//------------------------------// // Prologue. Life after death. // Story: Imagine // by Vision //------------------------------// *CRACK!* A loud noise echoed through the darkness. This was the first thing that happened here in a long time. This empty void of nothingness was the place people come to after they die. I knew that I’m dead, because the last thing I remember was a truck with a drunken driver smashing into my body, while I was crossing the road to the green light. I felt the phantom pain from that hit for… days? Weeks? I don’t know… I had nothing to tell the time. Well, except my memories. Its funny, that after death you can recall all your life with a perfect clarity. All the books, news, journals and magazines I’ve read, all documentaries, movies and cartoons I watched. All good, bad and “eh” of my life, was before me, like an open book. And that’s all I had until that sound. I turned all of my mental attention to the surrounding darkness. *CRACK!* This loud noise exploded around my conciseness again. And then I felt something. The feeling slightly reminded me of a cold morning summer breeze, but I felt it not on my skin, but on my mind, on my very soul. It was so refreshing! It brought me comfort and small happiness, the first emotions that I experienced here besides sorrow and hopelessness. That feeling was magical. It pulled onto my mind and I drifted towards the source of the “breeze”, following the path it gave me. The closer I got, the stronger it felt, until- I silently shrieked in pain as thousands of hot needles that was early a “breeze” piersed my conciseness, tearing into my soul and memories, filling me with agony- And then it suddenly stopped. I was somewhere. I don’t know how to explain why I knew that, but I wasn’t in that cursed place anymore. I felt surroundings which were coated in the “breeze”, radiating it, as if they were producing this strange feeling. But I could not see that. I was just a self-aware mind floating in a air, on some distant planet, probably not in my original dimension. But at least I was somewhere now. =Time Skip= After possibly hundreds of years, I discovered that “breeze” was, in fact, some kind of energy, that was being radiated by the surrounding my floaty self network of some kind, reminding me some what of a theoretical world's leylines. But with time, I felt difference in my energy, and energy of leylines, which brought me to the conclusion, that the world's energy changed over time without the massive source of the original type. And the fact that I still had a massive amount of the original energy was quite fortunate. Why fortunate? This energy could create things! Out of nothing! By force of my imagination! I had to simply imagine the atom and I felt it flowing away, with a fresh reserve of my energy quickly dispersing out of it into nothingness. But further more, now only mine energy could do that. I think it was the energy that made planets in this reality. But it didn’t matter, because I finally had means of creating my self a new body. But not my old human body. That guy died in horrible accident a loooooong time ago. I will make something cool and not glowy, like a certain professor from a dc comics, nope. Chinese dragons are a lot cooler. … What? They are cool! If only I knew were to start… =Time Skip= Ok, so for a while I’ve been trying to replicate some things I saw in books on animal anatomy, like skeleton, nervous system and organs, and conger them in the form of cool looking creature. First problem was the complexity of such things, because they had very, and I mean VEEEEERY big number of atoms and molecules in it, except I didn’t need to imagine all of it with this precisely, I just needed to know how it worked as a whole in order for it to appear near me, and there led the second problem. How do I put my consciousness in the control of the organic material, the answer to that was a power of will. I needed to will it to work with my energy. And after a while I found out the hard way, that the nervous system I knew could not support said energy, and each time my form would eventually go up in flames, and make me start from scratch. But after a while I could make me a body that could move, see, feel, smell and hear by using my energy in to do all this things. I was able to make it with the knowledge of plants I acquired in my biology class. I became a little blue blob of slime. Organic plant slime. But I could finally see! And the first thing I saw was a blue sky, filled with a small white clouds lazily floating through the it. Then I heard the singing of birds and small rustle of the leafs on, this time real, breeze. Then I felt soft grass underneath my form, and smelled the fresh air of the woods. That moment I knew what true happiness felt like. After spending so long in the darkness I finally could see and feel my beautiful surroundings. And only then, I moved. Moving like a puddle of slime was pretty fun, but everything is fun when you move first time in the hundreds (or by this point thousands?) of years. Vibrant colors of the forest were just fantastic! Yellows, greens and browns of all possible tones and shades were mixed as if by the hand of a master painter, who had a very essence inspiration flowing through their veins. So I proceeded crossing the forest seeing sights and many familiar animals and plant life I read about in my previous life characteristic of more northern regions, but creatures still looked kind of different, in more cutesy way, like these bunnies! Oh they’re just so cu- *Splash!* … I fell into the river while I was looking at the cute bunnies. Huh… All this excitement made my attention drift from one thing to another and so I didn’t hear the river until it was too late... Wait. A river! It could bring me to the civilization! Of course if this world has one. So I relaxed and let the flow move me through the scenery. It was only after I swam out of the forest by sunset when I heard new sounds. The sounds of working. This made me turn my vision to the noises where I saw a half constructed watermill, like the ones in a history books on Middle Ages, being built by… By… Freaking ponies. Oh. MY. GOODNESS!!!!! My little blobby self was not on just some planet, it was on magical pony planet! Yes THAT pony planet! My favorite show’s pony planet! And some how it made a lot of sense! That strange energy possibly was a flipping magic! And I was near a pony town! That was time to get some info. =Approximately 4 hours later= Apparently in this time libraries were only inside of castles of local authorities, like dukes and such. Guard there was quite big, but I slipped through the cracks, literally my slimy self was that good at moving. Also this village was populated by only earth ponies, which were periodically looking at the sky searching for something with a grimase on their faces. This observation led me to an assumption that I was currently in the racist times of pre-unification era of Equestria, which was confirmed by books of the local duke Early Harvest. And apparently I could understand pony language. Books on myths and history were most interesting to me. The old tomes told about war between pegasi and unicorns for the land and metal, in which earth ponies were eventually dragged in by both parties. After 35 years, war ended because of a food shortage, and since then there was unstable peace between races of ponies, but they still didn’t like each other, at all. In myths I found references to strange exploding lights every few decades, or simply put my failed attempts on making a body, also one much more important thing, in the oldest, most secure books from thousands years ago. The legend of how the world was made. Basically the five beings of great power created the ground, the sky, the moon, the sun and magic itself from essences of their very being and then together planted the seeds of life into the ground, creating the nature around them. After this each of nameless gods made their own life. Ground one made earth ponies, diamond dogs and minotaurs from the earth itself, sky one made pegasi, griffons and harpies from the clouds, magic one created unicorns, breezes and cat like beings, moon one made the creatures of the night and thestrals, and sun one made the creatures of the day and dragons. They gave their favored children this intelligence and told them said story, shortly after which they left. That meant, if the story is true, I got not just magic, I got the magic of old, of the creators. I had the magic of re beings that made this world out of nothing, and my consciousness accidentally wondered into this universe while it was build! That allowed my mind to absorb residual magic of Gods themselves while they were busy creating this world. But the best part is… They’re gone! And I am here. So, after that realization struck me it was followed by another one. I understood ponies and their writing and language because I was there when they gave every sentient being their language. That was convenient. But what wasn’t convenient is the lack of anatomy books, or medical journals, or any research on ponies body. And that was bad, because I didn’t know how their bodies could withstand such magical pressure. So it left me the only option, consuming a pony’s body to know how it works. But it doesn’t have to be a living pony, now does it? So the only thing I had to do is to find a dead body of a pony and do the deed. That’s why I was on my way to the towns cemetery. It was easy to slip between the bars of an entrance unnoticed, because the sun was set a few hours ago. And cemetery at night is the place where no one likes to be, especially in the times like this, when many folks whisper to their friends scary stories about ghosts and bloodthirsty monsters living in the woods and only come at night. … Maybe in this world they are partially true. Moving away from that creepy thoughts I slithered around the small cemetery, until I found most freshly buried pony. Seeing that dirt was moisty only in the area where grave was dug, I concluded that the grave was about day old. What? I read about in the internet. So, without hesitation slipped through the earth towards the supposed coffin, and when I finally touched the surface of the lid I harden my exterior and punctured my way in with force. The body looked like pony was sleeping, that’s how fresh it was, so I carefully covered him in a blue cocoon and started slowly, cell after cell disassemble his body, and found many interesting things that no anatomy book will ever tell you. This guy's nervous system, along with skeleton and organs had one solid difference, that distinguished this ponies from ours. And it was freaking sugar. Yes! Turns out that magic dissolves sugar first! Then by some mystical reasons it harms the body, also the higher the sugar in percentage in your blood the less magic dissolves it! So you don’t have to eat three cakes a day, just two in a week. So there you have it, that’s why ponies ate a lot of sugary treats in show and do not become ill with diabetes! Its magic! ‘So I just have to topple sugar in my me body’s blood to live through the first minute or so.’ I thought loudly as I envisioned every little retake of my new appearance. And- *BOOM!* With loud explosion of light and lightning in the middle of a cemetery my new form emerged. A whitish blue fur of a serpentine body, fading into black on my lion legs and where my hair supposed to be, with talons instead of hands and two meter long eyebrows and whiskers flowing on the non-existent wind, completed with tassels horn on top of my head, and a long muzzle with canines sticking out. After liking myself over I conjured up a mirror and looked into my eyes. My now blue eyes with four pointed white stars instead of pupils. I looked in them, and smiled. “Oh wow, I can’t believe that worked.” I said in my new voice with a bigger smile as I teleported away, when I saw torches moving towards cemetery from the disturbed town. This ponies did not discover the source of this bright explosion, and the only thing they found was silver mirror with a four pointed star engraved on back side of it.