The 5th Layer: Equestria has Visitors

by MaxKodan

Chapter 4: Time Passes

5th Layer: Equestria Has Visitors
Chapter 4: Time Passes
Max Kodan

The only sounds in the entirety of ponyville were the occasional clopping of a hoof on a hard surface and the quiet crackling of the newly lit braziers. There was an ominous feeling about the town tonight, now that the walls had been finished. The wooden barricades rose three stories, providing a good vantage point for anyone on top of them. Despite the warm glow of the fire, the walls felt cold and foreboding to the residents. They were a sign that things were unsafe. And to those old enough to think in such a way felt as though they were a sign of war.

Atop the wall nearest to the forest, the odd pony named Cy kept a vigilant watch on the dark mass of trees. More braziers had been set up along the treeline. Nothing would be able to approach from the forest without being seen by one of the 12 ponies that took constantly rotating shifts along that wall. It was still 10 minutes until his relief was meant to come take his place, which is why his ear twitched at the sound of someon- some...pony walking up the ramp towards his assigned area.

“Hello?” He asked the corner behind him where his visitor would emerge. He didn’t turn his head, rather, he kept his eyes trained on the forest’s edge.

“It’s me.” Twilight Sparkle’s voice said from behind him. He nodded his permission for her to join him. She approached somewhat slowly, then poked her head around to get a look at his face. His eyes never left the trees. He was really taking his job seriously. Every once in awhile he would blink, but nothing more. She sighed softly to herself and sat, looking out in the same direction that he was. From here she could see Fluttershy’s house. All of the animals had been taken out of it and moved to a more central location, but it was no wonder that the pegasus was the most on edge of all of them.

“You should really get some sleep” Cy said, still not looking at her. The unicorn snapped out of her thoughts.

“Oh, no, no. I’m not tired at all,” she said.

“Yes, you are.” He shot back at her, though not unkindly. “You haven’t slept since we told you about The Station.”

Twilight thought back. The Station. The name stirred her memories.

-----

She remembered 11 ponies crowded around a single table in the library. Somehow, it had just become their default meeting place. It was the day after they had driven the three fakes out of ponyville to parts unknown. Their escape was troubling, but not more so than the matter of the unknown entity that was headed towards their town. The meeting in the barn had been all tactics. Building a wall, preparing a defense, signing people up for shifts, fortifying houses, and so on. This meeting, however, was different.

Everyone agreed that the newcomers, who were yet to be named since they turned down Rainbow Dash’s “The Furious Five” because of something Cy called Copyright Infringement, would only be able to properly be of any help if they revealed more about themselves. This gathering would hopefully remedy that situation.

They wove a wondrous tale, to be sure. Stories of alternate dimensions: different planes of existence, places where physics worked differently, places where magic could not be found, and places where it was so rich the air stirred in your lungs. Fabulous stories about the place they called The Station, a universe that was created and altered by those who resided within it. A mysterious machine that allowed those trustworthy enough to handle the responsibility to jump into other realities. And the core group of 30 or so people who jumped back and forth, protecting those that needed protecting from threats beyond their imagination.

It was quite a bit to take in. The existence of other worlds had been seen as a possibility before, but not on this scale. Several ponies had appeared claiming to be “human”, and the word popped up again from this group. Suddenly, the addled explanations of thumbs and bipeds seemed a lot more believable.

-----

Twilight shook herself from her memories and returned to the present. “No, I guess I haven’t. It’s just so much to take in, sleeping isn’t really that much of an option for me right now.” She said.

“It’s been three days,” Cy said in return. “Go get some sleep.”

Has it been three days already? The unicorn thought. Or rather, she tried to think. The amount of time that had passed being brought up, she found her brain a little fuzzier than she remembered. “N-no, not just yet,” she said, shaking her head to wake herself up. “I came up here for a reason, you know.” She had intended for that to come out as a scolding remark for dismissing her so quickly, but it came out as more of a open mouthed yawn barely distinguishable as language in her own head.

Cy paused for a second, his sights still unwavering, before he replied. “Fair enough. What did you come up here for?”

“I wanted to know more. More about you.” She paused for a moment. “I mean, not about you, but about the 5 of you. So, yeah, about you. And the rest. All of you.” She finally felt as though she had gotten her point across. She watched as Cy tilted his head in thought and pondered her request for a short while.

“Hm...about us, huh?” He said wistfully, nodding. Though they had explained where they came from, the discussions of personality and individuality had been skipped over. Thinking back, they had given a bit of a ‘We Are Legion’-esque speech when they described the Station. “Yeah, I could tell you a few things.”

The sound of another set of hooves signaled their perfect timing. The two of them descended the stairs and passed the new watchpony. The replacement and Cy nodded at each other in passing, and the replacement sat atop the wall, staring out at the edge of the forest with fresh eyes.

“So, where do you want to start?” Cy rolled his shoulders as he walked, working out the kinks from standing still for so long. He also started blinking rapidly, which made Twilight wonder if he’d blinked at all, his entire time up there.

“Uh, I don’t know. I guess...tell me about your friends.” She said.

“Which one?” He asked as he stretched his neck.

Twilight thought about it for a moment, being a bit taken aback by the question. She had expected him just to dive into it, going one pony at a time. “Well, how about Nell? She seems to be your leader, or something. Is that right?”

The red pony smiled a bit to himself. “You know, I never really thought about how to describe each of them to someone, but it actually got a bit easier once I saw the...what were they...cutie marks?” He looked at her and Twilight nodded her affirmation. In all the rush of what was going on, the cutie marks hadn’t really seemed like a very big deal. When they first arrived, there was something there on their flanks, but the marks were like Alpha, Beta, and Gamma’s. They were difficult to focus on, and even when they were focussed on, it couldn’t be said what they were. Shortly after arriving in Ponyville, the cutie marks solidified.

The advent of the cutie marks was most interesting to Cy in particular. He had immediately begun working them over in his head, and it would feel good to say them out loud. Nell’s mark was the top half of a redish orange circle, the bottom defined by a jagged line. It looked like a sunrise blazing over a set of mountains, if you looked at it in the right mindset.

“Nell is...yeah, I guess you could say Nell is our leader. She’s really good at keeping us on task. I’m the newest one here, but from what I’ve heard from the others the team was a bit...useless before she came in. The other three were just kind of blindly doing whatever seemed like a good idea. Half the time, it really wasn’t.” The pair turned past a building and kept walking. For a talk like this, they would need some time, so they wordlessly decided to take a lap or two around the enclosed village.

“So that’s where her cutie mark came from, I guess. She’s like the light that breaks through the darkness. She gives us direction and keeps us seeing what we need to see.” He said with a bit of finality. That was the best way he could describe her, he supposed.

“Well, that’s...poetic. Very poetic. You seem to think highly of her.” Twilight smiled to herself. For some reason, a vision of Princess Celestia flashed into her head momentarily. She shook it off a little: This was about Cy and his companions, not about her. Just then, they passed a light blue unicorn that was hunched over something on the ground. It took a moment for Twilight to recognize the pure white mane as Kale’s. She began to approach out of concern, but Cy stepped in her way and guided her to keep walking.

“Don’t worry, she’s fine.” He said, smiling slightly.

Looking back at her, Twilight realized that she was staring intently at an apple that was sitting on the ground, her horn glowing a gentle blue that matched her body’s hue. “What...what is she doing?”

Cy smiled in response, then let out a small chuckle. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but...” He paused to laugh a little more to himself. “She’s trying to weaponize that apple.”

The statement took a moment to sink in. “Wait, she’s trying to WHAT!?” The purple spellcaster reared back and stopped in her tracks, turning around as if she were going to find that the scene had changed somehow.

Cy laughed and nodded. “Well, that’s the end result, anyway.” He said with a smile. “Kale is an enchantress. She holds magic that works specifically with changing the properties of physical matter. Magic here, however, is different than everywhere else we’ve been. Just as our bodies changed to this, our abilities changed as well. Right now, she’s trying to change anything about the apple. Then, once she figures out the magic, she’ll start doing more impressive things, like making them explode.”

He glanced back over her shoulder just in time to see the white-maned unicorn relax and take a bite of the apple, chew it for a moment, then spit it out in utter disgust. After a moment of wiping her tongue clean, she leapt up and let out a whooping cheer, grabbing a nearby pony and basically force-feeding them a bite. they reacted in a similar manner. She laughed a little and jumped in her excitement. “Well? What does it taste like?”

The poor random passerby gagged wordlessly for a moment. “It...it tastes like rubbish!” He said in a surprisingly british accent.

“It does! It does! I thought I was just hopeful, but...it really does!” Kale cried out, turning to gallop down the road. “It tastes like garbage! Garbage!! I made an apple taste like garbage!!”

And she was gone around a building.

Twilight stared in disbelief. Not in the abilities of the unicorn mare, but in the outburst. Up until then, Kale had been rather quiet and unassuming. She spoke up rarely, and didn’t really let her opinions get in the way. Rather, she let things go on, and gave a slight nod or a mildly troubled look when she agreed or disagreed with anything. But seeing her excited like this, Twilight wondered if she had a bit more pull than she pretended to.

“But I...” She organized her thoughts as she spoke. “I thought she was trying to weaponize it, why is it such a big deal that she made it taste different?” She tore her eyes away from the street for a moment to look at her escort confusedly.

“Well,” he began, “She’s got the hang of it now. She couldn’t try to make it explode, because then the only way to test it would be to have it explode. If she can change the taste, then she can test it more or less safely. The important thing is that she can change something. Now that she’s got the hang of it, she’s going to start the real work.” He turned and nodded down the road. “Come on, we have a couple more people to talk about.”

After a short distance, it became clear that Cy didn’t really know where the twins were. Twilight had realized early on that the siblings were rarely apart, so you’d think 2 ponies that were so distinctively identical would stand out, but in fact they seemed to be no where. “Do they always disappear like this?” She asked after the third pony they’d questioned gave them a negative answer.

“Not usually. They’re probably training.” Cy sighed and tucked the corner of his mouth. “See, they’re actually two of the greatest warriors we have. Battlemages, as it were. They’re 100% in sync, and not just by chance or practice.” He jumped up on a crate and craned his neck to get a better view of the area. “They have a psychic connection. A strong one. And that combined with their magic...Let’s just say, when they fight, it’s absolutely beautiful.”

After a short pause, Twilight spoke up. “There’s nothing beautiful about fighting,” she said harshly. When Cy looked down at her, he realized she was glaring daggers at him. He winced back, but then calmed himself down.

“That’s...No, you’re absolutely right. I worded that incorrectly.” He hopped off of the box and looked the unicorn right in the eyes. “Look, I understand that this all might make us look kind of...bad. Violent, warworn, hardened...whatever other terms you can think of. But I promise you this: We are not cold. We do not want war. We strive for peace, always. Only when that is not possible do we fight back. And right now, more than anything, I’m worried about keeping whatever is out there in that forest from doing any damage to anypony in this town.” He concluded, his eyes just as stoic and unwavering as they had been on the wall.

Twilight stood in mild shock. She had been taken aback by the sudden change in his attitude. And somehow, she believed him. She sighed and relaxed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...” she stopped herself. The look in Cy’s eyes lightened, and Twilight felt the need to apologize melt away. She decided instead to change the subject. “What about you? You’ve told me about everyone else, what do you do?”

Cy took a step back and sat down where he was. “Me? Well...interesting story, actually. I’m a weapons specialist, as it were. Being here, though, I’m kind of missing...well, thumbs. Everything moves differently here.” He lifted his front leg and arched it at the knee a few times. “I can’t really handle any kind of weapons or anything. Makes me a bit useless in fighting as it were.” He shrugged. “But outside of that, I’m a planner. I...well, I plan. A strategist, I suppose. I, ah...” He cleared his throat. “Stategise.”

As Twilight was about to respond, the sound of a bell clanged loudly, echoing through the buildings lining the streets. Twilight bleached slightly, and Cy hung his head. “Look like...I’m not getting any rest after all.” He turned his head and looked up at the wall. “Looks like something is here, Twilight Sparkle. Prepare for the worst. Prepare...” He closed his eyes. “Prepare for war.”