“What’s that rock doing this time Daedalus?” asked the disgruntled teen.
“How should I know? The philosopher’s stone does whatever it wants, and if you would kindly remember, I prefer the name that I had in this century, it’s Nicholas Flamel.” Nicholas was an odd sight, and he preferred it that way. His mismatched black and white eyes were glowing with a strange light and every movement he made produced a whirring sound.
Brushing away the long strand of hair that was constantly dropping into his face, Nicholas continued tinkering with a glowing stone in his hands. His shadow seemed to move around of its own accord in the dancing lights. The alchemist looked up from his work with an audible click and regarded his assistant with his coal eye.
The boy was an oddity to the alchemist, in all of his five-thousand years, he had never met anyone that puzzled him as much as the child who called himself Kai. Nicholas had found the boy wandering away from a burning village with a look of pride on his face, muttering something about destroying the plague of demons. Nicholas’s shadow liked Kai, and that meant that he was very powerful indeed. The boy never seemed to take off that green scarf of his, but this minor quirk didn’t bother the ancient man.
Kai interrupted Nicholas’s train of thought with another loud complaint, “When’s something going to happen? It never takes this long for it to magick us away to somewhere.”
“Patience child, things always happen for a reason.” The slightly annoyed immortal stated.
“Easy for you to say, you have all of the time in the world. Maybe a little fire would help it along?” Kai snapped and a jet black flame burst into existence on his thumb. He touched the fire to the glowing stone and watched it in horror as the light burst along with the stone, and all went black.
“Spike! Why can’t I find this spell? I was just about to use it and the process slipped my mind! Help me find it!” The lavender mare screamed.
The small purple dragon, Spike, looked at the mare and calmly said, “Well it isn’t very easy to help you find a spell when you don’t tell me what it does, it’s not like I can read your mind, Twilight.”
“That’s it! Spike, you’re a genius!” Twilight galloped over and embraced the confused dragon, “I was trying to do a mind reading spell! I know exactly which book that’s in!”She enthusiastically stated and ran over to one of the many bookshelves. “Well, thanks I guess.” Spike said, still confused. Twilight was in another one of her uncontrollable studying frenzies and Spike didn’t want to be in the middle of it.
‘I’ll just walk over to Rarity’s shop and see if she needs any help.’ Thought the baby dragon as he drifted out of the door of the library towards the Carousel Boutique. Spike barely noticed the large flash coming from inside of the library past the hearts in his eyes at the thought of the beautiful white unicorn.
Twilight struggled to get out from the pile of books that had landed on her, considering what had just happened. She had directed a simple mind reading spell at Spike, but at the exact moment that the spell had made contact, there was an explosion of pure magic. Spike couldn’t have put up such a strong barrier on his mind, so the blast was obviously from some other source.
Twilight noticed that she still had her eyes closed from when she had been concentrating on the spell. Opening them, she saw something that nopony wouldn’t be surprised at. Standing on a large scorch mark in the middle of the room were two strange ponies. Both of them were noticeably stallions. The pony on the left was about her size, with a black, unkempt mane, a brown coat, and a peculiar green scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. The other pony was about a foot taller than Twilight, and wore a large white cloak. His mane was brown and spiky, with a long strand hanging in front of his face. His coat was a pure white, even more so than Rarity’s, but the oddest thing about him was his eyes. His left iris was the purest black, with a streak of it invading the white. His left eye was just as odd, pure white other than the pupil, and a small black ring defining the iris.
“Umm… Hello?” Twilight wanted to facehoof for how nervous she was being.
The white stallion responded, “Oh yes, hello. Could you tell me the date and country? My companion and I are a bit…” He seemed to notice Twilight at this moment, “lost.” This last word was said with a large dose of irony in the stallion’s slightly metallic voice.
The brown stallion was, by this point, running around the room panicking. Twilight seemed to hear him yelling, “WHYAMIAPONYWHATISTHISWHYAAAAGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!” Though he was running at top speed, Twilight had time to take note of his cutie mark, a black ball of fire. Not wanting any harm to come to her precious books, Twilight’s horn glowed with the magic she used to halt the brown one. “Calm down, I don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t have you running around causing harm to my property,” She said with only a lingering twinge of nervousness in her voice, “I want to know what your names are.”
The white intruder was the first to reply, “You can call me anything you like, but I prefer Nicholas Flamel or Daedalus. Those are the names I’ve used for the longest period of time. My assistant who you so graciously calmed down’s name is Kai. Now can I ask a question of you? What is this place?”
Twilight stared at the stallion for a moment before answering, a twinge of confusion in her voice, “What do you mean what is this place. We’re in Ponyville, a small town in the land of Equestria.” She stopped there and stared in awe at what the white stallion was doing.
He had taken off his cloak and removed a panel of his coat to reveal his inside to be a complicated mess of gears, pulleys, and many other odd gizmos. Twilight’s mind struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. “Wha… how can? What are you? What’s happen…” She was choking on her words. ‘Well, what a nice dream this is, I would like to wake up now brain. It has been fun and all, but I like reality better.’ And with that thought she passed out on the wooden floor.
“Hey Nick, I told you not to do that in front of other people. Most living things can’t just take off a part of themselves and fiddle with gears and gizmos inside of them. Actually, make that everyone but you can’t do that.” Kai pronounced exasperatedly. Dealing with this immortal gear box got annoying sometimes, when the idiot forgot that being mechanical wasn’t a normal thing.
“Oh, sorry. I was just seeing if I needed to adjust anything to make this new body work, and I thought that since she was a pony, she wouldn’t care if I was an automaton.” The immortal alchemist replied, still thinking that nothing was wrong with what he did, he was still as alive as anyone else, just different.