeswalking. Well, that’s how it seemed, until he realized he was planeswalking. Backwards.
He struggled pointlessly against the unidentified and invisible force. And as he was about to cross the border between it and the rest of the multiverse, he wasted further energy by shouting for help. Despite his knowledge that he was the only one who could access this portion of the Æther.
It was at the moment before he was immersed in the new plane, that he blacked out.
White. That’s all Jace could see at first when he opened his eyes. That meant he had been out for a few hours at least, and that it was light out. That’s two pieces of knowledge from one solid color. The next thing he noticed was the features of this new plane. It appeared as though it was all…hand-drawn. He had no idea what that meant, so he tracked his analyzation score to 2-1. He stood up, and immediately fell backwards in surprise.
There were two things wrong with him. Number one: he no longer had feet or hands, they had been replaced by hooves. Number two: He had four legs. As he was about to get up, only to discover yet another thing about him had changed. He had a tail. Plus, he had no idea what any of that meant. That meant this game’s score was 2-4. Which meant he was losing. Jace hated losing.
So that meant he was going to have to learn a bit more about this place, and even the score a bit.
He stood up, and carefully walked forward a few steps, only to fall forward. He looked around, and found that there was another…creature…like himself nearby. He walked up to the confused being.
“Hello, might I ask where the nearest town is?”
The creature pointed towards what he assumed to be north.
“Thank you Miss…,” he said, waiting for her name.
“Umm, Derpy, Derpy Hooves,”
He looked her over. She was a grey…pegasus, perhaps…with golden eyes and hair. And he admitted to himself that she was somewhat cute.
His thoughts froze. Then reversed, and replayed. Somewhat cute? Now he was sure he was losing it. He had decided that this pegasus was cute. Meaning that his mind had been altered by this new form as well.
“Well, thank you Miss Hooves, now just one more thing I need from you…,” He summoned up seven runes and crushed one in his hoof. Ugh, that was going to take some getting used to. He then placed his aura cloaked hoof on her forehead, and drained a few memories from her, causing her golden eyes to face in odd directions, and absorbed them himself.
“Don’t worry,” He said, calmly as she passed out and collapsed on the forest floor. “You’ll be up and about fairly shortly,” He quickly reviewed the memories, and began to walk flawlessly, as if he had done it his whole life.
“Now then, let’s see. It’s about a quarter mile in this direction,”
Jace looked around the town that the pegasus had called Ponyville. It wasn’t large by any standards, but it was decently populated all the same. The memories that he had collected led him to believe that if anypony in this town was worth talking to, it would be Twilight Sparkle.
He stopped, and rewound his thoughts. Had he just said anypony as opposed to anybody or anyone? He decided to think about it later, and focus on finding out as much about this world as possible.
Supposedly, this Twilight lived in a library built inside of a tree. And she was also probably the most intelligent pony in ponyville, to boot.
He looked over the directions from the stolen memories, and ended up in front of the building before he knew he that he was walking. The planeswalker walked up to the large, circular door, knocked twice, and waited. After a few moments, there was a click, and the door opened revealing a…purple unicorn. Of course, it had to be a purple unicorn.
“Umm, hello,” Said the, he searched his newfound memories for the right word, pony, with a certain amount of confusion. “Who might you be?”
He abandoned his frustrated thoughts for a moment in order to answer her question. “My name is Jace Beleren. I was wondering if I could speak to you for a moment,”
“Uh, yeah, I guess,” She opened the door and stepped aside, allowing Jace access to the library.
He sat down on the floor and faced her. “Now, what I’m about to say is-,”
“I would just like to warn you that I am expecting company. My friend Rainbow Dash said she would be dropping by for some new books so this conversation could be interrupted at any moment.
“Thank you for the warning,” He said, with a small concentration of annoyance. “Anyway, what I am about to tell you is completely true, no lies, no tricks, and I’m not insane. I know what an insane pony-,” He stopped his thoughts briefly and then ignored it. “Looks like, and I don’t match the profile, got it?”
“Yes,” Replied Twilight with absolute confidence.
“Alright then, well…I’m-,” Jace was Interrupted by a loud crashing noise, some angered mumbles, another loud crashing noise, and then the sound of hoofsteps coming down the stairs.
“Ah, that would be her,” Said Twilight, standing up and walking over to one of the bookshelves.
At that moment, a cyan pegasus with a prismatic mane and tail began trotting down the stairs. She was quite obviously athletic, and fairly attractive-. Jace rewound his thoughts, and paused. If he still had fingers, he would close his eyes and rub his thumb and fore-finger over his eyelids. After that moment of confusion, he noticed that his head was aching at the temples. He paused yet again and thought to when that last happened, but he couldn’t place it.
After speaking shortly with Twilight, Rainbow walked towards the door, but stopped when she saw Jace.
“Who’s this guy, and what’s with his getup? And his cheeks?”
Jace looked into the nearest mirror, and noticed that he had light blue streaks running form his eyes down his jawline “Oh sweet, I still have those!” He shouted excitedly.
Twilight and Rainbow both adopted looks of confusion.
The planeswalker sighed. “Do you want the simple, short, or long version?”
“Well…I kinda wanna read this book, but I don’t wanna miss too much…How about the short version?” Said Rainbow, eyeing the book in her saddle bag
“I’m from another world, and I have the ability to travel between worlds, but I was forced to show up here and when I did I lost the ability to travel between worlds,”
Twilight’s jaw dropped, along with Rainbow’s, and neither pony moved for a few seconds, before Twilight spoke, with an amount of shock in her voice.
“S-Seriously?”
“Well, yeah,” said Jace, calmly.
Another few seconds of awkward silence passed, but this time it was broken by Rainbow Dash.
“That. Is. Awesome!,” She suddenly ran up and started looking him over, causing Twilight to laugh a bit at her curiosity.
“How do you do it?” she asked still examining his clothing.
“Well, I usually get some personal space,”
“Huh? Oh! Right! Sorry. Twi’ here got me to read this Science fiction book about alternate worlds, and it’s kinda like it’s happening right in front of my eyes,” She backed away, and Jace made note of a slight blush on her cheeks.
“Anyway, and then I would just kinda-,” He interrupted himself by attempting to access his spark, causing blue and blackenergy to begin to form around him, only to vanish suddenly. He collapsed onto the floor. “Well, do that. And it would normally take me to a section of nothingness called the Æther, which I would use as a sort of high-speed transit,”
“Woah,” said both ponies at once.
“Twilight, that looked like magic!” said Rainbow.
“Well, that’s cause it was, although, it works differently than most magic. That stuff comes from within me,”
“How is that different from normal magic?”
“Well, normal magic works like-,” He pulled blue energy from the ground and condensed it. “That,”
Both pony’s jaws dropped again.
“Huh,” said Jace. “That was odd,”
“Odd?” Asked Twilight. “That was fantastic! I didn’t know that earth ponies could use magic!”
“That would explain a lot,” Said Jace, as though he should have thought of it himself. “Such as the insane surplus of mana,”
“Okay, hang on,” Interrupted Rainbow Dash. “Mana?”
“ Okay, we have a lot to discuss,”
“Okay, wow,” said Twilight, after about an hour of explanation. “Your magic is way more complicated than ours,”
“Yeah, it shows,” said Jace, with a tinge of frustration in his voice. He could’ve explained this in twenty to thirty minutes if it wasn’t for all the questions he kept having to answer. “But, at least you understand it all, right?”
“Yeah, somehow,” said Rainbow, still slightly confused. Jace noted that he was still feeling the strange headache. He dismissed it as a rejection of the memories he had stolen from Derpy. “Well, I’d better get going, before this book goes out of print,” She and Twilight both giggled, but Jace was unfazed.
“Oh, uh…reader’s joke. Trust me it’s funny,” said Twilight, nervously.
“I observed as such,” said Jace, blankly.
Twilight and Rainbow exchanged a look, and then Rainbow spoke, with an air of fear combined with confusion. “Are you always this serious?”
“Yes,” He replied immediately, and with a sense that he had been asked that exact question before. It was at that moment that Twilight noticed a sort of blue shimmer in his eyes, and a slight freeze in motion from Rainbow Dash. She dismissed it as a coincidence. It was not.
Magic of Jace’s sort can be done in two ways. The first, being the most commonly used, is a full frontal variant, and is often more powerful than the second. The second, is concealed, and invisible to the untrained eye. What had just occurred was of the latter. He had entered, and searched, Rainbow Dash’s mind, to see if he could discover the source of his headache, and found nothing. And he had done it all in a fraction of a second.
On account of this failure, he obtained a troubled look. While he searched his own mind for a reason. Rainbow Dash gave Twilight a nervous smile.
“Well, I had better get going,”
“Hmm? Oh yes, if you must,”
She trotted toward the door, opened it and stopped before exiting. “Later Twi’, Jace,” she unfurled her wings, and took off at a speed close to that of a falling boulder. And, as soon as she was gone, his headache vanished.
“Hm,” he commented.
“What is it?” inquired Twilight.
“Nothing, just food for my thought,”
“Oh,” Twilight paused awkwardly for a moment, then grabbed a book, and turned to the marked page.
“Oh, um, Twilight?” asked Jace, interrupting his and Twilight’s thoughts.
She put her book down, and sighed. “Yes?”
“It occurs to me that I lack a place to stay. Would you perhaps be able to accommodate me?”
“I suppose. There’s a spare room on the ground floor. Make yourself at home,”
“Thank you,” He got up from his spot on the center of the floor, and moved toward the door behind Twilight, and stopped just before the doorknob. His eyes flickered blue, and Twilight froze for a fraction of a second. He then opened the door, and walked into the room.