“Are you sure this is such a good idea?” Swiftwing the Pegasus mercenary glanced below the cloud, to the ground thousands of feet below, barely visible through the driving snow. Off to the West, jagged mountains claimed by the Unicorns rose nearly to eye level. His brown fur didn’t provide nearly the insulation it should, and his dark orange mane was tossed about.
“Hush.” The bearded gray unicorn, bedecked with bells on his hat, poked and prodded the cloud-arch in front of him. Beside him, enchanted crates stood in a heap on the foggy surface. He had confidence in his cloudwalking spell, even if his foolish assistant didn’t. If only Clover hadn’t accepted the job. There was an assistant with some potential. Starswirl would never forgive Princess Platinum for hiring Clover.
The world itself was dying. He could see it all around him. It would end in cold and howling wind until the planet itself cracked apart. Trying to fix it was futile. What force could possibly fix an entire planet, an entire civilization, in time? No, the only solution was evacuation. And he was readying to do just that. Each of his previous portals had never quite worked right. He couldn’t keep them open reliably, or they were tied to fragile objects, or both. This time it’d go right, this time he’d get it!
The problem was matter. Matter… messed with space and time somehow. He didn’t have enough time to create an instrument precise enough to measure exactly how, but he could see that in this vast effort. All he had to do was get high enough. Far enough away from the planet.
The portals were the ultimate culmination of his secret theories into not merely time and space, but other, further dimensions. He regretted writing down all that information on time. With luck nobody would bother with it. No, it was possibility that he was concerned with now. He could use the possibility axis to alter the very intrinsic condition of a being.
Building a bridge to another planet was easy. All he really needed was to combine his knowledge of time and space spells. The hard parts would be finding and living on that planet.
Finding the planet had come to him fairly quickly. Unicorn theorists knew that other stars might have worlds like their own. All he needed to do was gather up a field of lie-lilies and bisect the sky until he’d narrowed down a star which had a life-supporting planet. The failsafes of the teleportation spell had taken care of the rest. Even now, he had a crystal sphere containing a plant from that far-off world as proof it was possible.
The difficulty of living on the planet would be fairly obvious. There quite a number of plants ponies couldn’t eat, and places ponies shouldn’t go. So he had the portal’s axis twist around the possibility axis, thereby transforming anybody (that had a soul, anyway) who went through into what they would be like if born on that planet! It was brilliant. Sure, the odd, furless, hornless thing he’d turned into had been a bit of a shock, but everyone who went through would be alive. Trivial problems like that could be fixed later.
Right now, though, he just needed his portal to work properly. Even when tying it to a supporting magical structure, the best he could do was 3 days open out of every thirty moons. Unacceptable! With a little luck, higher up like this he could get a good connection. Then it was just a matter of enlisting whatever Pegasus ponies turned into to lower everyone to the ground.
With a final blast of magic, the cloud arch hummed to life. The air in the center of the arch rippled, glowed, and was gradually replaced by a sort of hole that seemed to stretch away from you no matter how you stood.
“All right. Time to earn your pay.” Starswirl grinned wickedly at the brown Pegasus stallion.
“No way I’m going in that… weird… Unicorn magic.” Swiftwing scrambled to back away, wings flailing. As he tried to get purchase in the air, a blue aura surrounded him.
“I do believe we had a contract, whelp.” A rope snaked out of one of the crates. “Now listen, all you need to do is go through, observe the conditions, and report back.” The rope wrapped itself snugly around his barrel and tied itself. “This enchanted rope will hold onto you if you can’t fly properly.”
“But… but…” The portal was scary. Swiftwing had never seen anything like it, and powerful magic was never a good thing in the stories.
“In you go!” Starswirl anchored the other end of the rope to a wisp of cloud, and then chucked the Pegasus through.
Swiftwing couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down. All around him, blurs of fantastic color surrounded him. He could see odd shapes, odd sights. Vast towers, shining swords, some sort of horrible soda with meat in it. Then he blacked out.
He came to hanging from the rope. The second thing he noticed was that he couldn’t feel his wings. Then his eyes opened. He had transformed completely, into some kind of beast! In place of his forehooves, he had an odd, soft set of talons with blunt claws. In place of his hind hooves, odd lumpy projections. His joints didn’t seem quite right either. He was covered with some kind of brown clothing that matched the color his fur had been.
But the lack of wings was definitely the most important part, hanging from a rope coming out of thin air as he was. Looking up into the portal, he could just barely see that the air was distorted around it. It would likely be invisible from a distance, and terrifying as before up close. Now he just had to wait for Starswirl to reel him back in so he could explain that Pegasai transformed into something that can’t fly.
Impossible. Starswirl stared up at the immense column of pink light, radiating from the tallest peak in the Unicorn Range. They… did it. All around him he could feel warmth return to the world.
The hearts of ponies protect the heart of the land, that monster had said. This must mean that the rift between the races of ponies is ended. But how? Who?
Clover. Well, if my student did this, I can take credit for training her! Let’s go see about this. Starswirl teleported from the cloud to the foot of the mountain. In his astonishment, he’d completely forgotten about what he was doing.
And the warmth was beginning to dissipate the cloud.
Aaaaaany minute now. He’ll pull me back up. Then it’ll be OK. Swiftwing wasn’t liking this. He’d been holding back panic for a while now. He’d tried climbing the rope, but his control of the new grasping appendages wasn’t up to the task.
Then the rope began to move. Oh no no no no no…
Freefall kicked in. All his instincts wanted him to open his wings, but he no longer had them. He could do nothing but watch the ground spin below him as it rose up to meet him. Below, he could make out a forest of snow covered pines as it rushed towards him.
“I think he’s alive!” Swiftwing certainly hadn’t expected to hear that, or anything ever again. He opened his eyes, and could see some sort of shape looming over him. As focus returned, he noticed a creature similar to him, but smaller, with pale reddish skin and a white “mane” on its head. It seemed to have a feminine voice. “He is alive! He’s looking at me.”
That was when he noticed the blunt horns on her head, and the short tail behind her. “He… hello. I’m… Swiftwing.”
“It’s a human!” Behind her, he could see more, taller versions of the same creature.
“No… I’m not a human. I’m a Pegasus. I don’t even know what a human is.”
“But… you’re a human.” The girl peered at him more closely, then closed her eye sand held her hand towards him, palm-first. “He’s… telling the truth. He’s been transformed, somehow. He came from another world, like we did in the distant past.”
WHAT?!?
“Oh.” A larger, more masculine figure stepped forwards. “Greetings, Swiftwing the Pegasus. I am Bass Zak Togasaki of the Teru Tribe.
Swiftwing lived out his days with the Teru of the area, never able to return to his homeworld. After building up a more stable life, he didn’t really mind.
The cloud that supported the portal on the Equestrian side blew away, but Starswirl was right, and the portal remained open at full strength. Centuries later, the town of Ponyville was founded miles to the South of the point below it. Since it would be quite difficult to randomly hit a point in midair, no pony or animal ever encountered it again. Starswirl later used his knowledge of the possibility axis to attempt to turn himself into an Alicorn. It didn’t go well for him.
On the Ar Ciel side, the portal was never detected, even as a giant tower was constructed to the South of it.