As the silver mirror stuff closed over Luna’s head, she suddenly felt a surge of motion. She felt as if she was falling from a great height and involuntarily, she tried to open her eyes and her wings. To her surprise, she was able to do both. Luna could see she was falling down what seemed to be a vast, wide tunnel and despite them being open, her wings were doing absolutely nothing to affect her course within that tunnel.
She could see various concepts of time and space rushing past her. A train. A ticking clock. A spinning disk with constellations on it. “Twilight described seeing similar her first time through the mirror,” thought Luna. “At least that seems to be working normally.” Her course plunged her past both a broom and spinning blue box. She continued to plunge through the space between worlds. As she did she noticed there was a light ahead and that she was falling towards it.
“If this is anything similar to what Twilight Sparkle reported, I should emerge transformed,” thought Luna. “I need to be ready and mark the exit so I can find my way home.” The light swiftly grew closer and a roaring noise filled Luna’s ears. Then, everything whited out.
Seemingly moments later, Luna’s senses returned to her. She was lying on her side on some hard rocky ground. As she opened her eyes they were dazzled by the low sun shining into them. She squinted and began to look around. She was lying near the foot of what looked like a small glacier. A stream of melt water was running away from the glacier, and it flowed a few feet past her. The rock wall of the mountain to her other side.
As Luna rolled herself upright she could feel the cool crisp mountain air ruffling her fur, as her movement exposed more of her body to the slight breeze. Looking around at the ground, she saw she was in the middle of a debris field of objects. Books, candlesticks and other items from the library, were strewn all around in the late afternoon sun, spread out in a fan pattern from the rock wall in front of Luna.
“The wall there,” she thought. “That must be the portal.” Luna scrambled to her hooves, or rather, she tried to scramble to her hooves. Her legs were...different. She looked down at herself. Her legs were long. Nearly impossibly long, and lean, with a gracefulness her normal form lacked. But Luna also discovered, just as quickly, that the solidity of Equestrian hooves and legs allowed greater control at the hoof. The dead things at the ends of her legs could barely be termed “hooves.”
Carefully, Luna stood herself upright. And noticed something else about this body. It was very tall. She was a full head above where Celestia would have stood beside her. The stream flowing past her had formed a small pool near her and she looked at herself in it.
“I’m...I’m beautiful,” Luna thought to herself, as her reflection looked back up. Her coat was a blue black, like the night. Small, but clear eyes looked up at her from a long, narrow face. A matching black mane and elegant black tail accented her movements as she shifted from side to side. Her ears moved expressively and independently. In the reflection of the melt water, she could see she still wore her peytral over a slim, yet strong chest.
Then she realized that one thing was missing. Her wings were gone. Not even a trace of them remained. But surprisingly, her horn was still in place on her head, it’s long and spiraling length comforting, even if her crown was missing from in front of it. She looked around for it. If her peytral was here, surely her crown had made it through as well.
“There it is,” Luna thought, spotting the crown where it lay on the stone. “Now to put it back...” It was surprisingly difficult to lift with her magic, but eventually, it was done. The sun was just beginning to dip beneath the horizon now. The sun had been lower than she had thought, she realized.
“It’s too late to head down this mountain,” thought Luna. “Staying here longer than overnight isn’t an option. While there is water, there is no food.” Other than some lichen and moss the mountainside was barren of life. Luna judged it to be early spring here and it was going to be a cold night with nothing to even graze on.
“Thank the stars, I still have my magic,” Luna thought. Then to her horror, she realized that the little magic she had used to place her crown back on her head had not been replenished. She opened her magical senses and looked around for any sources of ambient magic in the area. There weren’t any. She was the only source of magic in the area. Even the books and the other items that had been pulled here from the library were completely drained of any magics their enchantments had.
Luna decided to take shelter in the lee of the rock wall that held the portal she had emerged from as nothing further had come out from it. The temperature was beginning to drop as darkness fell, and Luna could tell it was going to be a very cold night. She huddled on the bare rock shelf. There was a little heat coming from the stone, but it was fading fast, and Luna curled herself up to conserve heat. Then, Luna saw something that made her head lift and heart stop in wonder.
The moon of this world rose above the horizon. It was a tiny thing. Barely half the size of Equestria’s moon, but it was bright, oh, so bright. Its silver, white disk shining with a brilliant fury. So much light was coming off that moon that it was casting shadows. Even better, Luna could feel a diffuse magic filtering down from that heavenly orb. As if the hopes and dreams of millions, and perhaps even billions had been focused on it for millennia. Maybe it had, Luna didn’t know.
What she did know, was that magic was slowly sifting down from that orb. Magic she could use. It might be weak and feeble compared to Equestrian magic, but it was there. Luna got up from her huddled spot and looked down the mountain, stretching her senses as far as she could. By the moonlight she could see her position overlooked a massive, treed valley. Between her aerie and the valley floor there was a high plateau lit by the silver light. Golden lights were springing up in the woods, and distantly, Luna could just barely sense a few sources of magic.
“Thank the stars,” Luna thought. “There is magic here, but it is obviously rare and weak.” She looked at herself with her arcane senses, “I’m leaking magic, if I don’t do something about it soon I will have no power left at all. And an alicorn without magic...isn’t an alicorn.” Luna looked down at the deepening night over the valley below, lost in thought.
Eventually, an idea came to her. Weaving carefully, she layered a self-regenerating spell into her peytral. It’s purpose was to slowly absorb what magic she ran across and be a storage point for magic. Like water in a canteen. The magic coming down from this world’s moon would be a source, but only a small one. Come the dawn, she would have to make her way down the mountain to find those small sources she could sense in the valley below, past the plateau. If she could absorb enough magic, she could rip open the portal to make her own way home.
Content with her workings, Luna settled back down to rest. She decided to lay in the moonlight and feel it’s magic slowly flow into her. Curling around herself, she shivered throughout the night, sleeping in fitful dozes, somewhat comforted by the slow inward flow of magic. Luna welcomed the sun as it rose, standing to revel in its warmth after the long, cold night. Which is why she did not notice the predator sneaking up behind her.
A rippling snarl rang out at the same time as a blinding pain erupted from Luna’s shoulders, and a heavy weight landed on them. The impact and pain shattered Luna’s reverie. A great tawny beast had leaped onto her and using the claws, it had dug in to her shoulder even as it tried to swivel its maw onto a death grip upon Luna’s windpipe.
Ignoring the paralyzing pain, Luna reared up. As she did so, she could see that her attacker was some sort of giant cat. Gravity shifting as Luna rose on her rear hooves, the great cat slid downward, its claws dragging furrows through the flesh of Luna’s shoulders. The slide of claws through Luna arrested itself as the cat’s claws hooked into her peytral.
Its downward slide stopped, the cat again tried to reach up and clamp its jaws to cut off Luna’s air. But Luna’s forehooves were already rising into place. As they drew even, she began to rapidly pinwheel her hooves at the body of her attacker. She landed blow after blow into the soft underbelly of the creature. For its part, the beast hung grimly on. Luna’s shod hooves were inflicting fearful damage, but the cat had tasted equine blood and all it could think of was to sate its hunger and thirst on the flesh and blood of its prey.
Finally, the fastenings of Luna’s peytral could take no more and they parted. With a few final blows of her hooves, Luna sent her attacker flying in an arc. The peytral still hooked in its claws, the beast went sailing out into space and down the slope of the mountain. It bounced several times down-slope only to finally fall off a cliff edge below.
Gasping in pain, Luna collapsed to the ground. Blood flowed freely from her wounds and its iron smell filled her nostrils. Six long, deep gashes ran from her back down through her shoulder, stopping at her chest where her peytral had been. There was even a shallow chunk of flesh missing, where the beast had actually bitten out a piece of Luna’s shoulder muscle.
“I’m losing a lot of blood,” Luna thought. “If I don’t heal myself, and now, these wounds could prove mortal.” She summoned her power and despite the drain to her magic, cast the spell needed to heal her vicious wounds. Slowly the wounds closed, blood slowing and stopping to a slow ooze. Luna poured even more power into the spell and the divot of missing flesh in her shoulder was restored. When it was done, her wounds were mostly closed. Only six very long but now also very shallow, cuts remained.
“I’ll have to remember to thank...thank...somepony, for teaching me that spell,” Luna thought. She tried to remember who had taught her the spell to heal such large wounds. Star...something? “No matter. I will think of it later,” thought Luna. “For now, I need to get out of here. That creature could have a mate, or a pack. Worse, I’ve spilled a lot of blood here. It could draw other predators or scavengers.”
Luna took a deep drink of the ice cold glacier water, as quickly as she could to replace lost fluids, and began to make her way down the rocky mountainside. She passed the body of her attacker during the descent. It was very messily and very definitely dead. There had been no sign of pursuit by any other such creatures, nor any other predators, so Luna began to slow her pace and ease her way to the high plateau.
It took most of the morning, due to her making her descent a slow and careful one. To slip and fall in some places would have been fatal. When she finally reached the large plateau she attacked a swath of grass that grew at the edge of the area. It had little taste and it was raw, but it was edible and Luna hadn’t eaten anything in nearly twenty-four hours. Head down and hungry, Luna began to amble from spot to spot, nibbling away at the combination of surviving winter grass and new shoots as she did so. After an hour or so, she had nearly filled her empty belly and was looking around to plan her next moves when she began to hear a rumbling noise.
Luna looked around to find the source of the noise. Was it thunder? Was it something else coming to try to eat her? The source crested a small ridge line and to Luna’s relief it was a group of fifteen to twenty equine figures. “Hello!” she called out. Or tried to. All that emerged from her mouth was a loud braying sound. The equines seemed to take little notice of her bray and merely fanned out around her in a rough semi-circle as they came to a stop. Luna decided to wait to see what they would do before she acted.
Nothing happened for a minute, during which time Luna noticed that, as far as she could tell, the pony like creatures around her were all mares. Then, without a word, most of the mares began to graze. Luna looked around at these big ponies. She wasn’t sure what she had expected but being ignored wasn’t one of the things she had expected. Only one of the big not-ponies was still focused on her. A very large mare. Almost as large as...Celestia. As large as Celestia would be, if she was here.
She was a chestnut brown mare with a long mane and tail who slowly approached Luna. This was the mare’s territory, so Luna lowered her head to show she meant no harm. The other mare approached Luna and snuffled all over her neck and head. Luna could smell the earthiness of the mare and feel a sense of authority from her. Luna held still as the mare finished her inspection and proceeded to nuzzle Luna in approval, giving a slight nicker as she did.
“They’ve accepted me into their group,” Luna thought, as she gave a friendly nuzzle back that tasted of wind and sun. The mare in charge, accepted the nuzzle and moving to stand beside Luna, began to graze as well. Luna was about to return to her own grazing when another not-pony trotted up. He was a stallion. Tall, deep chested, with piercing eyes and a confident gait. His exotically coloured blue roan coat drew Luna’s eye at once, as her gaze took stock of the healthy stallion who was obviously in his prime. He immediately took notice of Luna, and she felt a tingle run through her, from forelock to fetlocks, as the handsome stallion examined her as closely as she had examined him.
“These equines are little more than animals,” Luna thought to herself, as their lack of speech and mannerisms brought her to that conclusion. As the stallion approached her though, Luna could not help but move to meet him. Primitive beast or not, she was entranced by the flow and play of the powerful muscles in his chest and shoulders. “But that doesn’t mean I...i...oh my...” Luna’s thoughts began to fray as the stallion nuzzled her neck where it met her shoulders. The stallion traced a line with his nose down Luna’s flank, and the tingle she had felt moments before flared anew within her.
“why...why am i acting like this?”, Luna thought. It was becoming harder to think as those most primal of drives and urges manifested themselves.. So very hard to think or reason. It was easier just to let her body drive her actions. The tingle she was feeling, settled in her loins as the stallion reached her hips with his muzzle. He was obviously as entranced with Luna as she was with him. The stallion began to nudge her hips, moving her, positioning her. Luna wanted what was going to come next. Some part of her tried to object. To point out these were primitives, that this was foolish, careless and impulsive. Luna felt a warmth and weight on her hips and all thought, all comprehension, and all sentience vanished. Washed away by the primitive pony within. What made Luna, “Luna” went away.
The next thing Luna knew, it was night and she was standing in among the group of not-ponies she had met during the day. Looking around, she could see the silver moonlight streaming down from the light of this world’s moon. The magic flowing from it was stronger than the previous night and it flowed into her. She reached within and noted with alarm that her magic had fled her completely. Only the weak magic flowing down from the moon had restored her.
“This should not be,” Luna thought. “The spell woven into my peytral should have prevented...” Her peytral was gone, she realized. She rewound her memories of the past day. “The fight with that cat creature. When I kicked it off of me, it tore my peytral loose. I’m still leaking magic and combined with healing myself of my wounds I completely drained myself.” Luna recast the spell she had performed on her peytral. Only this time, using her own body as the anchor for the sorcery.
She looked over at the herd stallion, who was asleep not twenty feet away from her. “I wish I could remember what we did,” thought Luna with a sad smile. “But what I can remember, showed me this world is trying to force me into its rhythms and ways. Staying with you and being one of your mares would be nice, Stallion. You and yours accepted me openly, but to stay with you would be the life of an unthinking animal, a beast, and Luna of Equestria is not a beast. Only my magic keeps me from becoming what is normal for an equine on this world, it would seem.” Luna began to move carefully and slowly away from the herd so that she did not wake any of them.
“If I am to remain ‘Luna the Princess’ and not become ‘Luna the Animal’ I need to find and stay near sources of magic,” The treeline into the valley proper was about a mile away. Between the bright moonlight and her excellent night vision Luna was able to pick her way in that direction with little difficulty. “I need to limit my magic use as much as I can, until I can find one of those sources I felt earlier. So long as that moon rises every night I shouldn’t lose myself to ‘Luna the Animal’ again.”