“Applejack! What do I do?” Twilight screamed, desperately holding onto the hooves of Applejack, who was starting to shake from the weight of a flailing in the air Twilight. Applejack pulled with all her muscles but Twilight’s body just wouldn’t go up far enough. Out of breath, she looked around her for a solution, a second passed before she saw that Rainbow dash and Fluttershy had put Pinkie Pie and Rarity safely on the ground below and were coming back up to catch Twilight.
“Let go.” Applejack said, her grip already slipping. Rainbow and Fluttershy would have to catch Twilight.
“Are you crazy?” Twilight shouted, hooves shaking and sweat growing on her forehead. ‘Oh sweet Celestia is my life really going to end like this?’
“No I ain't. I promise you'll be safe.”
“That's not true!”
“Now listen here. What I'm sayin' to you is the honest truth. Let go, and you'll be safe.” Applejack assured her with the calmest voice she could muster in her current situation.
Twilight stared deeply into Applejack’s eyes, on one hoof she had known this pony for less than a day and she was sure that Applejack couldn’t save her. But on the other, she could feel that both of them were losing their grip on each other and it was unlikely to hold for much more. Finally, she decided to take a leap of faith, and trust Applejack.
She let go of Applejack and felt herself fall down from the steep cliff, body flailing as if trying to climb up the air.
“Yaaah!” She screamed. After a few seconds her fall was broken by a hard surface and everything went black.
x
The screams of the seagulls brought Twilight back into reality. Immediately waking up she was brought to heel by a searing pain echoing out from her skull and out over her body.
She tried steadying herself but the pain stopped her in her tracks and left her writhing about on the ground, blind to the world around her while the pain in her body dulled excruciatingly slow, as if it was trying to claw at as many nerves as possible before it went. Even when her sudden seizure had ended she lay on her back,panting and blinking in and out of consciousness while her mind settled.
“A-a-applejack!” She managed to wheeze out between her rugged breath, but no reply came. “Rarity, Rainbow, Pinkie… Spike?!” She called out, this time with a clearer voice, but still no reply came.
Panic slowly started to set in, and she opened her eyes to find that she wasn’t in the everfree forest anymore.
Instead of the purplish night sky that had just minutes ago been over her it was now an unending bank of grey clouds. She spun her head around from where she lay and fell further and further into panic, her mind simply not being able to comprehend how suddenly everything had changed. In front of her an endless ocean stretched endlessly into the distance, its the harsh waves occasionally squirting a few droplets of water onto her.
Behind her lay a collection of hills, all barren of any life except for the groundcover and a few measly shrubs. Around her, the beach she lay on stretched toward both horizons and was only interrupted by the occasional cliff.
Her head was overwhelmed, but before she could be fully taken by panic she reached up a hoof to steady her head and calm her breathing, but to her further astoundment she felt that it wasn’t a hoof that touched her head. Instead of the hard surface of a hoof that Twilight was accustomed to, five fingers touched Twilight’s face.
“Okay, Twilight, count to ten and everything will surely go back to normal.” ‘one, two, three...’ For a moment all of her sensations faded and were replaced by a numbing buzz throughout her body, it growing in volume before abruptly cutting out.
“Ten,”
She opened her eyes again and nothing had changed.
She desperately looked around even more, hoping to find some sign of an illusion spell, but found nothing. Instead she was met with even more drab landscape of hills overgrown by weeds and yellow grass.
Twilight felt another panic attack come onto her, but she caught herself, trying to piece together what had happened. “Okay Twilight, you’ve been suddenly transported from the Everfree forest to an unknown location, Nightmare Moon still has free reign, and no one came with you... that you know of,”
“What could have happened?” She quickly scanned her newfound body, and confirmed that it wasn’t equine as it had previously been.
Her body now was more like the body of a minotaur, only leaner, with just one horn and soft feet instead of hard hooves. Twilight gave out an exasperated sigh at the revelation, adding it to the summary of the situation she was composing.
“And apparently transfigured too,”. By now the craziness of the entire situation had made Twilight’s mind go full circle back to being calm. She took a couple of deep breaths and stood up, cringing slightly as multiple pebbles etched into the skin of her new feet.
“First off, who or what? Considering that teleporting me so far away from the Everfree and shapeshifting me would take an absurd amount of mana, I can only assume that Nightmare moon did this. Speaking of her, the sky also seems to indicate it being daytime right now? Has she already been defeated, or am i just on the other side of the globe...”
A gust of wind blew through the hills, causing twilight to cover up her chest with her arms, the thin coat of fur on her new body not helping much. The cold sensation reminded her to conjure a cloak, but as her brain went through the familiar motions of bringing up mana it could only pull out a miniscule flick of it.
‘Oh Celestia! she took away my magic too’ Twilight thought, her eyes shrinking to the size of pinpricks. “Why?! What’s the point to all of this, if she wanted to defeat me she could have done it in a million easier and more effective ways. Summon a rock over me, blast me with magic or even just throw a particularly sharp stick at me! And if it isn’t her, then what did this!?” Twilight ranted on, soothing her nerves from the lashing they had just received. By the end of it she was physically and mentally worn out, and fell down to sit on the cold and rocky beach.
The more she sat the more alternate possibilities of her arrival she considered and threw out, each seeming more unlikelier than the last. When there were no more possibilities to consider Twilight noticed how uncomfortable it was sitting almost naked on cold rocks. And at that moment it was as if everything came back into place.
“What are you doing Twilight! Nightmare moon is probably still out there and here you are sulking because of som-something trivial! After Nightmare Moon is defeated I’ll worry about my magic and my body,” Twilight looked around, once again scanning the environment, but this time looking for signs that could help her locate where she was in the world.
“Okay, rocky beach, rocky hills and not a lot of vegetation. This must then most likely be the southern parts of the griffin dominion. So, that means the nearest settlement...” She looked up, trying to see where the sun was through the clouds, and recalling her lessons in geography.
“That way,” She looked north. “About 200 km with cold weather and no food or water with me,” The thought made the hills infront of her seemingly stretch out and adopt an air of ominousity, the small rocky outcroppings becoming razor sharp edges and the skies descending onto the landscape and coating it in a thick fog.
“For Equestria...”