//------------------------------// // Entering the Void // Story: Into the Unknown // by Bubble-Fics //------------------------------// “So” Derpy stood outside of Dr Whoove’s house, with her own set of saddlebags, watching the Doctor, lock up his place before safely putting his key into his personal saddlebag “How are we going to get there, Doc?” “Simple” He comes over to stand by Derpy’s side “We fly!” The Doctor proudly stands there, with a puffed chest, focusing his attention to the sky with a pretty confident expression on his face. “Umm…” Derpy looks at him in confusion. “Using a hot air balloon, of course” He points towards a resting hot air balloon, not too far away from their position and starts heading towards it. “Oh,” Derpy follows after the Doc “Derpy gets it now” The pair approach the magnificent balloon where the Doctor eagerly clambers abroad. He taps on one of the various ropes that hold up the big ballon on top of them. “It is the easiest and fastest way to get to our destination” Derpy watches the Doctor start loosening some saddlebags which, causes the hot air balloon to slowly rise from the ground. Derpy gets lost in thought. “Don’t we have to rent these” She watches the Doctor let loose of more saddlebags “or something” He whips around with a determined look on his face. “Not in the name of science!” “Hey!” They both look behind them to see a not-so-happy stallion running there way in the distance. The Doctor’s expression turns to that of panic. “Quick, Derpy!” The grey pegasus looks to the Doctor expectantly “Remove the last of the sand bags” Derpy does so, giving the balloon more freedom to rise up, higher, from the ground. She quickly flies abroad, watching the Doctor get to work with the burners of the balloon “And away we go” The pair soar up into the sky, looking down at the grumpy, now, out of breath, stallion that was chasing them, slow down from exhaustion. He watches his beloved hot air balloon disappear into the white, puffy clouds up in the light blue sky. Several hours later… “Um..Doc,..” Derpy looks over to see the Doctor, looking at the map in his book whilst also controlling the burners “Derpy thinks that we should get some rest now” The Doctor perks up at this mention of ‘rest’. “Huh?..Oh, right!” The Doctor closes his book “Yes” He double checks on the burners and his compass before coming to sit down, near Derpy “The balloon is set in the right course so we should be there by daybreak” He goes into his bags, to get his warm overalls “we better wrap up for the night” Derpy follows his lead, taking out her own warm overalls “soon we’ll be dealing with temperatures below 0” The pair, simultaneously, put on their warm overalls. “How exactly will we find..this ‘gateway’ of yours? There must be quite a lot of mountains in this range, so how will we know which is the right one?” “With” The Doctor finishes putting on the last of his overalls and searches through one of his saddlebags “This!” He presents a weird looking device to Derpy “The gateway itself, is said to be infused with various types of gemstones but most specifically, Painite” Derpy opens up a box of muffins, grabbing one for herself before giving one to the Doctor, who gladly accepts it “It is one of the rarest minerals known to Equestria” Derpy continues to listen, whilst she eats her favourite blueberry muffin “This device here, has the ability to detect any source of Painite and directly lead us to it” The Doctor motions his hoof to the device “So you see my friend, finding this gateway should be a piece of cake” The Doctor finishes with a smile before biting a chunk out of his own muffin. The next morning… “Doctor?” The Doctor continued to sleep, undisturbed “DOCTOR!” He wakes up with a jolt, with crumbs of muffin still stuck around his mouth, from last night. “What’s the matter, Derp-“ The Doctor sees a mountain coming there way “Holy hayseeds!” He jumps up to the controls and steers the balloon out of the mountain’s way “That was close” The Doctor breaths a sigh of relief. Derpy points a hoof outward with a fearful expression. “There’s more!!!” The Doctor takes notice of this and proceeds to work with the controls, steering them out of the multiple mountains that appeared before them. “Derpy! I need you to grab the Painite detector” Derpy hastily goes through Doctor Whoove’s bags and finds said detector “it’ll help us navigate ourselves through this blizzard” “Okay, now what does Derpy do!?” “Flip the switch” The Doctor steers them away from yet, another mountain, before looking behind at Derpy “try and listen closely to where the signal is!” Derpy follows the Doctor’s instructions, putting on a headset to listen in on the detector’s signals whilst the Doctor, continues to steer them out of harms way. “Go left!” The Doctor follows her lead “Now right!..Uh..down!..Now..Bear left again!” The signal begins to beep louder in the headset that Derpy wears “We are really close” She exclaims. The Doctor looks back at her, confused. “Really?” “Doc, look out!” The Doctor, fails to act in time, and their hot air balloon crashes into the side of a bigmountain. … “Doctor Whooves, are you okay?” Derpy searches around in the massive heaps of snow, on the mountain’s edge, trying to find the Doctor. “I’m alright” The Doctor pops his head and hooves out of a pile of snow, grabbing the pegasus’s attention “How about you?” Derpy come over to help her friend out, grabbing on to his front hooves before pulling him out of the snow. “Derpy’s good” The Doctor shakes himself off, trying to get rid of as much snow as possible “but not so sure about the balloon” He follows her gaze, to stare at the definitely wrecked-beyond-repair hot air balloon, that was slumped over on its side, half-buried in the snow. “Agh! The balloon!” Derpy watches the Doc run over to the crashed balloon “I guess we’ll have to make the rest of the trip by hoof” He sighs “Let’s salvage what we can” He finds his saddlebag, placing it on him before finding Derpy’s own and giving it to her “That Painite detector could come in handy right about now” He turns to face Derpy “Do you have it?” “Umm” The Doctor raises an eyebrow. “What?” “I think I lost the detector..when we crashed but, we can check the snow” Derpy realises that the chances of finding the detector in the snow were pretty slim “Oh..that’s a lot of snow” “Doesn’t matter” She looks back at the Doc “We’ll use my book” The Doctor opens up his saddlebag and reaches in to grab his book “Maybe there’s something…” He sits down in the snow to skim read the pages in his book. “Uh..Doc” “Not now, Derpy, I’m on to something here” Derpy watches a large shadow creep up towards them, before surrounding their very surroundings. “But there’s a-“ A low, guttural growl, rips Doctor Whooves away from his pages, to stare back into the beady eyes of a massive winterzilla. “…hi” The winterzilla roars at them, causing them both to run away in the other direction from the fuzzy beast. It gives chase, on its massive two feet to run after the frightened pair. “This can’t be-“ Both of them slip down a hill “The book never said anything about there being a winterzilla!” The winterzilla jumps in front of their trail, roaring at them with all its might. Derpy grabs ahold of the Doctor and flies them both past the furious creature “Oh, wait,” The Doctor looks through his book as he’s being flown by Derpy “I must’ve skipped this small detail: Beware of Winterzilla’s” The winterzilla roared once more, using its four extra limbs to help accelerate its running speed, causing poor Derpy, to speed up her flying “So minuscule, how could they possibly expect any pony to read this, I mean-“ “Derpy don’t think this is the best time” A noise from above, catches their attention, they look up to see an avalanche coming their way. Derpy drops the Doctor and they both run as fast as they can from the approaching flow of snow. Even the winterzilla, stopped, to see the approaching avalanche before running in retreat. The avalanche hits, taking them all with it, covering them in snow. Derpy and the Doctor pop their heads out of the snow only to recoil in fear as the winterzilla stood there, with its four arms stretched out to its widest extent. “It’s cornered us! Derpy, my friend” The frightened pegasus doesn’t dare take her eyes of the massive creature “I am so dreadfully sorry I dragged you into this” The winterzilla closed in, emitting another low guttural groan from its toothy maw “Now we are but mere moments from being monster chow” A light bulb went up in Derpy’s mind. “Not today, Doc” Derpy broke out of the snow encasing her form, causing the Doc and the winterzilla’s mouth to widen in shock “You want some muffins?” She presented a box of muffins to the creature, holding it high enough for the thing to see “Go get em’!” The Doctor watched in amazement as Derpy did the most heroic thing, chucking the box of delectable muffins far away from her. The winterzilla followed the box of muffins before running after it and away from the Doctor and Derpy’s presence. “Derpy..that was-“ “Let’s go, Doctor Whooves, before it-“ Derpy helped the Doctor out of the snow, looking back at the now occupied winterzilla. Before, they could move an inch, the ground beneath them opened up causing them both to fall down into it. The pair slid around and down a tunnel complex until they came to crash on the earthy ground outside of the tunnel. They slowly, got up and brushed themselves off from their slide. “This is beginning to become a habit” The Doctor grabbed a head flashlight and turned it on before placing it on his head “Derpy!” His friend began to walk somewhere causing him to follow after her in the dark cave. They turned a few corners and found themselves staring at the… “‘In Modis Aliis Porta’. We’re here!” They both stared in awe at the extravagant structure “It’s..beautiful!” “Isn’t it” Before them, stood a grand archway, with rocky pillars embedded at each side of its grand entrance. Through the archway, came some crafted stairs made out of the very earthy rock of the mountain which led towards a smooth stone looking platform where a mystical, crystal embedded, arch structure stood. Each crystal came in a different hue and size, that would make even the prime and popular, Rarity, quiver at the knees. Glowing green and blue gemstones, were embedded in the very rocky walls surrounding the grand gateway, providing it with this alien-like glow, only adding to the mysterious nature of the structure. “So..is that it? “Is that it?” The Doctor was caught off guard “Don’t you see, Derpy?” She turned to face the chipper face of the Doctor “We actually made it to the ‘In Modis Aliis Porta’, the possibilities are endless! I need to extract as much as I can from this scientific phenomena” The Doctor happily bounded up the stairs up to the platform and began rummaging through his saddlebags to begin his investigations. On the other hand, Derpy, found interest in the weird drawings, scrawled on one of the wall’s surfaces. The drawings were very faint, so it required a lot of effort to focus on them properly. “Cave Mare drawings” Doctor Whooves had begun extracting some painite and gems from the structure before him. “Pure Painite, everywhere!” He examined the painite in his hoof with a small magnifying glass “Must sample as much as I can” He abruptly put the sampled painite into a small sampling jar before placing it into his bag “If only, mother, could see me now” “Hey, Doc!” Derpy looked over towards the Doctor, who was busy geeking out over the samples he was obtaining “There are some really interesting drawings on the walls that I think you should look at” “That’s nice” The Doctor moved on to sampling from the glowing gemstones embedded in the cavern walls. “Derpy, thinks they might be instructions” Derpy walks over to the gateway, looking back at the drawings “It points to this crystal here” She begins turning it like in the drawings “if I…” “Forget about Nobel Prize” The Doctor places his new sample in a jar before placing it in his bag “This discovery will make me president of the-“ He whips around to face Derpy “Derpy, what are you doing?” Derpy finishes poking another crystal, which pushes into the structure with a satisfied ‘click’ noise. She looks over at the Doc. “Opening the gateway” “Oh” The Doctor shrugs it off, going back to his sampling “Wait!” He whips around again “What!?” A monstrous roar snatches the Doctor’s attention, he looks over to where Derpy and him had been moments ago only now the spot was occupied with an angry winterzilla. “Looks like Fuzzball’s back!” He turns to Derpy, who acts unaware of the winterzilla’s presence “We need to get out of here, now!” Derpy turns one last crystal 90 degrees clockwise, causing a loud warp sound to vibrate over their surroundings “You…opened it” Sure enough, the gateway was alive, with colourful swirls of blue and purple filling the once empty space of the gateway. The loud, fast, approaching foot steps of the winterzilla echoed through their ears. “This way, Doctor Whooves!” “But-“ Without warning, Derpy, grabbed ahold of Doctor Whoove’s hoof, dragging him into the open portal with her. The portal closed behind them once they were through with only the echo of a roar sounding behind them.