I found myself smashed against a corrugated metal wall, my belly, chest, and jaw against a hot surface—sun-drenched outside, considering the rays of light shinning through tiny punctures—my rear quarters in the dirt. The smell of oil mingled with frost steam in the air. I hadn't quite knocked myself out again, but my ears rang and again I hurt from, well, slamming into an immovable object.
I suppressed a groan as I slid to the ground only to have my chin strike pieces of crushed cement. And the metal smelled of rust and oil. Lovely.
I looked right, left. Had any creature been near, they'd have had a momentary advantage, but I skittered behind a couple of steel barrels and felt hidden from...
The sphere was an inter-dimensional gate, fundamentally different than Starswirl's and Celestia's magic mirror. It didn't require magical input, but it certainly circulated a celestial-ton of magic like an arcane house fan.
That meant this world had magic.
I rubbed my bruised jaw with the frog of a hoof, looking at the gate, wishing that my intuition was better at spell equation math.
Blood. I felt a drip at the tip of my nose. That was the rust smell. Well, I guess I really didn't know everything, after all.
From my vantage point, I could see back into Applejack's parents' grove. I waited. A few minutes later, one of the bipeds with a hat like AJ's walked into the clearing, carrying a barking arrow. He shook his head at the parent tree, kicked it hard enough to rattle the branches, then took out a canteen. He pointed to some creature unseen and headed along the improvised road back toward the farm house.
I began breathing easier and examined my surroundings. It was no barn, in the sense AJ used it. From inside, I could see how slipshod it was. Seams here and there did not match and, along with the puncture holes, let in wan little beams of sunlight in which dust swirled and gnats flit. On the opposite side, I could make out dappled flickering of breeze tussled leaves—probably trees that shaded the ill-fitting sheets of tacked-together metal and kept the light from the various gaps and holes from overwhelming the flickering bluish bulb hanging near the barn door. The motorbike rested on a kickstand.
That made me think it was a temporary garage, cobbled together from trash siding. Oil stained the dirt in places. Compared to the scale of pony construction, a small house could easily fit in here. Compared to the bipeds and their trucks, it was little more than a shed and really wasn't that big.
I theorized that the gate had recently appeared. The bipeds had hastily hidden it from prying eyes by building around it. With junk. As slipshod as it was.
Why?
The startling report of dozens of barking arrows gave a clue. I cringed behind the barrels, hiding my head under my forelegs. I should have thrown a shield spell around me, even if I didn't know what velocity ranges I needed to tune for to protect myself. A right guess, even if it weren't the most likely guess, might have saved my life...
Were it I who were being shot at.
But, it wasn't me. I lay there quaking in fear for more long seconds than I'm willing to admit before my twitching ears sensed the direction of the sounds and a doppler effect in action.
No. The bipeds weren't shooting at me. Or the garage that housed the gate.
I heard an amplified shout and the barking stopped, except for a couple defiant barks. Another shout, then quiet.
Was there an army out there, preparing to invade Equestria?
I had to find out.