“I need more paper.”
Belvedere’s whispered words went unheard in his silent office. He leaned into his high-backed chair and regarded the vaulted ceiling. The wall stretched far above the neat rows of framed awards, certifications, and newspaper accolades hanging near eye level. In his mind he could see the wood and steel beneath the plaster just as plainly as the squares of light on the paint, projections from the ornate windows on the opposite wall. Brilliant afternoon sunlight entered through sixteen separate panes of glass, regardless of the rainclouds soaking virtually every other Manehattan rooftop. His office’s lofty perch, seventy stories off the ground, made most other unicorns dizzy, and drove some earth ponies to the brink of panic. Looking down on the clouds was for pegasi, they said.
Most days he’d chuckle and say that kind of talk was old fashioned, a relic from an unenlightened era. Not today. Today he needed a way to banish the remaining third of the pony population from his doorstep. Solitude helped him concentrate.
Even with his door shut he could hear Cornice, his ever-attentive, ever-talkative pegasus secretary chattering away with whoever happened to be nearby. She was talking about him, of course. She hadn’t stopped ever since he’d cancelled every meeting she’d so painstakingly laid out for the week, relegating even the most crucial of tasks to his underlings. He returned his attention to the drafting paper spread out across the table, sketching idly while he mouthed Cornice’s oft-repeated words along with her. “Never comes out anymore… Can’t be well… No living family as far as I know… Still acting like he lost somepony special…”
Belvedere stared at his drawing, that of a stone block shaped like a wedge. His pencil hovered over the paper for a moment, adding a flick of graphite here or there until the stone looked suitably rustic. He lifted the paper into the sunlight. “You’ve got it all wrong, Cornice. I never had somepony to—”
And then he was back on his bedroom floor, his eyes wet, his throat raw, his heart in tatters, and his mind completely at a loss for why. He glared at the paper until the anguish abated. “I don’t have anypony to lose! So why—” his voice grew soft again “—so what’s wrong with me?”
He’d been asking himself for days, ever since waking up on his bedroom floor doused in sweat, tears, and a crushing sadness he’d assumed were aftereffects of a horrendous nightmare. Why did his lavishly furnished home suddenly feel so empty? Why did the decade of heady accomplishments immortalized under glass on his office wall look like they belonged to somepony else, to some other founder of a highly respected architecture company?
“Why do I hurt so much?”
Cornice wouldn’t have an answer, and he didn’t want to press anypony else for one. The stack of pending contracts he was counting on to pay the bills could disappear in an instant if somepony saw him, the company’s president and chief architect, frequenting a psychologist’s office. Not that he was on track to have the current project’s preliminary sketches approved in time, of course. All he’d been able to draw or think about lately was stonework. Nopony wanted to build with stone anymore, unless their job title was Princess.
The drawing traversed the spacious room in his magic grasp. Once it arrived at the far wall, it affixed itself over a picture of him posing with the mayor in front of his then newly opened office building, the crown jewel of his then-young and now-booming architecture empire.
He tapped the intercom button. “Cornice? Can you get me some more drafting paper from the supply room, please?”
Cornice replied in her usual chipper tone with no trace of the worry Belvedere heard only via eavesdropping. “Sure thing, Mr. B. Do you want anything else? How about some lunch? I can have one of the boys run over to your favorite sandwich shop. I’ll even fly down to the grocery store on the corner myself and make you a PB&J if you want.”
Belvedere rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Cornice, but that won’t be necessary.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and her concern came through at full force. “Are you sure? You didn’t have any breakfast either. It’s not healthy! You’re really worrying me!”
“I’m fine,” he replied, his voice all business, “please just go get me more paper.”
He flicked off the intercom and regarded the wall, the door, and the hundreds of drawings that were slowly covering them both. He could almost see it. He could almost see the dream-like scene of a stone wall lurking in the back of his mind.
“I just need more paper. A lot more.”
---
Pebbles scattered in the distance. Belvedere froze, his thin frame shaking with fear as much as fatigue. The stony outcroppings and tree limbs jutting from of the shadows remained stationary. His eyes traced and retraced the scene in front of him, taking in every inch of the visible, twilit world. Brittle roots stretched across the dirt path, and a few sizable boulders diverted it. The nearest boulder was barely a hoofstep away, but not big enough to hide behind. Worse still, its left side was trapped beyond where the light could reach, within the deep dark that hid rock, tree, and animal alike. For all he knew, an unseen monster was crouched on top of that rock, inches away and yet invisible in the shadows.
He stood there, one foreleg still hovering in mid step, while the dreary world seemed to hold its breath along with him. Finally he heard it, the click-click-click of sharp claws on hard stone. A deep breath came next, as strong and ephemeral as a gust of wind. It had to be a timber; any other creature would’ve taken him by now. Only a timber would sit patiently and wait for him to let his guard down before striking.
Belvedere’s hind legs started to cramp. His muscles were as taut bowstrings, ready to launch him into a run for safety. His brain knew better. He’d get ten paces from the shadow’s edge at most, and the average timber could leap twice that distance. He’d actually seen a set of claw marks a solid thirty paces from the shadows yesterday. Even if he made it out of pouncing range, the timber could easily survive the extra ten seconds of exposure to sunlight required to chase him down and drag him back to its lightless home.
Enough with the shadows. Belvedere glanced up at the heavens instead. The roiling mass of clouds offered little comfort, and the hollow circle of light peeking through them wasn’t any better. The sun’s empty ring offered little heat, and even less light. He shut his eyes tight, half-wishing the timber would just put him out of his misery rather than force him to do what had to come next. I really wanted to eat today.
He fixed his gaze on the sack sitting five paces away, still exactly where he’d dropped it before stepping off the path to relieve himself. He could almost taste the little green sprouts inside the bag. If only he’d just eaten them all when he woke up this morning. If only he’d ignored his high-minded notion of adding them to the garden back home and thereby producing even more food. The best he could do now was not become food himself.
Pain shot down his neck as his horn lit up. How many days of headaches would this magic show cost him? Three? Five? At least he’d be alive to find out.
He couldn’t help crying out while the bag flew through the air, parallel to the wall of darkness separating him from his would-be devourer. His eyes watered as he stumbled around and started to run. He didn’t need to look back; he’d seen this scenario play out too many times already. An abbreviated roar sliced through the silence, and the sack met a grisly end, trading its existence for his own.
The familiar trail flew by beneath his hooves, boulders and tree limbs giving way to bare earth after a minute’s run. A vast, dirt-covered valley stretched out below him, smeared with patches of impenetrably black shadow and dotted with the tiny bonfires of many a tribe. He’d be able to see his home soon: curved stone walls roofed with canvas and guarded by a tall, leafless tree.
“Two days,” he muttered, “two days scavenging. All for noth—”
A ball of white light engulfed the trail and seared his eyes with greater intensity than even fire could manage. His muttering gave way to a scream just as a ear-rattling bang knocked him off his hooves. For a moment he was flying six inches above the path, and then the rock-hard ground was pummeling him from all sides while the sun flitted in an out of view. Over and over he tumbled, each cry of pain cut short by a mouthful of dust and a hard blow to the legs, side, or back.
And suddenly everything was still again. Belvedere lay in a heap, feeling like he’d been skinned alive. He still felt like he was spinning, even though the sun had taken up a stationary position overhead once more. A minute of ragged breaths went by, devoid of all other sounds, lights, or signs of trouble. What was that explosion? Was he losing his mind?
Belvedere’s head stopped spinning a full minute after his body did. Standing up took two minutes more, the adrenaline from his earlier sprint now completely gone. He looked around, first to find a place to hide and then to regain his bearings. Neither took long: a dry stump two paces up the hill looked big enough to crouch behind, and the trail lay three paces beyond it. What he saw next, just beyond the trail, defied all explanation.
His legs moved of their own accord, lumbering up the hill in spite of their painful new collection of scrapes and bruises. Within thirty seconds he was at the edge of the crater, the charred pockmark that had suddenly appeared in a brilliant white flash. Ten seconds after that he was standing in the crater’s base, his hooves inches away from the pony sprawled in its center.
Her coat put the word ‘purple’ to shame. Never had he seen such a brilliant sheen, so completely unblemished by filth and malnutrition. Her mane was more striking still: a deep purple hue almost turned black by the dim light and striped with luscious pink. A unicorn horn graced her forehead, a perfect spire separating her mane and completing a visage that was at once kind and yet elegant. Pegasus wings sprouted from her sides, a bizarre sight on a unicorn, but beautiful in an exotic sense all the same. This was a creature of dreams brought to life, an angel deigning to visit the mortal world.
The timber’s long, low howl brought Belvedere back to his senses. He shook his head and took a second look at the creature before him. She was a pony, and that was all. Strikingly beautiful, perhaps, but just a pony. She was probably from one of the valley tribes, out scavenging for food in his backyard. That didn’t explain the crater or the white flash, but those didn’t matter. What mattered was the timber lurking in the deep dark nearby, and the conveniently unconscious meal waiting here for it. All he had to do was get back on the trail and run. That’s all his survival required.
His own legs wouldn’t cooperate. Every instinctual urge to run and hide failed. Every self-preserving thought of leaving this pony to get eaten, and possibly clubbing her over the head to ensure it happened, fled in the face of her eyes fluttering open. She let out a groan as her legs twitched. “Mis… calculated.”
“Can you walk?” The question came out gruffer than he intended. The gentlest tone in the world wouldn’t banish the timber, of course. Nothing sort of a pony-sized meal would do that.
“Who are you?” She stared up at him, her angelic face distorted by confusion rather than the fear he'd expected.
“I’m Belvedere. We need to run.”
“What?”
Another howl tore through the still air. Belvedere crouched down next to her. “Can you walk?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Then you can run. Get up.”
He scanned the landscape from horizon to horizon. They were a good fifty paces from the nearest patch of deep dark. If they made it to a hundred then he’d consider them safe, at least from the timbers.
“Twilight.”
His head whipped around and found the pony standing next to him. “Huh?”
“I’m Twilight. Twilight Sparkle.” She was smiling. Why was she smiling?
He nodded. “See that dirt path right there?”
“Why is it so dark? I couldn’t have been out for that long, and it was the middle of the aftern—”
He bared his teeth. “See the path right there? See how it keeps to the lighter parts of the hill?”
She vanished in another brilliant flash. He shook his head and blinked away phantom images. “Twilight!”
Her reply was fainter than it should have been. “Fascinating! Is this shadow magic? I can’t feel magic here, but I guess with the whole alternate world thingy it still could be… You said your name is Belvedere?”
His jaw dropped. Somehow she was standing at the edge of the light, fifty paces away with her nose nearly touching the deep dark’s void and the light from her horn dying at its surface. “Don’t! Don’t touch it! Are you crazy?”
She flashed out of existence again, this time rematerializing next to him with an apologetic smile. “Sorry! I'm just a little excited I guess. I’m not really from around here. I’m just… exploring.”
“Want to get eaten?” he bellowed. “If you want that so bad then go ahead, just let me get a running start so I don’t have to hear the timbers tearing you to pieces!”
Her ears folded back. “I-I’m sorry. I-I know how weird this must seem. I’m not actually from this world. I’m just conducting a little experiment to see what… Did you say timber wolf? Your world has them, too?”
Belvedere brought a hoof to his forehead. “I can’t understand half the words coming out of your mouth. Please start talking sense or go back to wherever you came from.”
She stuck out a foreleg to shake. “How about we start over again on the right hoof. I’m Twilight Sparkle, and I’m visiting your world as part of an exploratory experiment. I’m probably going to get pulled back any second now, so could you tell me something about your world before I do? Is it close to midnight here? How big is your village? Why is your sun a hollow ring? Do all ponies live in fear of timber wolves?”
He batted her hoof away and glowered at her. “Fine, listen: it’s evening, I’m Belvedere, I live on my own, and I’d really really like to not get eaten today! Oh, and what kind of crazy pony calls a timber a wolf?”
A roar shook the ground under them. Belvedere turned just in time to see the creature leave the shadows. Two front legs came first, each one lined with twin rows of spikes from paw to shoulder. Next came the teeth, a mass of twisted fangs protruding from a gaping, circular maw in the creature’s head. A long, lithe body composed of sticks and branches followed, smooth in some places and riddled with spikes in others. Two back legs and a long tail tipped with a mace-like stinger came last of all.
“Run! Run! Run!” Belvedere said it to himself as much as to Twilight, and kept saying once the timber crashed down a mere five paces short of them. He couldn’t help saying it, even if it was already too late.
The timber lunged forward, its spear-sized teeth moments away from impaling them both, its whole body sizzling and smoking in the light of day.
“Hold on!” Twilight shouted back.
White light seared his eyes again, this time accompanied by a whoosh of air that seemed to pass right through him. The timber howled again, this time from a great distance. Belvedere looked around, elated, confused, and nauseous all at once. He and Twilight were now at the base of the hill, a solid five minute’s run from the crater and the massive creature bounding around it with ear-shattering frustration.
“How’d you do that?” he whispered.
“What is that thing?” Twilight shouted back.
“Timber. They live in the deep dark… sunlight and firelight burn ’em up. Sometimes they get desperate… grab ponies stupid enough to get near their territory… ponies like me.”
Twilight remained silent, which eventually prompted him to look at her instead of the monster fleeing back to the darkness and its wake of white smoke. Her carefree smile was gone. “I should go. I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble.”
Her horn lit up, and he shielded his eyes against what he assumed would be another blinding flash. “Wait!”
Nothing happened. Her horn glowed softly, a purple beacon of magic that he couldn’t help but think was being wasted. He couldn’t fathom how much better life would be with that much raw magic at his disposal. Twilight glanced up at her horn, and then resorted to tapping it with a hoof. “Why isn’t it working?”
“Why isn’t what—?”
“The spell! It’s just simple teleportation… well, celestially amplified trans-dimensional teleportation wrapped in a dozen different enchantments to pull me back just in case anything goes wrong, which it definitely has… but…”
“There you go not making sense again.”
Twilight gasped. “What if I’m stuck? What if the enchantments all failed a-and I can’t get back to Equestria? I can’t be stuck here!”
“What’re you talking about?”
Twilight threw up her forelegs. “Equestria! My home! I have to get back there!”
Belvedere shook his head. “Twilight… Twilight, this is Equestria.”