//------------------------------// // Prologue // Story: Containment Breach // by gamerboy11116 //------------------------------// Ponyville. At first glance, this quaint town seemed like any other. Many small, wooden houses with large roofs made of hay, laid alongside several rough gravel paths leading to and from the various cafes and vendors selling delicious treats, all finally converging into the town center, containing nothing more than a well, some benches, trees and a small, statue of an equine holding a book. And in truth, it wasn't particularly special in many regards. However, when one is to truly investigate the town's every nook and cranny, one begins to discover it's hidden, vibrant interior, full of a friendly, perhaps too friendly populace, always ready to show you a good time. The whole town sort of smelled like flowers and peaches when you really focused on it. One of the town's more noticeable features is a large, crystal castle towards the outskirts, towering above everything else by a huge margin. It vaguely resembles a tree, with several balconies extending out from its sides like branches, and with a large crystal star adorning the top, adding to the already incredible extravagance of the structure. The evening sun barely stayed above the rolling, flower-covered hills, dense forests and crystal-clear lakes that surrounded the town, illuminating the whole town in a dull, orange glow that glinted off the castle like a mirror. Several, small fluffy clouds lay low in the sky, layered across the sky almost like a painting, as if somepony took a brush of orange and yellow and moved it across a canvas in one elegant stroke. Several foals and colts ran throughout the town, giggling and laughing to each other as they weaved in between the ponies going about their business, closing up shop for the coming night, or simply taking a stroll through the town. Everything considered it was a truly picturesque scene. However, inside that castle, a single, purple pony was missing all of it. She was focused on something else entirely. Something much, much bigger... Twilight dared not make a sound as a single bead of sweat dripped down her forehead, threatening to blur her vision. Her quill stopped moving across the paper for just a second as she grabbed a tissue with her magic from across the room. Bringing it towards her, she wiped her forehead, before dropping both the tissue and the quill onto the floor. She inhaled sharply, filling her starving lungs with clean air, having held her breath for over a minute without even realizing it. She painfully sat back into her chair, away from her desk which she had been leaning over for the better part of an hour straight. A small groan escaped her lips as she straightened her back, stretching her limbs in an attempt to release some tension. Satisfied with the pops she received in response, she slumped into her chair in a heap. She sighed deeply, staring at the paper she had been writing for over three months. She had blocked out contact with most of her friends and relatives for this, ever since the conception of the idea. Dimensional travel. The ultimate dream of any science fiction fan. Not just the ability to travel to other planets, but galaxies, universes, even through time and space in unparalleled ways, entering other planes of existence altogether. She sat there for at least a minute, gathering her bearings. She had been sitting in this chair for three hours straight, and it certainly wasn't good for her. She needed a break, but she didn't know quite what to do. Working on this seemed to be her entire life, having invested so much time and energy into creating, developing, writing and hopefully executing this spell. She had received her meals from Spike, never leaving this room until it was time for her to sleep. Anything other than working on it seemed almost foreign. Her stomach answered her question, growling in desperate need of sustenance. She sighed and slowly got up, climbing down from her chair and walking towards the kitchen. Spike had gone to sleep early tonight, so she needed to get her food herself. Her work could wait for a few minutes, after all. Walking out of her laboratory and into the kitchen, she began preparing a small snack for herself. It wasn't anything luxurious or even all that large, just an apple, a hay sandwich and some water. Trotting back to her laboratory, a thought struck her. Something that nearly made her fall over right there and then, a revelation of sorts. Her pace quickening, she made her way into her laboratory, placed her plate of food on a nearby table, took one big bite of her sandwich and began writing again. Of course. How could she be so blind? Her hypothetical dimensional transport spell could--- no, her theoretical dimensional transport spell, at its core, was a modified teleportation spell combined with a dimensional bending spell. Essentially, she bending space to the point where it 'breaks' so to speak, and forms an infinitesimally small rift through space and time. This, when combined with the teleportation spell, allows her to access everything beyond her plane of reality, allowing her to teleport to alternate dimensions entirely. That was the easy part. The difficult part was getting the energy required to perform such a task. Vast teleportation was never a problem before, but at this scale? Neigh-impossible. It was a hinderance which irritated her for months. Not once could she get the energy requirement down far enough for it to be reasonable. But that, as she had just realized, was because she wasn't attacking the core issue. Teleportation spells increase in energy requirement exponentially over distance, and the distance between planes of reality was, of course, great. But she already figured out how to bend space to allow her access in the first place, why not bend space to shorten the distance, too? She had been so focused on getting the teleportation spell to use less energy she hadn't simply thought of bringing her destination to HER. Hours passed. Her food slowly disappeared until nothing was left. Pages upon pages of writing were made, being swiftly put to the side for the next. So much effort and time and money spent to develop her theory, and this was the final result. Slamming her quill to the side, she held her final, revised document in front of her. She didn't really know how to feel. Before now, she thought of just how excited, just how amazing this would be. Finally finishing it. Nobel Prizes, Awards of all kinds, and uncountable amounts of money would be coming her way, she thought. She was excited, don't get that wrong, just not... ecstatic, is all. She had no time to lose. Setting the requirements of the world she would land on to be habitable for her, she started the spell. First, she opened the rift. It wasn't visible with the naked eye, being smaller than the width of an atom. Although, the temperature in the area immediately around the rift itself, about one inch cubed, rose to more than a thousand degrees Celsius. Secondly, she began the teleportation spell. As magic coursed through her veins, all funneling into her horn, she began to have doubts. What if this didn't work? Was she being rash? She had spent so much time and was so excited to get this done she hadn't even considered any possible flaws in her design. But no matter. It was time. Her vision went black as she entered the rift. Looking around, she didn't see anything spectacular. In fact, she saw nothing at all. She kind of expected something... profound. Something mind-bogglingly incomprehensible as she whizzed through time and space. A tunnel formed from the fabric of reality, every event that has happened, will happen, or has never happened occurring in an instant in front of her eyes, the screams of a thousand burning universes colliding... but to be honest, such beliefs were nonsensical. It made perfect sense that she saw nothing. What else would she see? Her eyes were three-dimensional. For all she knew, she was traveling through the seventh dimension. She saw a flash of white, burning into her retinas like a thousand exploding stars. And then she saw a different kind of black. Unconscious black.