The Awakening
It was complete darkness, the kind of unnatural inky blackness that swallowed up not just light, but sound as well, for it was the kind of darkness that nightmares were made of. Four unconscious ponies imagined that they were floating up and away. While they were not aware of their bodies actually being moved, their deep consciousness knew. Their world around them started to spin and whirl. Everything became blurry and something similar to a black hole formed. In the presence of this portal leading to an unknown place, the ponies began to stir.
The sheer power of it was awakening the fibers of the equines. The dark magic of the portal seemed to sense this and sent out a wave of power. It proved too much for the ponies and they were knocked out into a deep slumber, any chance of waking up lost to them now. With the ponies not able to create any interference, the dark magic pulsed and spread over the four equines. They were sucked in and pulled through like a substance through a straw.
After some time, the ponies were dumped. The dark magic sent out another wave of power. This time, releasing the ponies minds from its grasp. The magic started to slither away like a snake until it was completely gone from the equines. After a few minutes, one pony moved. This one pony, would be the first to see what horrors await.
The first pony slowly awoke, his coat a pale yellow, and his mane a fiery combination of red and orange. He held the Cutie Mark of a truly noble warrior, one of the Celestial Guard. A shield, with an engraving of one of the most precious things in Equestria, Celestia's sun. He arose from his slumber groaning into the ground beneath him, muttering to himself before opening his eyes. He looked around in confusion before, finally, his words came to him.
"Where am I?" He wondered, looking around at his surroundings. It was definitely not where he last remembered himself being. Seeing that he was definitely not in a grassy field, which was where he went to sleep, last time he checked. He looked around a bit more until he spotted three more ponies, one after the other. They were all mares, unlike him, who was apparently the only stallion there. "Umm... Am I seeing this right? Or did I just get really drunk or something?" He said to himself even more confused then before.
"Uhh... Hello, are you awake?" He said, looking towards one of the sleeping mares. She had a light grey coat except for three of her hooves, which were all light brown. The front, right hoof was grey but had a large light brown horizontal stripe above it. She had on a pink bandanna and her mane was in a sideways ponytail. Her hair was a light shade of orange with a cream stripe through it. Her cutie mark was a stunning image of a water double-helix.
The mare groaned and got up to her hooves. She looked around, confused and horrified. She was not in her room, in her house, in Las Pegasus.
"Where am I? Where's Kiki? Moooom! Did you-" The mare stopped in mid sentence. She was staring at the stallion who had woken up before her. She looked him up and down and grinned. She flipped her hair and gave him an affectionate look through half lidded, orange eyes.
"Hi." she purred. "I didn't see you there. If I'm here with you, I'm totally cool with waking up in some random place." The stallion stared at her. While he wasn't complaining about the attention, they weren't alone. He pointed to the two mares sleeping on the ground.
"Do you know them?" At that moment, one of the mares got up slowly and rubbed her head. She was a dark blue unicorn, her eyes were a light blue to match, while she had a dark purple mane with a light purple stripe running through it. She wore a black dress and silver shoes encrusted with an opal in each. She looked at both of them with a look of confusion.
"Oh dear, where am I, and who are you two might I ask?" She asked. "Last thing I remember I was going out for a night on the town from my condo in Canterlot..." She stated. She wiped the grass off herself and flicked her mane back into place before fixing herself up. "Oh my, my dress is all wrinkled! Oh well, this will have to do for now, I will fix it later..." she said, apparently losing all thought in her surroundings once she noticed how much of a mess she was. She looked over at the other two again. They were giving her an odd look. "Oh, umm, ehem, pardon me for getting off topic. So then, what is going on here? Why am I out in the middle of nowhere?" She said, her concern growing.
"We have no idea either, good thing you woke up though..." The stallion said looking over at the multicolored mare next to him. Changing the topic sharply he looked over to the final mare. "There is one more of us who hasn't woken up yet, somepony poke her or something." He suggested. The others just looked at him confused. "What? Don't you want to find out what the hell is going on? Ugh.. Fine I'll do it." He said grumpily. He trotted over to her side and lightly prodded her with a hoof until she woke up. "Well aren't you just all sunshine and rainbows this morning." He said chuckling as the mares eyes shot wide open, angry.
"Why the buck are you waking me up?" She stood slowly, all the while leaning menacingly into the stallions face. "Why are you even in my house? Who are you?" After silence for a minute or so, she added, "If you don't tell me, I'll kick you in the-"
"Hey, you're, like, not even in your own room, lady." the multicolored mare said. "Back off my stallion!" The stallion was sweating now. He backed away slowly from the crazy mare. She was black as night and her mane and tail were purple with blue-dyed edges. Her cutie mark was a ghost in the shape of a raindrop that looked just as peeved as she did at that moment. She was also a unicorn and had on a dark purple sweater.
"Who are you? Where am I?" she demanded. Seeing that she wasn't going to get an answer, she crouched and looked like she was about to pounce on the nearest pony; the stallion. He panicked and put his front hooves up.
"I'm Pyre Shine! I don't know why you're here. I dont even know why I'm here!" The multicolored mare and the Canterlot mare glanced at each other. The former shrugged while the latter put a hoof to her mouth and stared at the dark unicorn mare like she was crazy.
"I'm Lynx Ring. I dunno why I'm here but you need to, like, chill." The Canterlot mare winced when it got quiet. It was her turn to introduce herself to the mad mare. She took a tentative step foreward and spoke up.
"I'm Onyx Flash. Just as every pony else, I have no clue why I'm here." she looked at her horseshoes. "Or how." The mare stared at the three ponies for a second, pondering whether or not they were telling the truth. She looked around for the first time. She was definitely not home. She growled and gave the three sideways glances.
"Name's Spirit Rain." she reluctantly faced Pyre. "Sorry about threatening to bruise your jewels, guy." Pyre gave her a sly smile.
"It's alright. I like a girl who can kick some flank." Spirit looked utterly grossed out. Lynx put herself in between the two. She got in Spirit's face and told her exactly what was on her mind.
"Uhh, no! You stay away from my stallion! Who do you think you are, acting all tough to, like, steal him away from me!?"
"Uh. Ew." Spirit pushed Pyre and Lynx to the side and trotted up to Onyx. "I hope you have common sense because it seems like this random placement we've found ourselves in had made every pony lose their damn minds." Onyx chuckled at the mildly foul language.
"I suppose I'm your pony, then. Well, now that we've met each other and everypony's awake, let's figure out where we are and how we got here." Onyx looked around. "This place looks somewhat familiar but different in a way." The four ponies started to walk away fronm their wake up-site. As they walked, things started to change. While where they were was somewhat recognizable, now, it was beginning to look like another world. The trees got bigger and taller. The roots came out of the ground and mushrooms grew on the very tips, which were dangling in the wind. For some reason, the air smelled of chocolate and candy and the sun began to turn different colors. There were cotton candy clouds in the sky and they randomly rained chocolate. The flowers were wax and the stems were mere candy canes. The grass didn't even look like grass. It was a bright sky-blue while the actual sky was a vibrant green. The normally small critters were huge and watched the quartet with beady, red eyes.
"Oh my." Onyx gasped. "This place looks exactly like that time in Canterlot..." Lynx gave her a worried look.
"What time in Canterlot...?" Lynx said hesitantly.
"Oh my Celestia. You better not be talking about what I think you're talking about." Pyre said. Spirit glared at him and Lynx.
"Unless you're slow, you'd know she's talking about the time Discord escaped from the labyrinth." she growled. Pyre smirked and gave her a wink. Lynx glared at Spirit with annoyance and huffed. Spirit rolled her eyes and pushed the topic onward. "I think we should all be questioning why this looks like this, what the buck is going on, and where the hell we are right now." She said, eyeing everypony. "Now who wants to find that out?" She said, looking annoyed as she scanned the group in front of her. One by one, they slowly raised their hooves. "Good." She says, finishing her point.
"I agree with the crazy mare." He said. Noticing what he just said, he quickly continued his statement before she could have time to notice what he said. "I-If we are going to find out what's going on we need to get out of this... uh... forest?" He says shrugging awkwardly. Before he turned to get a death glare from Lynx. She noticed him talking to Spirit, obviously. She looked like she was about to have a meltdown.
"Hey, there's a city up ahead." Pyre stated. Everypony looked in the direction he was talking about and gasped in relief. It was a city. While as they got closer it got foggier, they could get one detail about it. The city was big. The quartet traveled in silence awaiting for what was in stow. As they neared the city, they noticed the fog tasted a lot like root beer. They passed a stream that lead to a river in the opposite direction. The water was shimmery and had streaks of red.
"Is... is that blood?" Lynx asked. Pyre said nothing. She looked up at him. He swallowed and looked away.
"Just because it's red doesn't mean it's blood, smart one." Spirit snapped. Lynx glared at her. Onyx covered her mouth with her hoof.
"Oh my. I hope it's not blood." Pyre stared at the stream in silence for a few minutes. The three mares noticed his silence and they watched him curiously. So far, he'd had smart remarks to everything.
"It is blood."
"How do you know?" Spirit asked with her usual attitude. Pyre closed his eyes and turned away from the stream and the mares. He just walked away without a word. The mares glanced at each other, confused by his reaction. Spirit shrugged it off and followed the stallion. Lynx gave Onyx a comforting smile and joined the other two. Onyx shook her head and ran up to the rest of the group to catch up. They continued to walk. The tension was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. Lynx actually considered trying that for a few seconds. Spirit stopped suddenly. No pony else stopped until Lynx almost fell into a deep chasm that was about a mile long and extremely deep. Pyre gave a shout and grabbed her tail in his mouth. He pulled her back and she landed on her flank.
"Are you alright, dear?" Onyx asked the shaking Lynx. Lynx nodded. She got up and flipped her hair.
"Gee thanks for, like, giving me a heads up, Rain girl." she said.
"It's not my job to be your eyes, fru fru." Spirit scowled. "If you're too stupid to watch where you're going, that's on you. Me pulling you out of harms way will just be me stopping what will happen again in the future." Lynx pouted but said nothing. Pyre seemed to have exited his silent state and grinned again.
"Easy, baby, don't start a cat fight."
"DO NOT CALL ME BABY, YOU PIECE OF CRAP." Spirit said loudly. Pyre flattened his ears but still smiled. Lynx narrowed her eyes at Spirit, unsure of whether she should complain that the mare bashed Pyre or simply stay quiet since he hadn't made any suggestive comments.
"On another note," Onyx sighed, quite tired of the arguing, "How do we get across this chasm?"
"Hello." Pyre flapped his wings. "I have these bad boys." He flew over with relative ease.
"But how do we get across, doofus!" Spirit shouted. Pyre shrugged. "I am going to murder you!"
"Not allowed in this... uh... wherever we are, babe!"
"Not to fret. I can teleport us over." Onyx said. She placed a hoof on both mares and lit her horn. It only took a moments concentration before there was a flash and they appeared on the other side of the chasm. "Hoof bump!" When no pony raised a hoof to her, Onyx frowned. "Come on, don't leave me hanging." Lynx bumped Onyx's hoof with hers. Pyre gaped at Onyx.
"What?" she asked. He stared at her horn.
"How did you do that?"
"Oh Celestia." Spirit huffed. "Do what?" Pyre gave her a hard stare and turned back to Onyx.
"How did you teleport... and with two other ponies at that?" Onyx blushed and rubbed her foreleg shyly.
"I used to go to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. I am very good at magic, you see."
"Teleportation is a very powerful spell. And the fact that you managed to do it with toe other ponies..." Onyx blushed shyly at the compliment. Lynx turned so red with anger that she had to say something.
"Can we get to that city now? I totally, like, need a shower. And a way to contact my mom. She was dog sitting, you know?" The group continued to the city. They didn't stop until they reached it. When they arrived to the edge of the city, they just stared. It was a good five minutes before somepony spoke.
"This is not good."