Lyra yawned as she walked away from the Ponyville train station and made her way back to her one story house, which happened to rest in the dead center of the small town. She had been invited to a party at Vinyl Scratch's club, or DJ Pon-3 as most of the patrons called her, by some of her friends and had spent most of the day in Canterlot. She rarely had an occasion to visit the city where both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna ruled, save for the wedding a year or two ago and the day that Twilight Sparkle had been crowned princess. She supposed that spending the entire day in the majestic city had been a bad idea, but she had a day off of work and had decided to have some fun with a few of her friends.
She might have also had a few too many drinks while at the club, because there were several instances where she wobbled as she walked down the road, but she was sure that she hadn't had enough to make her do anything stupid during the night.
Speaking of the night she craned her head to look at the stars, something that she enjoyed to do whenever she had the opportunity to do so, because she had always enjoyed the feeling of looking up at Luna's night and wondering what was out there. She knew that there were a large number of stars in the night sky, so she had always wondered if there might be other life out there that they didn't know about. That obsession had been the reason that some ponies thought she was insane, for thinking of other creatures besides them, so she had let it become her little secret. She also knew about the magical mirror that Princess Twilight had brought into her castle, something that allowed her to connect two versions of Equus together, so it stood to reason that the Princess knew about other life as well.
She stopped walking for a moment as she watched one star disappear completely, though for a moment she had to wonder if Luna had been the cause of the star vanishing, but then she decided that the Princess knew what she was doing and that the star would show up again in a few minutes... otherwise she was sure that Princess Twilight would have some words with Princess Luna later that night.
Once she had decided that Princess Luna would take care of the missing star, with or without Princess Twilight telling her about it, Lyra resumed walking towards her house, so she could sleep off the drinks she had ingested by the time morning arrived. Even thinking about the drinks she had that night made her wobble more than usual, which made her think that she was actually drunk, though she was lucky that she wasn't on the side of the street puking yet. As she got closer and closer to where her house was located she swore, to Princess Celestia no less, that she was becoming more drunk with every step that she took, almost as if one of the drinks she had that evening had been drugged without her knowing about it.
It gave her all the more reason to get to her home and sleep the night away, though even as she walked she could feel her vision blurring as she drew closer to her destination.
Come on, my house is right there. Lyra thought to herself as she walked towards the front door, Just a few more steps and I'll be able to put this night behind me.
She managed to push herself to the front of her house, where she removed her key from her saddlebags with her magic and opened the front door, before she nearby fell to the ground the moment she was inside her house. She took a moment to close her front door before making her way towards her bedroom, though she barely made it halfway to her bed before the drunken feeling that was invading her body really got to be too much for her to handle. Her world started to swirl around her as she tried to reach her bed, while she silently cursed herself for even taking the drinks that her friends had ordered for her at the club.
Eventually she succumbed to the drunken feeling that was coursing through her body at the moment and fell to the floor, though she was out like a light before her body touched the wood.
The Black Temple, the largest structure in all of Shadowmoon Valley, was constantly busy with activity as elves, demons, and other creatures continued to prepare themselves for whatever missions they were sent on. Most of them would be sent to the opening of the valley, where they could watch for intruders, while others would venture into the nearby lands and make sure that their forces were operating the way they were supposed to. Only their master and his elite warriors would remain at the temple, where they would be safe due to all of the security measures that had been put into place over the last few years.
Even now Illidan Stormrage, Lord of the Outlands and Master of the Black Temple, would be watching his forces as they prepared to execute his orders, making sure that all went according to plan from the summit of his temple. Though even then the Lord of the Outlands was not entirely alone at that moment, as one of his elite soldiers was waiting behind him, patiently waiting for his own orders.
"Tell me Kayn, what do you see?" the Lord of the Outlands asked his companion, not even turning around from his perch to look in the direction of the person he had directed the question to.
The blood elf in question seemed to be silent for a moment, as if he was wondering what his master was hoping to gain from asking such a question, before he shook his head and walked up to where his master was standing.
"I see an army that's preparing to carry out your orders." Kayn replied, looking down at the various warriors and mages that had been assembled in the Black Temple, "They are prepared to fight anything and everything that you would order them to fight, without hesitation."
"As it should be," Illidan commented, turning his head towards the black sky for a moment, feeling the end of a magical surge of some kind, "and yet it is sometimes hard to tell if my allies are truly working to bring an end to the Burning Legion. Kayn, do you remember the orders that I gave you this morning?"
"Yes Lord Illidan. I was to gather a few of my fellow Illidari and scout out the Hand of Gul'dan," Kayn immediately answered, referring to the mountain that was in the direct center of Shadowmoon Valley, where some remnants of the Shadow Council were rumored to be performing their dark rituals, "Is something wrong?"
"I am unsure." Illidan admitted, though he knew that Kayn would keep this to himself, "The magical surge that I was feeling has ended, which means that whatever ritual the remainder of the Shadow Council were performing has been completed. I do not know what they were attempting to summon, or if it was a summoning ritual at all, but I do know that something has passed through the Nether... though I do not know what that something is. So while you and your chosen comrades are scouting out the Hand of Gul'dan I want you to be on the lookout for whatever the warlocks had summoned, or evidence that they were even there to begin with."
"It will be as you command, Lord Illidan," Kayn replied, respectfully bowing to his master for a few seconds before departing from the summit of the Black Temple, so he could gather a few allies to help him in this endeavor.
Illidan turned his attention back to the mountain that Kayn would soon be visiting, wondering if the warlocks had succeeded in their summoning or if they had been blown apart by whatever had appeared before them. All he had to do was wait for Kayn to return with news... and hopefully the head of whatever demon had been summoned into the valley.
"Oh my aching head," Lyra moaned as the morning sunlight hit her face, causing her to lift one of her hooves up to her head and start rubbing where she thought the pain was located, "That's the last time I let Trixie talk me into drinking at a club... or going to a club for that matter. I know ponies go there to have fun, but passing out because your drunk is not my idea of a fun... time?"
She had opened her eyes and expected to find the same blue sky with Princess Celestia's sun hanging in the sky, but what she got was a black and eerie green colored sky, with the sun unable to totally penetrate the clouds. The land itself was blackened, charred and had green flames jumping out of the cracks every now and then, though in certain places Lyra could have sworn she saw what she assumed was vile green lava. In front of her, or more accurately between her and the pool of lava she had noticed, was what appeared to be an altar of sorts, like the type that she had heard that rituals were performed at.
The only difference between the pictures she had seen before this point and the actual ritual altar she was sitting in front of was the fact that the one in front of her had been used... and recently judging from the scorch marks that she assumed had been the ponies responsible for whatever ritual had been performed here.
"Oh why did I have to wake up in the Badlands of all places?" Lyra moaned, because judging from everything she had seen this was either the Badlands, where barely any life existed, or Tartarus itself, which she suspected that she would be seeing demons if that was the case, "And how did I even get here? Its not like I have that much magical energy as it is. Either I was really wasted last night, or I managed to overload my horn and teleported further than I should have been able to. Oh well, I had best get up and see if I can't find my way out of here... there's no telling how long I've been missing from Ponyville or if anyone even realizes that I'm gone."
She lifted herself up onto her legs and wobbled for a few seconds, before falling on her side and making her wonder if she was still drunk from whatever had been put in her drinks last night. She looked down for a moment and was shocked by what she saw, because her normal legs had been replaced with the limbs of a different creature, as they were thinner and ended in something other than a hoof. Her eyes raced all over her body, finding that she had been transformed from a pony into some sort of bipedal creature that looked like a hairless ape. The only things that remained of her former self was her grayish cyan mane, which she assumed was hair now, and her horn, which was in the middle of her forehead.
"Okay... I'm definitely not in the Badlands," Lyra said, trying to keep calm before she went crazy from the fact that she was not only on an alien world, but also that her body had been transformed against its will, "Still, I should try and find a way home... if one even exists at this point..."
Before she could finish her sentence she felt the ground shake for a moment, causing her to fall onto her rear once more as she waited for whatever was happening to stop. That was seconds before something rose out of the green lava that she had seen, though what she saw was a grayish stone limb grab onto the ground between her and the lava and pull whatever it was attached to out of the lava. A creature made of fire and stone pulled itself out of the lava, drawing itself to its full height, roughly three times Lyra's size, before it spotted her with whatever eyes it possessed and roared at her, allowing her to feel the heat of the lava it had come from.
It then dawned on Lyra that this might not actually be a completely new world she had been stranded on, because with a demon standing before her, with the intent on killing her no less, she knew exactly where she was.
"Great... I've gone and teleported myself into Tartarus..." Lyra moaned, which was seconds before the demonic creature took its first step towards her, "Oh... I guess I had better RUN!"
The last word came out almost as a scream as she bolted up onto her legs and attempted to run up the hill that was beside her, to put some distance between her and the creature that she assumed would walk slowly considering that it was made of stone. She was wrong in that decision, because the demon easily caught up with her and smacked her in the back with what she assumed as one of its limbs, throwing her into the side of the hill she had been heading towards. Fortunately she was only lightly bruised, because she didn't feel too much pain on her back, though the unfortunate thing was that she was still an open target for the demon that was standing behind her.
She turned to look at the demon as it approached her, cursing the fact that she had no experience with this new body of hers before her final hour had come knocking on her door. That was before something sharp flew through the air and impaled the stony demon in its chest, causing it to wobble for a moment as a bipedal creature appeared out of nowhere and started using what Lyra assumed was a pair of swords to cut into its legs. A second bipedal creature appeared to Lyra's left and charged at the demonic creature, jumping onto the creature's chest and removing the sword that had been thrown into its core, though Lyra also noticed that it was also carrying a pair of blades. Lyra assumed that it was just the two creatures that were doing battle with the demon, but then a third one appeared above the stony demon and put its blades in the creature's back, which apparently struck its core as the demon fell to pieces seconds later.
It was at that point that Lyra noticed that two of the bipedal creatures appeared to be males, though when she looked at the one that killed the demon she figured that it had to be female.
"It feels good to be back on the hunt," the female creature said, pulling her blades free from the demon's corpse as she approached her companions, turning to the one that Lyra assumed was the leader of their group, "Any sign of the warlocks that summoned that infernal?"
"No... and it doesn't appear that there has been a warlock here for quite some time," the male on Lyra's right replied, as he had taken the moment to investigate the altar she had seen when she woke up, "Whatever magic was worked here was not a warlock ritual... it was something else entirely, of that I am sure."
Lyra had no idea what warlocks were, save from what she read in the occasional comic, but by the way the creatures were speaking it was clear that they didn't whatever the warlocks were. She assumed that they had to be people that focused on dark magic and making foul pacts with demons, which made her reconsider her decision that this had been Tartarus and was, instead, a new world. She had absolutely no idea what world this was, but right now she was thinking of how she was going to get home and not get killed by demons in the process.
"And what about her?" the female asked, pointing at Lyra for a moment, who turned her head to the creature for a second, "She's definitely the product of whatever happened here... so shouldn't we take her back to the temple and present her to the master?"
"Lord Illidan would be interested in meeting her, that much I can agree on," the male replied, though it was then that Lyra noticed that the third member of their group had moved away to watch for more creatures like the one they had taken out, "and its only a matter of time until our enemies come to investigate. Seeing how she can't walk at the moment, and how stressed we are for time, I'll carry her to the temple... unless you would rather do it Kor'vas."
"I would rather fight demons than carry her," the female said, holding her weapons out as if she was ready for a fight, "which we might get to do if we stay here any longer."
"And I would rather not risk revealing ourselves just yet," the male replied, beckoning the other creature over before sheathing his blades and scooping Lyra up, "Let's get back to the temple before we're spotted."
Lyra decided not to protest about the creature picking her up, because she had no idea how she was supposed to move her new body at the moment and would likely hinder their progress in heading to wherever this temple of theirs was located. The other two creatures fell in beside the one that was carrying her as they began their journey, giving her the opportunity to see that the entire area that they were in was exactly the same, though any trees she spotted seemed to be almost completely destroyed. In the distance she spotted what she assumed were more demons, small creatures that appeared to dance every now and then, before she caught sight of the temple itself.
The temple was a massive structure that seemed to dominate the entirety of the land that it rested on, though there appeared to be a main road that she assumed caravans used to transport goods and soldiers between the temple and other locations. The wings of the temple were larger than what she was expecting, which told her that there had to be quite the number of soldiers inside the temple's interior. All of the braziers that she noticed had the same green flames she had spotted earlier when she had first found herself in this strange land, though she had to wonder how much light those braziers gave to whoever called the temple home.
Once they passed through the main gate, however, Lyra's eyes widened as she noticed a large number of demons walking around what she assumed was the temple's courtyard, leading to her fainting in the creature's arms.