I'm not too fond of falling but then again I'm guessing no one is unless you're a skydiver or you love pulling off risky stunts in midair that involve falling a great distance then pulling yourself out of it. I'm none of the above and seeing as I was falling from a pretty great height I thought for certain I was gonna either die or get knocked out.
Instead I crashed headfirst right into a tree and amazingly enough it didn't snap. However my head got stuck in the trunk just like a cartoon. Really painful getting stuck and it hurt even more getting it out. Now I know what you're thinking. Why not just light it on fire? Couple of reasons. One despite being a fire wizard I'm not actually immune to fire. Just a bit of resistance to it from my clothing and small accessories. I can still be burned with the rest of them. And two... Think about where I was. I didn't exactly want to start another massive fire on my first day back.
Getting my head out wasn't just my doing though. I swore I heard a spitting sound and wound up backfirst on the ground staring into the sky or what was visible of it. I could see the tinge of light coloring the darkness and I guessed that sunrise wasn't that far off. Nothing abnormal here I thought. And then I sat up.
The tree was staring at me. No I'm not joking, the tree had a face on it and it was staring directly at me. Not a scary face either but one that mirrored human emotions other than rage. As of now it wore a questioning look and if I didn't know better I'd say it was twisting its trunk to better insinuate its curiosity. The amount of detail on it was staggering. I could clearly make out the little leaves on the top of it and it actually looked like it could be found in my world if not for the fact that tree faces were better there and didn't have eight roots in the cardinal directions. They also didn't have the shadow of bark that he had being a lightish brown. Can't really describe it better. And to top it all off, it spoke... As in formed coherent sentences that were actually intelligent, something I didn't expect outside in this world.
"Who are you?" It asked in a deep and drawn out voice. It sounded old and if I listened closely I heard some creaking in there.
"I could ask the same question. I've only seen any sort of animated tree on Mooshu and none of my little foes that I've faced ever came here." I responded and felt a little surge of amusement as he actually did tilt this time but had to quickly undo that as his bark started to splinter.
"Mooshu? What is that place. I've not heard of it even in my old home."
"Old home? Wait you're not from here? Eh you know now that I think about it, I don't think the trees here normally have that much detail. Not to mention the fact that when the trees in this forest get a face it's usually meant to scare ponies," I responded with a bit of a cheeky grin. As to how I knew the little forest face thing? Hey I had to run through this multiple times on my first visit... Mostly running from my own creatures. No Wizard Circle means that next to none of my creatures will actually listen to me. Only ones that did are a couple Life healers and my faithful Heck Hound plus one or two other Fire creatures.
"Indeed I am not from here. I come from a place where I had a friend in a round pink bouncy ball," the tree responded, "and am I to assume you are from this Mooshu?"
"Nope. I'm from a place called Wizard City. Nice place and very friendly people. Meant to train wizards in order to help restore order through the Spiral... and this is all going over your head isn't it. Or more accurately your leaves."
"Admittedly I do not know what you speak of. But it is of no consequence."
I breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes comments on intelligence could come back to bite and I seemed to have a habit of pulling those off. "Good to hear Mister... Well I never caught your name did I?"
"My name is Whispy Woods. And now if I may request yours in return?"
"Joshua Sta- er... scratch that. Just Legendary Pyromancer Joshua." Didn't know if he'd heard of any tales of what I'd done but I didn't want to risk it.
"Pyromancer... As in fire?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"You dare bring fire to this sacred wood? Feel the pain of your insolence!"
Whispy's face turned incredibly angry and the trunk itself doubled in area. To add to that, the leaves swelled up until they easily blocked out the entire clearing's sky view. The tree didn't even speak and instead opened fire. How you ask? Well he started breaking even more laws and as I started dodging, he began raining apples down on my head. Have you ever had an apple hit your head? Hurts a little bit. Now imagine when that apple is actually flung down at you. Hurts more. Now add about fifty extra apples to dodge and your hopes start to dim. Yeah I was not happy and certainly regretting my choice in revealing my school.
I ducked and weaved through the storm of apples digging out my spellbook to see what Treasure Cards I could use against him when something smacked me in the back. I looked up at him and groaned in disbelief. Apart from his apples he was now actually sending gusts of wind at me. The tree had immense lung capacity for not even appearing to have lungs!
I finally dug out my spellbook as the tree started to pull something else and both of us were stopped instantly by a loud voice.
"Alright you two that's enough." The voice sounded like it was my age but it had more of an authority air than I could ever muster. I turned to see who was talking and saw a unicorn. He had light-grey fur, a black mane and the mark on his rear looked like a ton of random magic sigils. "Now what started all this?" He asked in a stern voice. I had no trouble believing that he'd be excellent at keeping kids in line.
"Well I might have been stupid enough to bring fire spell- hold up... You're not at all fazed by a human and a talking tree that hits like a truck?" I asked, confused by all this.
"Not one bit," he replied, "Whispy. We've talked about this."
"I might have also been hurled straight into his mouth by my timed wings vanishing. I need to keep better tabs on those things," I muttered. He heard me of course. I keep forgetting that ponies possess significantly better hearing than humans do... and a ton better hearing than trees because this one didn't hear what I muttered even though any human could've picked it up easily.
"Just follow me. And Whispy, no more flinging apples at the farmers who live outside the forest. I don't even know how you managed to hit them from that distance and I don't want to, I'm just tired of getting complaints," the pony snapped at the tree. Before I could wonder why he was called Whispy, the pony picked me up in a levitation field, it was colored black and actually made me wonder if he was using dark magic, and started carrying me away from the tree.
"My apologies," he said, "Whispy is notoriously easy to trick and he's got a bit of a nasty temper. He claimed to be friends with a pink bouncy ball? Well he didn't tell you that on numerous occasions he attacked said ball."
"Is this really necessary?" I asked while considering what he said. Would make a lot of sense that an intelligence insult would hit hard with him I guess.
Normally I could break out of this but a lot of my magic ability was in my wand. It was only with that that I could mess with existing magic fields or even stand a chance of sensing other magic. There was a reason why my wand had the strongest locating spell on it.
"Given that I have no doubts you'd actually run, yes it is," he responded.
After about 15 minutes of walking, he dropped me on the ground and turned to look at me. "I must say when I arrived in Canterlot for the first time, I never thought I'd see you in a statue let alone hear about what you did when I tried to look up what landed you there."
Wait... "Why would you be surprised to see me in a statue form? Didn't exactly make many pony friends before today and none of them were exactly immortal," I responded. Hey only immortal ones were the princesses then and... well we weren't exactly friends.
"That is because I wasn't a pony before. Right now you may call me Spellbook and for the record I do know you, but not in the way you'd expect."
"What do you mea-," I started right before he cut me off.
"Your real name is Joshua Starflame. You are a Legendary Pyromancer ranked at level 64. You have multiple pets but the one you kept out before this was a Helephant named Duke Ruby. You specialize in fire magic mainly but you trained life as a secondary school and prefer to work alone. Before arriving here you were sent to Zafaria after going to Celestia and before Celestia you were sent to Dragonspyre to put an end to Malistaire. Am I missing anything?" He said all this in a matter-of-fact voice but my jaw dropped at this.
"Hold up... Just... How do you know all this?" I asked. I was mentally preparing to fight and it was shown by the way my spellbook was starting to float by my side. I didn't know who he was and I didn't know what he wanted. But if he was a threat I'd show no mercy, I'd fight for my life.
He waved down the threatening gesture and stared right into my eyes. "It's simple. I know all this because I created you."
The Spiral
Wizard city
"Where did I put it!" a wizard in green robes yelled running about his small cottage, The library will never forgive me if I lost that book."
A small unicorn was woken from his nap and yawned seeing his master run about frantically.
A knocking could be heard at the door. With a distinct voice behind it, "Lifewriter answer this door, I have a message from Headmaster Ambrose."
This was Gamma, Headmaster Ambrose's owl and confidant. He sometimes served as a messenger but only for dire emergencies
"The book can wait," Lifewriter said running to the door, "Stay here Prince."
He stepped outside and breathed in the islands air before quickly saying, "What is it?"
"Ambrose needs to see you in private at his office. NOW!!" The owl ordered then forced a teleport on Lifewriter to send him straight to the Headmasters office.
"Sorry for the nature of this summoning, Lifewriter. But there is an urgent matter to attend to," A voice said from the corner of the dimly lit room.
His eyes strained with the dim lighting of the room, yet Lifewriter still made out the figure of the Headmaster.
"Well, if it is as urgent as I think it is tell me what to do."
"Have you heard of the missing student Joshua Starflame?" Ambrose asked.
"Isn't he the Pyromancer that almost burned down wizard city with a Fire Elf?"
"The same person, Yet I fear that something terrible is going to happen with the balance magic there that will destroy the..." Ambrose paused as if he knew something yet didn't know how to say it.
"Balance magic across one of the islands," I continued his sentence.
"Where Starflame has been for the past years cannot be accessed with a normal world door," He then motioned Lifewriter with his staff to follow him to the back door.
Opening the door was a long dark hallway that seemed to lead nowhere, the walls of this hallway were enchanted with a space altering enchantment that made the hallway longer.
The headmaster started to walk into the hallway, crystal balls lining the walls glowing blue as he passed them.
As he started to walk into the hall to go where ever it leads I only took two steps in before reaching the other side with the headmaster. Glancing back he could see that this was just a small illusion to deter thieves.
Opening the next door revealed something similar to the wizard city world door room except there were wires and tubes glowing with mana each one connecting to the world door.
"You are lucky young wizard, Besides Joshua and myself You are the third person to step through the alpha world door," He then turned to me and looked into Lifewriter's eyes, "Yet the world you are going to enter even I have not explored. So be careful. Find Starflame and bring him home."
"I will not let you down headmaster," he said looking at the Alpha world door.
This is it. No turning back now, He thought as he stepped into the swirling colors of the world door.
Equestria
Everfree Forest
"Wh-what?" I stammered.
He'd just told me his crazy tale. Claiming I was not only his creation but an avatar he made within an online game called Wizard101. I didn't want to believe it and if I had any option I wouldn't. But I was kind of at a loss for words. He'd picked apart my past and even some more private details that no one but me knew. Given all this I said something that I normally wouldn't say.
"You can't make me believe this... This very strange story. You have no evidence!"
"I do... Just not here. But I guess there's no other way then. Get ready kid. You'll believe it, even if I have to knock some sense into you," He said again and even without my wand I felt the outpouring of magic from him. But then, wouldn't you know it... Another crazy event happened. I guess that's the norm for Equestria.
We both heard a sound far above us and looked up. A symbol with three leaves and a circle formed in the air and I saw a line quickly being drawn from it and hurtling down towards the ground. I squinted trying to make out what it was and saw a tiny dot. It wasn't a line but someone falling and leaving a trail of smoke behind.
"It's... headed towards Ponyville. I swear that town is a magnet for trouble," Spellbook said and would've facehooved, if not for the fact that when he smacked his hoof against his face he gave himself a concussion.
"You weren't kidding when you said you weren't from here..." I said.
"Shaddup and let me recover from this."