My Little Exalt
PROLOGUE
by: Lithl
special thanks:
Geren Covant
Rhanite
Saekwaka
It was just like any other day at Sweet Apple Acres. Even outside applebuck season, every member of the Apple family had chores to finish. Granny Smith was in the kitchen, preparing the night's dinner – a simple, everyday meal of celestial salad, carrot stew, and an apple pie for desert. Applebloom had just gotten home from school, and she had to take the slop out to the pigs and finish her homework before bed. Big Macintosh and Applejack were together in the south field, clearing it of debris after the recent thunderstorm.
With her job nearing completion and Celestia's sun beginning to set, Applejack took a moment to catch her breath lost to a hard day's work on the farm as well as take in the beauty of the land around her. Four generations of the Apple family had poured their hearts into this farm and now, in the glowing sunset, those four generations of love practically gleamed over the apple trees. And while everypony in Ponyville heard what happened next, only the few (such as Applejack) who were looking to the sky at the time saw the fountain of light that accompanied the explosion.
Out of the windows of the Books and Branches Public Library, a blinding golden light flowed as if it were quicksilver. Before touching the ground around the library, the liquid light shot up into the sky in a brilliant column before flying out in all directions. As the light extended out from above the library, it expanded; it quickly reached the ground as it raced through the small town. In a blink, everything from the foothills of Dragon Mountain to the fields of Sweet Apple Acres and from the edge of the Everfree Forest to the shores of Froggy Bottom Bog was bathed in the golden light. Where the light encountered obstacles, it flowed around them. It seeped into the homes and businesses to bathe every nook and cranny of the town in its brilliance. And whenever a pony was touched by the light, he or she could feel a small tugging sensation; it was the feeling of a current pulling all of Ponyville's inhabitants away from their home.
However, few ponies actually registered the light tugging sensation, though, since the liquid light was accompanied by the sound of a deafening explosion. Unlike thunder, demolition explosives, or even a Sonic Rainboom (which created a wave of noise that was quickly dissipated in the air) this sound seemed to be amplified by the liquid light in both magnitude and duration. The deafening noise was not a continuous series of sound crashing like wave after wave upon a pony's ears, but a single noise carried indefinitely within the light.
Just as suddenly as the light and sound has appeared, it dissipated. It took some time for most ponies to properly regain the use of their senses of sight and hearing, but Applejack's senses of touch and smell were not affected in the least. And it was immediately obvious that she was no longer standing in her southern field among dozens of blooming apple trees.
Applejack was standing knee-deep in the most foul, rotten-smelling muddy water she'd ever come across. Not normally one to complain about a little grime in her coat, she suddenly realized just how Rarity felt every time she got dirty. This stuff was simply vile.
Once her vision returned, Applejack looked around to try and get familiarize herself with her surroundings. It had apparently been several hours since the initial blast at sundown in Ponyville, because Celestia's light was just peeking out through the treetops on the horizon in a bright pink sunrise. Big Macintosh was still nearby, so wherever she'd been transported to, she wasn't alone. That was a comfort, at least. The two of them stood in a swamp a swamp which was a far cry from the sights of Froggy Bottom Bog they were used to. While Froggy Bottom did have decaying plants, they fell into the swamp's waters and fed nutrients to new plants. In this place, it seemed even the new plants were dead and rotting.
Applejack turned to her brother and exchanged a silent nod – words were rarely needed with Big Mac. Whatever happened, they had to find out if it had happened to Granny Smith and Applebloom, too. Figuring out their situation was important, but family came first.
In the center of the swamp stood a massive burial mound, rising 100 spans into the air. Deep in the heart of the mound, a purple unicorn was regaining consciousness.
Twilight Sparkle awoke draped across a granite throne in an earthen room that was slightly reminiscent of the royal audience chamber – disregarding the fact that it was underground instead of surrounded by brilliant stained glass windows lit by Celestia's sun or Luna's moon every hour of the day or night. The few furnishings present besides the throne were all made of the same dark metal. On the floor in front of the throne was a discolored circle in the dust, as if something had rested there for a very long time, and had only recently been moved.
Twilight let out a groan. "Wh-what happened?" When she lifted her head, she winced as a lance of pain shot up through her horn. When she lifted a hoof to her forehead, she felt a warm trickle of liquid and pulled it away with a stain of blood. "Spike? Spiiike!" She tried to call out to her number one assistant, but it came out more like a croak.
"Oh, hi Twilight!" A pink party pony leaned out from behind the throne Twilight was still resting on and waved energetically. "How ya doin', silly-filly?"
"Pinkie? When did you get here? Where's Spike? Where are we?"
Pinkie's face screwed up in concentration for a moment before quickly answering her friend's questions in succession. "Yep, that's me! A couple seconds ago. He's around somewhere, but I think he's playing hide-and-seek with me. And we're in the throne room of the Mound of Forgotten Seeds at the center of the Noss Fens swamp on the eastern edge of Creation!" With that, Pinkie Pie bounced happily around the edge of the throne into a position where Twilight could stare at her, dumbfounded.
"I've... never heard of any of those places. How do you know about them, much less know that's where we are?"
"I... can't tell you." The pink pony's ears drooped a bit due to being unable to adequately answer her friend's question. "I would, um, have to break something in order to tell you."
"What, you Pinkie Promised someone that you wouldn't tell how you know all these things?"
"No, I wouldn't be breaking a Pinkie Promise. More like a wall. Like, 'Rawr! I'm the Incredible Pony! You wouldn't like me when I'm angry! PONY SMASH!!'"
Twilight shook her head and resolved to put everything her friend had just said behind her. It was Pinkie Pie; incomprehensible was her middle name.
"No, silly-filly; my middle name is Diane!"
Putting. It. Behind. Me.
"The last thing I remember... I was using that inter-dimensional scrying spell I found in Exploring the Æther for Fun and Profit, and I was taking notes on the differences between various universes. Then I saw this face... glowing yellow eyes... and then I wake up here with a bleeding cranium and you spouting nonsense in my face about a Mountain for Forest Sewing, and a Grassy Fence you Created. And where's Spike? Spiiiike!"
Carrying an unconscious and slightly green Rarity through the swamp on her 'fainting couch', Rainbow Dash was not in any particularly good mood.
"What the hay, Fluttershy? I mean, I get that some magical horseapples brought us to this nasty swamp place. And I get that Rarity would probably rather die than touch this muck. But why do we have to carry her couch around, too?"
The two pegasi were trudging through the swamp side by side as they carried the couch on their backs between them. It had been Rainbow's idea to head towards the huge hill, both to get out of the mud and to get a better view of where they were. But Fluttershy's assertive side had burst through and insisted that they carry Rarity along. Between Fluttershy's poor flying skill and the weight of the couch, the stunt flier had been forced to walk the whole way.
"Well, um... I couldn't possibly leave Rarity behind, especially not in a place like this. If she came around alone in this swamp, she would just faint again." Her voice grew softer as she tried to hide behind her long pink mane. Her assertiveness was clearly fading. "So I-I figured if we took her up to the hill, then when she woke up, she could... help us understand what's going on... if that's alright with her." Fluttershy ended her sentence in almost a whisper, followed by a slightly embarrassed squeak. "A-and besides, it's a lot easier to use the couch with two of us, than to balance her on one of our backs, right?" She gave a hopeful grin to her more outgoing friend.
As it turned out, being the only distinctive landmark visible in the area had attracted a lot of other ponies to the Mound. Being the only area covered in moss rather than mud probably helped, too. Once at the hill, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy discovered that it consisted primarily of large, flat, step-like ridges leading up to the top which had plenty of room to set down Rarity and her couch safely.
Moments after relieving themselves of their burden, the pegasi pair was glad to hear a very familiar voice: "Howdy, sugarcube! Glad ta' see y'all 'r here, too. Been a might bit worried since tha whole explosion thing, but it seems ev'rypony from town got dumped in this here swamp. Even Zecora's here!" With that, the farm pony pointed back the way she came to the zebra herbalist currently tending to a teary-eyed little colt who must have had a little scrape with some of the broken and rotting wood along the way.
"Have either o' y'all seen Twilight or Pinkie? Ah may not have ev'rypony's name mem'rized like Pinkie does, but from what Ah kin tell, they're the only ones missin'!"
"No sweat, AJ. Now that I've got that big couch off my back, I can zip up to the sky and find those two in ten. Seconds. Flat." The boastful mare set to make good on her claim, leaping to the air only to crash down. Her wings flapped ineffectually as she tried to lift herself from the moss-covered stone. "What the hay? Why don't my wings work?!"
A small chuckle escaped the lips of her best friend and rival. "Perhaps Ah shoulda' told ya sooner, but it seems the pegasi all lost their ability to fly. Cloudchaser discovered y'all can still glide jus' fine, but the liftoffs just ain't happenin'."
The look on Rainbow's face made Applejack switch from a mirthful jab at her friend's expense, to honest sympathy. "Ah'm sorry, sugarcube. Ah s'pose Ah'd feel the same way if Ah found out Ah couldn't farm apples no good no more. Or if Ah suddenly lost all my strength 'n endurance and was like Fluttershy." She darted a glance towards her other Pegasus friend, "no offense, Fluttershy."
"Oh... none taken," the butter-colored pegasus even smiled; it seemed there were indeed, no hard feelings over the comment on her fragility.
"Anyway, RD, what say you and Ah search around on hoof for our friends, together?" To this, Rainbow Dash nodded in agreement. "Fluttershy, honey, why don't you stay here an' watch over Rarity 'till we come back?" Fluttershy also nodded in agreement. It seemed that without their unspoken leader in the form of Twilight, the leadership role had fallen to the Element of Honesty.
Ponyville's Iron Pony competitors walked off together, heading up to the top of the Mound first to try and get a better view of the surrounding swamp.
Twilight sighed in exasperation. This place, this... 'Mound of Fallen Seeds', as Pinkie had called it, was definitely spooky. Except for Twilight and Pinkie, the winding corridors and stark rooms were all empty save for furniture, lamps, tableware, and even foal's toys – all of it made from the same dark steel material, and all just slightly too big. And yet there was something in the back of Twilight's mind that suggested there were many more presences here. Perhaps dozens or even hundreds! Pinkie, for her part, was giggling and bouncing the entire way. Earlier, she had tried for a reprise of her 'Laughter Song' that she'd sung the night Twilight and her friends became the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, but Twilight managed to prevent that. While Pinkie's laughter had completely eliminated one of the traps set for them by Nightmare Moon, singing in this place felt subtly wrong. And Twilight didn't want to tempt the presences she couldn't avoid feeling.
"Hey, listen! Twilight, you can hear the ocean in this thing!"
Twilight rolled her eyes, "Pinkie, that's not the ocean, that's just the blood in your-" but Twilight couldn't finish her sentence, as Pinkie had cupped one of the strange metal objects to her ear. It wasn't even something that could have possibly amplified the sound of Twilight's blood pumping (thankfully, the cut on her head from earlier was small, and had already stopped bleeding).
What Twilight heard wasn't the blood in her ear; and it certainly didn't sound like the ocean, as Pinkie had claimed.
Twilight heard voices screaming in agony. The cold, dark, steel material was quietly moaning in pain with the voice of a dozen ponies: dead ponies. Frozen stiff, Twilight scanned the room they were in, slowly looking to each and every metal object that surrounded her. And suddenly her sense of other presences in the Mound made sense. She wasn't being spied on or followed; there weren't any invisible unicorns around. All of the metal in this place had been forged from pony souls. Twilight wasn't feeling the presence of a few hundred; she was subconsciously hearing the presence of a few hundred thousand.
Fearful, horrified, disgusted tears began to well up within Twilight. Some of these were shaped like fillie's toys, for Celestia's sake! Admittedly, some of the toys were oddly shaped, bearing more resemblance to a diamond dog than a pony, but a filly's doll made of souls shook Twilight to her very core, all the same.
"Wh-who would do such a thing?" Twilight's knees began to feel like jelly, and she would have surely fallen over, if her ever-cheerful friend hadn't been there to support her.
"There, there, Twilight," Pinkie Pie softly cooed, wiping the beginnings of tears from the purple librarian's eyes. "It was the Dowager. She's a bad person, but don't worry, she's not here." It was telling of Twilight's current state of shock and horror that she didn't even question Pinkie's knowledge of who had created these monstrosities. Nor did she question where the Dowager was if she wasn't here. Or Pinkie's use of the strange word, 'person'.
"C'mon, Twilight," the pink mare gently nudged the purple one with her muzzle, "let's go find our friends. Then we can leave all this soulsteel behind us."
At the top of the Mound, Applejack and Rainbow Dash had found a sloping tunnel heading deep into the hillside. With a shrug that said 'well, we can't see them in the swamp', the pair began their descent. Just as the light from the entrance gave out, the walls began sporting steel lamps; they were burning bright enough to illuminate the large earthen corridor, yet they still casting ominous shadows across the walls. After a minute of walking along a snaking corridor, featureless except for the irregularity of the walls and the light fixtures, the two athletes stumbled into a broader area which was presumably an entrance hall. Before either of them could take it all in, they heard a bubbly voice chattering away and coming closer.
"... and that's how Creation Equestria was made!" Rainbow Dash and Applejack each looked to the other, as if to confirm the other had heard it, too. While normally eccentric, they'd never heard that sort of noise come out of Pinkie's throat. It was almost as if she'd said one word, and the cosmos had scribbled through it, backed up, and allowed her to say 'Equestria' in the space where the other word had been previously.
They didn't have long to think about it, because not a second later Twilight and Pinkie Pie both trotted (or hopped, in Pinkie's case) into the room. It wasn't long before the four friends met in the middle of the room for a group hug; the still-muddy Rainbow Dash and Applejack incidentally mussed the until-now pristine coats of the other two mares. After her revelations in the Mound, Twilight couldn't care less about a little mud. And Pinkie was... Pinkie.
Twilight seemed even more happy than usual to see two of her closest friends. "Oh, I can't tell you how good it is to see you girls! One minute I was in my library, the next minute I was waking up in this strange place, pain in my horn and blood dripping from my head!" Twilight indicated the trail of dried blood still clinging to her coat. "And if it weren't for Pinkie, I'm sure I would've gotten lost in here. It's like a labyrinth in this place!"
"Aw, shucks, Twilight, an' we were just comin' to look fer ya. Whatever happened, it caused ev'rypony in Ponyville to end up in this here swamp. Rarity seems to have fainted from the muck, and Fluttershy is outside with her."
"Yeah, what the hay did happen, anyway? Got any ideas, Twilight?"
Twilight shook her head a bit when she replied, "not really. The last thing I remember, I was working with my inter-dimensional scrying spell. You remember the one that I mixed up with a teleportation spell and we ended up in that gender-swapped Ponyville?"
Shock crossed Rainbow's face. "You mean you teleported the entire town to an alternate dimension?!"
Twilight shook her head again. "No, I wasn't using any teleportation magic this time. I was just doing research on other dimensions by looking at them." Twilight straightened up and beamed at her friends, "I even came up with a universal addressing system that I could use to determine the extra-spacial joint conjunction relationship between dimensions! I call it the Sparkling Address System for Superior Yewniverses. That's 'Yewniverses' with a 'Y', like yew wood. Because otherwise I couldn't call it SASSY!" Pinkie Pie's giggle fit indicated her approval of the acronym.
The upswing in her mood disappeared as Twilight continued, "The last thing I saw with the spell was this shadowy face with glowing yellow eyes. Pinkie seems to think it was something called a 'Dowager'."
"Hey, Ah know that word. Granny Smith is a dowager, too!" Applejack looked between her friends, all staring at her with just a hint of disbelief. "What? Ah get to know things, too! A dowager is just a mare who outlives her stallion, iffin' her stallion's got lotsa money and land, and gives it to her when he passes."
"From what Pinke's said, this is a bit different. If you can believe what she's said, anyway. She called it... what was it, Pinkie?"
The pink pony bounced up on her tiphooves as she sung back the blackened name as though it were some kind of song, "The Dowager Of Irreverent Vulgate In Unrent Veils." Even though everypony in the room heard Pinkie's normal voice, there seemed to be some sort of ethereal echo of darkness when the Dowager's full name was pronounced. Everypony but Pinkie seemed to shiver at the sound.
Twilight, back with her friends, took the mantle of leader once again. "Come on; let's get back with Rarity and Fluttershy."
When the four friends got back to Fluttershy and Rarity, Rarity had finally come out of her fainting spell and the spa buddies were chatting animatedly, though Rarity still seemed a little distressed. Perhaps because everypony (excluding herself) and the underside of her couch were all muddy, and the air still stank.
"Oh, Twilight, darling! I'm so glad you're here!" Rarity was about to give Twilight a hug, until she noticed the mud that had rubbed off Rainbow Dash and Applejack onto Twilight during the group hug under the Mound. She pulled back, trying (and failing) to avoid being rude about it. "Eh-heh. Well, anyway, Twilight, I was hoping maybe you could, help, what with being the princess's student, having a special talent at magic, and being the Element of Magic and all." Twilight raised an eyebrow that that, but allowed her friend to continue, "You see, the other unicorns and I have noticed... well, doing magic has become rather difficult. All I've been able to accomplish since waking up has been some minor telekinesis, and with a limited range and weight limit at that."
Fluttershy took up the reins of the conversation. Apparently, despite her timid nature, she'd been the one doing most of the talking to other unicorns; Rarity had only recently woken up. "Yes, well... you see... it seems nopony can levitate much more than they could lift with their hooves. A-and they can't levitate anything further than a few spans away." The Pegasus shrunk down and tried to hide behind her mane again, as if suggesting that the unicorns couldn't do everything they were used to would bring down their wrath upon her.
"I was hoping perhaps you might have had better luck, Twilight?" Rarity batted her long eyelashes at her friend, a move that frequently tossed stations head over hooves for her. Of course, Twilight was a mare, and not a filly-fooler, so it didn't have quite the same effect.
"Honestly, Rarity, I haven't tried any magic at all since waking up. I've felt extremely drained and-"
Before Twilight could finish explaining why she'd not tried to use magic, Rainbow butted in, "Yeah, Twilight teleported all of us to another dimension, I'm pretty sure she's worn out."
"Rainbow!" Rarity admonished her overzealous friend. Of course, she had to be sure, "Is that true, Twilight?"
"Well, no... at least, not directly. I think. I was using a spell to look at other dimensions, but all it does is give me a look at them, not transport me there. There's no way it could transport the entire town. Even princess Celestia would have trouble teleporting an entire town within our own dimension – much less to another one." Twilight's ears flopped downwards, now convinced that this entire predicament was her fault.
"Hey don' worry, Twi. I bet it was something that 'Dowager' pony-"
"Person," interrupted Pinkie Pie.
"Uh... 'person' did while you was lookin' at her with your spell that did it. Maybe mixin' the Dowager's magic with your own caused some kinda' magical screech like when Pinkie held the mic too close to DJ p0n-3's amplifiers at the weddin' reception."
It was a good theory. At any rate, it was a theory that didn't put all the blame for getting the entire town of Ponyville lost in the multiverse squarely on Twilight's shoulders. It also put some of the blame on the shoulders of somepony who was, if Pinkie's inexplicable knowledge about this place was to be believed, clearly evil.
Pinkie glanced up towards the midday sky a little nervously, though none of her friends seemed to notice. "Hey girls, I think we should get everypony out of this swamp. Like, I think we should get moving now."
"What's the problem, Pinkie? This hill seems safe enough, even if the swamp doesn't smell so hot. We can also take everypony inside if it starts to rain or something."
Pinkie shook her head. "It's almost noon. We got here at dawn, which is a good thing, but we really don't want to be in this swamp after dark. Even inside the Mound. It's a long way to go to get out of the Noss Fens, especially when everypony has to walk, so we should probably leave soon." Her friends eyed her quizzically, but when they noticed the sweat beads starting to form on her brow, her eyes darting quick glances into the distant reaches of the swamp, none of the other Bearers decided to be neighsayers.
Twilight was the first to speak up. "I don't know how, and I'm not sure I want to know. But you seem to know a lot about this place, Pinkie. Which way should we go to get out of here?"
Pinkie seemed to perk up that her friends were willing to follow her advice on the matter, and pointed her hoof to the east. "Bordermarshes. Bad." She simultaneously pointed both north and south while managing to remain balanced on three legs, in a maneuver that her friends' brains eliminated from memory to prevent meltdown. "Barbarian lands. Less bad, not good." Finally, she pointed west, allowing her friends to cease their mental gymnastics. "The Scavenger Lands. Plenty of places to hide from anything bad, plenty of good people." There was that word again: 'people'. Twilight was about to ask about the word, but decided against it.
"That's settled, then. Gather everypony together. We're heading out to the Scavenger Lands."