Harmony Consultant

by jqnexx

Phase 1: Awakenings, Part 1

The warmth of the sunlight woke her. She shifted slightly, with a gentle “mmm” as she rubbed her face against his... fur? That didn't seem quite right, and neither did the feel of her own skin. It was a little too warm and there didn't seem to be any sheets touching it.

At that point, her mind was sufficiently awake to realize that many other things were wrong as well – especially with her hands, they didn't seem to be there at all. Whatever she was lying on, it didn't seem to be her husband either.

Her eyes snapped open and she tried to stand up. She couldn't seem to quite manage to get upright, but being on all fours felt oddly right. She looked down at her arm and hand, or rather her lack of such. Where it should have been was a light gray leg ending in a hoof. Oh, and the house had been replaced by grass, apparently.

Her mind raced as she tried to process what was going on. She'd been somehow moved into a forested area and transformed into – she examined herself briefly, the long neck providing an excellent view of her back – a small horse or pony of some kind. All without waking herself or her husband.

Her husband! She regarded the lump she'd woken up pressed against just now. It was another pony, white-coated, but with – she did a double take at the sight of them – feathery wings sprouting from his back. It had almost the exact same hairstyle as her husband, a purple bowl cut. On its flank was a pair of vertical lines, one red and one green. The evidence indicated it was her husband, transformed similarly, but she had to know for sure.

“Croix! Wake up!” Her voice was a little deeper than her slight build suggested it should be, and wavered with barely concealed panic. She shoved his shoulder with her hoof, and when he didn't rise immediately, both hooves and her full weight.

“Ugh! I'm up, I'm... whoa.” At the sound of his voice, the anxiety drained from her face and she gave a small smile.

“Yeah, this is a new one isn't it.”

“Mir?” The stallion groggily stared up at her. He blinked twice.

“Yes, it's me. Alright, just to make sure, please describe how I look right now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Uh, you seem to be a talking horse with a light grey coat, your hair’s still blackish, although you’ve got a tail with it too, and there’s some kind of black horn sticking out of your head. The horn looks different from most animal horns I've seen, more like a spearhead. There's some sort of star-with-a-musical-note mark on your hip.”

Mir pondered for a moment. She hadn't noticed the horn, but now that he pointed it out, she could feel it. It had senses, like any other limb. She just hadn't noticed it before. Somehow concentrating on it felt strange, but she couldn't spend time to think on this. Somebody had did this to them, and it was either some sort of evil plot or the mother of all pranks. Maybe both. “Do we have any enemies with a horse or pony fixation?”

He raised a foreleg to his chin. “Just Infel.”

They were sitting in a sunlit clearing in a forest, with only a few body lengths between them and the trees. Mir sat down on the grass, scanning the border of the clearing. “Hmmm, I can't think of any either. If we were rabbits, I'd blame Shurelia and we could go beat her up for this.”

Croix sat down with his back to her, scanning the other half. “I keep having this weird feeling on my back.”

“That's your wings, dear.” Mir failed to suppress a smirk.

“Wings?”

“Yes, you're a winged horse now.”

“Well, I guess I won't be needing a V-Board anymore.”

Satisfied nobody and nothing was standing in the shadows waiting to strike, Mir stood up again and looked around at the clearing floor. Now that she'd calmed down some, she saw a few objects scattered on the grass around them. Most of them were things that had been in their house. She also took the time to examine their surroundings for things other than enemies.Something about the trees seemed off to her, but otherwise they could have been in any forest anywhere on Ar Ciel, or rather any temperate forest. It was definitely a temperate forest.

“Dear, I think you should put this on.” Croix had found what appeared to be Mir's bodysuit, remodeled to fit her new form, and offered it to her. She turned towards him and her eyes widened. Why was she staring at him? He'd just picked up the suit with his... he looked to his side. He'd picked it up with his wing.

“Croix, how exactly are you doing that?” She tilted her head slightly and moved to his side to get a better view.

“I have no idea.”

She approached until her nose pressed against the wing, then backed up a small amount. “Don't move.” Her hooves began to prod along the edge of the wing. “It doesn't actually have a joint where it's bending... here. How is it doing that? Is it cartilaginous? It feels too solid to be a muscular hydrostat, so....”

He sighed and lowered his head slightly. She'd always had a thing about birds, first as metaphors and now she'd become interested in the flesh-and-blood kind. “Dear, please just put it on. And help me into my armor if you could. There could be dangerous animals here, or even monsters.”

“Right.” She wiggled into it without any difficulty, and managed to get it clasped shut with her mouth in a rather impressive display of dexterity for lips. “Now, I saw what I think is your armor over there, let's get it on you and then we can get moving.” She lifted up the armor, only to find him staring at her too. He seemed a bit more affected. His jaw had gone slack and his eyes had dilated to pinpricks. Then it hit her – all four of her hooves were on the ground and her mouth was empty, but she knew she'd picked up his armor.

It was floating off to her right, covered in a blood-red aura of some kind. Her eyes registered a glow of a similar shade coming from somewhere above their position... “Croix, is my horn glowing?”

He shook his head briefly and cleared his throat. “Yes, it's... glowing the same color as the armor is.”

She thought about moving the armor. It lifted up and dropped down in a rhythm a couple times. “Huh. This is... this is real magic.”

“You mean like song magic?”

“No! I mean, real magic. I didn't even think about singing anything but here it is just levitating next to me. It's incredible, like an expression of pure will.”

He sighed again. “Before you ask, no that's still not my taste.”

She chortled. “Darn. Now, let me get this on you.”

He gulped and stood stoic as the armor accelerated towards him in uncertain fits and starts.

---

The two walked through the woods, ever alert. After leaving the clearing, the canopy had largely blocked sunlight from reaching them, and it set them on edge. Ears pricked and rotated towards any sound, but so far they hadn't seen anything.

“So what do you think, Mir?”

“Well. I do know a few ways to change someone's form, although this is pretty good. It also wouldn't explain where we are now. I'd be more inclined to say we're in a virtual world like the Binary Field, except I'm, well, me, and I'd expect I'd notice if I was in the Binary Field. It is where I do most of my best work after all.”

“It's definitely not a cosmosphere, I can tell you that much. Those always had a dreamlike quality to them, and I can really feel my muscles getting tired here.”

“Croix, you're not actually getting tired, are you?”

“My legs are, a bit. I want to fly.”

“Well then, go ahead. Just don't get lost.”

Croix paused for a moment. “Dear, where are we going, anyway?”

“You remember that big speech I gave you when I told you what I really was with all the gory details, including the part about why I couldn't go certain places, right?”

“Yeah, it was when I accused you of sending my sister into danger.”

“Well, since I'm always worried about getting too far from the tower, it helps to be able to sense how far away it is. This particular sense is giving me results that don't make, well, sense. It feels like the tower should be right ahead. But it'd be impossible to miss!”

Croix pondered. Her homeland, the Tower of Ar Tonelico, was indeed hard to miss. It should soar above them to the top of the sky, but all he could see was blue and some scattered clouds. Nothing that should be able to hide such a mammoth structure.

She continued on without waiting for his response. “It feels like it's only 150 stons ahead and we're making good time so we'll see what's there when we get there. It's emitting a tower signal so it must be some kind of ground relay or a crashed satellite. In the meantime let's go over what we know.”

He took it up there. “Someone, unknown to us, broke into our home, turned us into... what did you say they were again?”

“A pegasus and a unicorn. They're old legendary creatures.”

“Right. They did this without waking us and then dumped us in the middle of a forest. Wherever it is, we can't see the Tower of Ar Tonelico from it so it can't be anywhere near your home.”

“It's our home now. They also were kind enough to provide us with equipment to fight in. Either whoever did this wants us to fight something for them or they want us to fight to the death in some kind of brutal arena.” She smirked a bit.

He winced a bit at her teasing (at least, he always hoped it was teasing). “If they wanted either of those I'd think they'd explain what they wanted of us before now.”

“Well, I'm quite alright with either. It'll be really nostalgic, being protected by you.” She trotted forward slightly and nuzzled him on the side.

“Uh, thanks. But let's keep our eyes open. There's something wrong with the forest.”

“I'll say.” She turned her head from side to side. “The birds have all stopped singing.”

They stood in silence for a few seconds. He couldn’t hear anything except some very faint wind. “Then you'd better start.”

Mir closed her eyes. Her lips began to move, and a faint singing sound was audible, seeming to come from everywhere around her. Her horn lit up, and a ball of black energy appeared above her. Croix began to flex his wings slowly. His lance seemed to be the same, even if he had to hang onto it via a hoof-strap. A steady thumping noise began to rise in volume, and the ground shook.

A tremendous reptilian head burst over the treetops, belching smoke. It was green and spikey, with horns coming off it and a long neck trailing behind it. Wings could be dimly seen through the trees further back. Mir opened her eyes and smirked. It wasn't that big, in the grand scheme of things she'd blown up.

---

The dragon let loose his mightiest roar. Pony guardsmen usually ran off in fear from him well before this point, but even those that did come face him never made it past the roar. But these ponies... they didn't move at all. They didn't even flinch. Intolerable. He'd have to make an example of them. The unicorn wasn't moving and wasn't really even paying attention to him, but the pegasus was closer. Laziness won out, and he grabbed at the latter.

To the dragon's confusion, rather than grab and squeeze the life out of the annoying pony, there was a “ching” sound and his claw closed slightly to the right of the pony, an odd vibration reverberating through it. He brought his claw back towards the target in a swipe, but it deflected up with a similar “ching” noise and a similar odd vibration. He blinked in confusion. That was about the time the pegasus stabbed him with its lance. The dragon's hide was too thick for it to reach anything truly vital, but it still was a stupid pony hurting a dragon! Before he could act on this feeling, the pegasus flapped its wings back once, pulling the lance out, then flapped forward again, piercing into the dragon again. Through the pain, one thing was readily apparent. The pony had struck with far more momentum than he should have had from that one flap.

As the pony pushed back and prepared to strike a third time, the dragon backed up as well, flapping his mighty wings once. Trees around them twisted, branches snapped, and leaves billowed out. The pony wasn't blown backwards by the force (and there was that “ching” again) but the effort had brought the dragon the distance he needed to get a clear look at the situation. The pegasus started to move forward, but then pulled back for some reason, probably he was wary of leaving the unicorn unguarded. The dragon concentrated on the ambient magic around him. He could feel distortions in it, and resolved them into an understanding of the situation.

The pegasus was somehow bending the magic coming off the unicorn around him. Exactly what he was doing with it he wasn't sure, but it seemed like it gave him a tremendous boost in striking power. It probably was also the source of the mysterious “ching” that coincided with every time he'd failed to affect the pegasus. The unicorn, however, was not the ultimate source of this magic. It was coming into her from a distant... thing... somewhere. He couldn't get a good read on where it was or even what direction it was in, which was surprising. What he could see however was that the thing on the other end providing the unicorn with magic was truly powerful, and that she was gradually drawing more and more power from it. No wonder the pegasus didn't follow him. Not only was the unicorn the source of his mysterious tricks, whatever was up meant that time was on their side. And that made him mad.

A torrent of fire poured forth. The trees closest to his mouth were vaporized. Beside him, the ambient heat had ignited trees and vines not directly touched by the incandescent gas. In front of him was an inferno. Blazing trees had fallen in great numbers, a legion of ashen logs pointing out from him, and... oh no. He couldn't believe it. The unicorn was still standing, undisturbed from her spot, not even sweating. Around her, the tinderbox of forest floor leaves remained cool and dry, however fire was beginning to spread in from the edges. The pegasus hovered slightly over and in front of his companion, with an oddly cocky half-smirk, half scowl on his face.

The dragon couldn't possibly believe it. If it had been Princess Celestia or there was a force field he might have understood, but nothing made sense. Mortal ponies burn fairly easily! It's a fact of nature. All dragons understood that. Something was terribly wrong here, and his pride was slowly becoming willing to acknowledge that in the traditional dragon “acknowledgement of a worthy foe” ceremony (flying as fast as you can in a straight line).

Unfortunately for him, time was up. The black ball over the head of the unicorn shot forward, splitting into five. He began to flap, but it would take too long to get off the ground. The blasts of darkness struck home.

---

Croix surveyed the battlefield as the dragon crashed to the ground. It seemed to be still alive, but in pretty bad shape. Probably a pretty good concussion and a bunch of painful bruises. Could dragons even get bruises? This one seemed different from the ones back home, but he didn't know much about them either. In any case, now that nobody was trying to kill him, there was a more pressing concern than the safety of their recent foe.

“Dear, I think you may have started a forest fire.”

Mir surveyed the area, and assumed a pout. “Don't blame me, it's a dragon. He breathed fire at us first.”

“Sorry, force of habit. But we should get moving. I think I saw a river nearby.”

Before Mir could protest, he dived down and scooped her up with his forelegs, then flew straight south over the river.

“Croix, I have never started a forest fire. I have knocked you over a few times, at most.”

“I know, but it’s one of the few things I can tease you about. Anyway, there's a building or something on a cliff down there, it's made of stone and across the river so we should be safe. I'll put us down there.” Mir sighed and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t admit it, but she liked being carried like this.

---

As they came down for a landing, Mir's eyes suddenly popped open.

“This way!” She leaped from her husband's grip onto a nearby balcony. After sticking the landing, she dashed through the moss-covered doorway deeper into the building, and Croix dived in to follow her.

Despite his longer legs, Croix had a great deal of trouble keeping up and almost got separated from her as he ran. Finally, many hallways, twists, and turns later, they stopped. Mir stood in a large room, circling a mirror. “It's coming from there.”

Croix looked at the object she was circling. It seemed to be a rectangular full-length mirror, about twice as high as he was now. The edges were covered in silver filigree, but nothing else was remarkable about it. It didn’t seem electronic at all, so he had to ask. “The mirror?”

“Yeah, my connection to the Tower is coming through here, no doubt about it.”

“You sure it's not in a room above or below this?”

“Yes!”

“Sorry.”

“I can pick up a few other connection points elsewhere, but this is definitely the one I've been using since I arrived.”

“I'm just glad it's here.”

“You and me both. But I don't see any mechanism at all, so there's nothing more we can do here, other than shut the door so nobody disturbs it.”

“Well, let’s get… WHOA!” Croix had idly moved up to examine his armor in the mirror for any damage from the dragon, but was shocked to see his old self reflected. His human self. “Uh Mir, take a close look.”

She ambled up to the mirror, and as soon as she got close, she could see it. To her reflection’s right stood the Croix she knew, clad in white armor and standing tall and upright. In front of her was the deceptively girlish and slight form she was normally in. Mir rolled her pony eyes and the human ones followed the movement. She stuck out her tongue and waggled it left and right, and the human reflection, well, mirrored the movements.

“This is strange.” She sat down to think on things. The cool stone of the floor wasn’t particularly comfortable, even with fur, but this was a lot to take in. “OK, even I have never, in all my life, seen something like this.”

Croix turned to her. “Coming from you that’s a bit scary.”

She pawed idly at the mirror for a moment. Then she tapped it once and listened to the sound. After letting the soft metallic echoes die off, she stood up at last. “OK yeah, I hate to admit it but I got nothing here.”

Croix moved back to her side. “Is there any sign of how it works? At all?”

Mir shook her head. “No, there’s nothing. I’ve seen all sorts of technologies, but I’ve got to say, this looks like it’s just pure magic.”

Croix scrunched up in thought. “You mean like the way the Teru distorted the paths that lead to their hiding spot so that no one could find it without their permission?”

Mir nodded curtly. “Yes. This seems to be a similar phenomenon. It’s possible this could lead back to our home, but without whatever or whoever it’s keyed to it’s useless to us.”

Croix sighed. His wings spread to the ground as his shoulders slumped. “Damn. Well, I guess just lock the door on our way out then.”

---

After they left, shut the door, and piled rocks in front of it, they began to wander through the building towards what they assumed would be the main hall. It had large banners and a roof that looked like it had been patched recently, but no other sign of life. They resolved to look for a road nearby, but as they began to wander down towards the entrance, Mir's ears suddenly sprung up.

“Croix! Can you feel that? Hear that?”

He cocked his head. “No...?”

“It sounds exactly like... YES! It is!” Mir dashed forward to the edge of the entrance area, leaped from the ledge, did a front flip in midair, and landed on a stairway leading down. “This way!”

“Showoff.” Croix sighed and flapped after her.

As they rushed down the stairs, they moved nearer and nearer the river until they entered a cavern that seemed to be cared into the side of the cliff. “It's in here... but...”

Mir stared ahead at the giant, tree-shaped crystal, but it felt all wrong. “No no no, this is some sort of mistake. It's got no proper outer shell and if anything happened to it kiss everything goodbye.”

Croix peered inside. “What's all this?”

Mir put her forehoof to her horn. “I guess this is a point in favor of the 'virtual world' theory. This thing is putting out waves very similar to a Heart of Gaea, but it doesn't have any kind of shell. If this is what I think it is, it makes even less sense.”

Croix raised an eyebrow. “I don't really feel like guessing games tonight. What do you think it is?”

“The heart of this entire world! Awfully careless to leave something like that lying around.”

“It's not just lying around.” That voice hadn't belonged to either of them. Croix jumped forward and turned around, putting his body between Mir and whoever had spoke.

“Easy there mister, nothing to worry about. I'm just one of the ponies that the Princesses sent to check up on things.”

Mir moved out from behind Croix to regard the new pony. He was orange with a blue mane and a pegasus like Croix, but he wore yellow armor that she didn't think would be of much use in a real fight and looked kind of stupid. “And you are?”

“I'm Lt. Flash Sentry. But you guys are the suspicious ones. Please give me your names.”

“I am Mir, and this is Croix Bartel.” Mir considered giving a fake name for herself, but she doubted a bunch of talking ponies would have heard of her, unless it was a simulation crafted by someone she knew. Time to learn something.

“Those names sound strange, are you foreigners?” He also thought the unicorn's horn looked odd, but it would be impolite to point that out. Still, the last unicorn he heard of with a strange horn was Sombra. Politeness won out for the moment.

“Yes. We come from a land called...” Should she give away their homeland's real name? Might as well, if they didn't recognize her name they likely wouldn't be able to recognize it. But why do they have relays? “...Sol Ciel.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It's... very far from here.”

“And how'd you come to be here?”

“I... flew. He carried me.”

Sentry looked at Croix. He seemed to doubt that one pegasus could carry another pony all that distance, but he wasn't going to press just yet. “Alright, but what are you doing here?”

“We got attacked by a dragon and ran this way.”

Flash startled, and leaned in. Time for business. “Was anyone else with you?”

“No. Also, I think the dragon may have started a forest fire, so you might want to get someone to deal with that, if you have anyone who can.” Forest fires that got out of control in Sol Ciel could be doused by powerful song magic, but if this guy was anything to go by the inhabitants of this area wouldn't have any such capability. She'd offer to do it, but weather song magic couldn't be done without specialized equipment actually on site.

Flash leaned back and slumped. “Drat! There goes my chance of seeing her. I've got to go round up a weather crew to get this taken care of. If you're looking for a town, the nearest one is Ponyville, just follow that path over there all the way until you reach it. Stay on it. You probably can't make it to town before night falls so go until you see a sign marked “Zecora” and knock on the tree house there. She should be able to take you in for the night.

Croix chimed in, “All right, that sounds great. Let's get going. I didn't get to wake up in a bed this morning and I want to do so next morning.”

As the two dashed off, Flash took out his flare gun. Celestia had stepped up the Everfree patrols ever since the incident with the tree recently, so he'd been hoping to get some leave to see Twilight. No such luck though.

A red flare burst over the old castle.

---

Finally! He’d been waiting for that stupid dragon to go fight something for what felt like ages. It was simply too powerful to defeat as he was now, loath as he was to admit it. He dashed towards the gem pile, and with his aura plucked ten perfectly black spheres from the ground. As they hovered closer to him, their surfaces rippled with deep purple. “Not me, little ones. Soon.”

---

To Mir's surprise, the phrase “tree house” had been taken literally. It seemed to be a hollow tree with a door on it and some windows in it. Many strange bottles hung from the branches and a mask hung over the door. It vaguely reminded her of the Teru tribe, but not quite. It was getting dark and while she trusted herself and Croix to handle anything in the forest, a good night's sleep would be much better than the alternative. She rapped once with her forehoof.

“Travelers, at this late hour? Please make your way into my bower.” Mir had heard of Zebras before, they were striped horse-like creatures that had been extinct until the Planet Regeneration recently. They couldn't normally talk, but then again neither could ponies as far as she knew. This one talked, rhymed, and wore a cloak.

“My dinner is over at this time, but there is still cilantro, rice, and lime.”

They ate a small meal (completely vegetarian, Mir noted) but didn't talk much. Walking all day wasn't that bad for her, but Croix was a human (well, normally) and he also had to wear heavy armor and carry her during the escape from the forest fire. “After the meal is over, we'd like to go to bed.”

The zebra led them to a second story of the tree house, where there was a bedroom.

“Do not worry your weary heads, for the two of you there are two beds.”

Mir groaned. “We're married. We'll take one.”

The Zebra pointed to the guest bed, and they climbed in. As Mir got in, her back felt a little stiff. That was odd, she almost never felt the effects of exercise like that; it must be the quadrupedal stance. She closed her eyes, felt Croix's wing wrap around her, and fell fast asleep.