//------------------------------//
// Chapter Four: The Chariot of Hippolytus 
// Story: Equestria Mares: The Secret Apprentice of Princess Celestia 
// by Coyote de La Mancha 
//------------------------------//

The first thing that assailed Twilight was a sense of complete disorientation. She had expected something like it, of course. It was vaguely reminiscent of her first teleportation attempts when she was still a foal. Yet this was different. It was as though she could feel the world spinning under her, even as her senses kept telling her she was remaining perfectly still. She collapsed to the ground in a controlled fall, trying to keep her breathing steady, waiting for the strange vertigo to pass, hoping her arrival had been undetected.
If Sunset Shimmer finds me like this…
With her eyes closed, her other senses were beset by her surroundings. Twilight could feel the thick, silken grass under her body gently compress under her like the finest down, its long blades almost embracing her as she sank into the greensward. There was little sound of animal life, just the occasional sliding sound of something moving across tree or stone. But the powerful scents of the place struck her like a hammer, again and again. The heady, almost intoxicating perfume of flowers and resin-thick leaves was dizzying in its own right, keeping her in check for several moments after the initial after-effects of the mirror had passed.
Yet, in time, she opened her eyes. Her eyes had already adjusted to what passed for night in Phaedra, but nothing could have prepared her for the grandeur that surrounded her, and she gasped as she beheld her surroundings in sheer awe.
The grass she lay on was a green that was vividly deep, the heavy blades impossibly thick and soft. She was surrounded by red-brown trees bearing a thick canopy of rose-colored crystalline leaves, moving in the breeze like chimes. They bore fruit like gems, green, purple and sapphire blue. When the winds moved through them, it was a caress of fragrance and music. 
Momentarily caught up in the beauty of the place, she closed her eyes and allowed the wind and the sounds and the scents all to wash over her, this time reveling in their symphony. Then, she opened her eyes again, looking upwards for the first time.
The stars of these alien heavens were few, but close and bright, pulsing as they shone like jewels in magnificent tones of ruby, lapis, and pearl. Far closer were the planets, taking up much of the nighttime sky. Here, one was various shades of blue and violet, striped in slow-moving swirls. There, another, reddish-orange, textured and pocked by centuries of its own encounters. Still another, larger than the first two, was green… but ringed by a million scintillating precious stones orbiting in an endless dance of light green, magenta, and deep blue bands. 
Chief among them all, however, was Phaedra’s moon. Smaller than Luna’s, but impossibly close, its visible half filling almost a full fifth of the sky with its mythril glow. Twilight could see the faint curve of Phaedra’s horizon before it as the satellite majestically revolved its way down, shadows lengthening across its face as its craters and caverns caught the light from a massive red sun only beginning to rise in the west.
With a start, she realized she had been singing, wordlessly caught up in the dance of this strange world. She was also, she saw, hovering several feet off the ground in a violet glow, the rustling plant life drawn towards her as if she were the center point of a brisk wind.
Quickly, she drew her magic back in, landing in the lush green without a sound… and with a gasp instinctively leaped into the air again, landing perhaps thirty feet away. 
The horned serpent completed its strike even as she moved, each of its twin heads snapping its venomous fangs mere inches from her hooves. Despite its size – each of its necks being as big around as her leg – it had crept under her silent and unseen, completely hidden by the sea of luxurious blades beneath her. Now it raced after her over the green, hissing, gills flared, ready to strike again. 
Before she had time to think, there was a blinding flash and the stench of charred flesh and burning chlorophyll, and everything was obscured by caustic smoke.
The breeze cleared the smoke quickly, showing her the deep trench that had been blasted before her, a scar upon the rose-colored forest with no end in sight. The Phaedran snake was dead. So was everything else that had been in her power’s path, as far as the eye could see.
Twilight took a deep breath, gathering her magic in as she did so, capping it, trying to seal it within herself even tighter than she had before leaving, and then tighter still. Then she looked around herself again at the alien beauty that this tiny planet presented. She had listened to Celestia carefully before leaving her own world, but despite that had still failed to grasp the full import of what the oldest princess had been trying to explain. Now, being here, seeing Phaedra for herself…
She understood now why Starswirl had wanted so much to study this place.
She understood now why he had to leave.
And, above all, she understood why she had to hurry. For, even in the short time she had been intruding in this deadly paradise, it seemed to her the moon and its companions were just a little bit closer than they had been before.
“Great going, Twilight. Sunset’s around here somewhere with the Element of Magic, I’m on a quest to save two worlds and her, and the first thing I do is almost get eaten by a snake.” She glanced around, a little nervously. “I wonder what else might be around me, hunting me, hidden by the local flora?”
She sighed. “Focus. Okay, what do I know?” 
She started walking down the smoking trench she’d burned through the greenery. At least nothing could attack her from below. 
“I know I can’t look for Sunset with spells, and I certainly can’t track her on the ground. Both are too dangerous, though for different reasons. With the time difference, it’s not like she should have gotten far. And I don’t think she’d risk teleporting, not with what she’s planning. But if she were nearby, there’s no way she could have missed me deforesting the place.” 
She looked around. “So I guess the gateway’s location is as unstable as everything else in this place. That leaves me with a whole planet to search, no matter how tiny a planet it might be.”
Carefully, experimentally, she flexed her wings.
My wings are still weak, she thought. But that might be to my advantage. I can barely get ten feet off the ground at home, and then only for short distances. But here, with everything so amplified, I should be able to go higher with way less effort. Clear the canopy. Then hover, maybe gently glide. 
“I’ll just have to be careful,” she decided. “Even if it speeds the collapse up a little, it’ll be worth it.” Then she muttered, “Time isn’t exactly on my side, after all…”
And so, with great concentration and care, Twilight spread her wings, and began to bring them gently down.
She cried out as the trees struck her across the face and shoulders in an almost simultaneous flurry of rapid-fire blows as she catapulted through the canopy at blazing speed, the world fleeing from her below her hooves. The wind dragged greedily at her mane and tail, her feathers, her coat as she rocketed into the sky. With effort, she spread out her wings again, stilling her flight. She shook her head to clear it. She’d been lucky, she realized. After destroying so many trees in the area, there had only been small branches and twigs left in her way. Impacting a major limb at that speed might have been fatal.
Still, looking around, she was exhilarated despite herself. The planets were even closer now, their details that much more jewel-like. The sun was warmer, the stars brighter, their facets more easily seen. Even Rainbow Dash had never flown so high! Yet somehow, the air was no thinner. And faintly, ever so faintly, she could hear something. A sound that had been too far away before to be heard until now. Almost like music, crystalline and pure.
The stars, she realized. The stars were singing.
Despite herself, she reached out to them in wonder. They were still too far away to touch, of course, but she knew she could go to them if she tried. She grinned. She could fly to the stars here, even to other worlds, and explore all their wonders. Imagine!
But no. Now was not the time. With effort, she refocused upon the task at hoof. Perhaps she could come back another time, with better research and preparation, after Sunset was safe. With proper research, she knew, there had to be a way. But right now, the important thing was to bring the unicorn back to Equestria before she destroyed herself. 
Twilight glanced down at the world below her. With Sunset’s advantages, finding her would not be quick or easy, even from such a vantage point. And flight remained a factor, of course. Still, if flying was that amplified on Phaedra, then…
Twilight closed her eyes, relaxing with the ease brought on by years of practice in the mystic arts. With her heartbeat calm and her mind still, she placed her focus not on her wings’ motion, but rather upon the magic behind it. Even as she began to fly again they moved, though now they seemed more to gesture than to simply flap. And this time her motion was slower, more controlled. 
Yes, she thought. Much better. Guide the flight through will, and let the wings be secondary, almost incidental. It was very different than her friend’s flying lessons, which had concentrated on the “basics” of flight: posture, wing movement, trajectory, and so on. In a way, this brought her back to her first magic lessons as a little foal, when she’d still used gestures while casting her spells.
Probably Rainbow was going to bring in the “higher” concepts of flight gradually, she mused, once I’d mastered the basics on a more physical plane. And, Twilight acknowledged, that made sense with most students. Rainbow was an excellent teacher, and Twilight certainly wasn’t going to stop their lessons. But first and foremost, Rainbow Dash was an athlete. Twilight Sparkle was a magician.
And flying, at its core, is just another kind of magic.
Inwardly, she chuckled at herself. I should have realized this long ago, she thought. It’s perfectly logical. After all, it isn’t exactly aerodynamics that lets Rainbow fly upside-down, or lets all the pegasi walk on clouds. I just never stopped to think about it.
Then, she chuckled again, this time out loud. 
“Rainbow Dash, Master Magician,” she grinned. “Mistress of flight magic. An egg-head in her own right.” She couldn’t wait to tease her about that, once this was all done.
Meanwhile, Sunset Shimmer was still down there. Somewhere.
Twilight sighed. Well, if she can be anywhere – and it looks like she could be – I guess I’d better just be systematic. I’ll start where I landed, and start circling out. 
She considered her wings again. Very, very carefully.
Above her, the planets continued their ominous rotations. Was it just her imagination that they were even closer now, that the sun was slightly larger, the heat from its intricate orange-and-red patterns more pressing? She hoped so. It was a painful thought, that she might be responsible for further damaging such a beautiful place.
She sighed again as she searched the landscape below. “Then again, if the place is getting smaller instead of just crunching in on itself, maybe that’ll make the search easier. Of course, if I can see Sunset—”
Without warning, a bolt of fire lanced into her from below, burning across her face and barrel. She cried out, frantically trying to break her fall as a range of coastal mountains rushed up to strike her. Her plunge curved slightly as she desperately aimed for a lush valley between them. 
Then she was struck again, fire the color of blood and gold. The world went dark, and she did not feel it when she crashed through the valley’s canopy, this one full of sky blue leaves, and then onto the stony ground below.
Silence.
Hoofsteps. Unhurried. A breeze moving gently across the alicorn, shifting her mane over her eyes as a unicorn’s shadow falls over her still form. A female voice, tired, full of bitterness.
“Damn you, Celestia.”