Sunset slowly began to stir, having no idea what had happened. The last thing she remembered was fixing the mirror, a sudden outburst from outside, and the rest of it was just blank. Trying to get up, she placed her hands on her forehead, which was really aching at the mo-
Wait a minute, Hands?! Forehead?!
Desperately feeling herself all around, she found that she was no longer in her pony form. She was a human again! But something was wrong, not with her body of course, she was used to this. No, what was wrong, was where she was.
She definitely wasn't in Canterlot High School, there was pavement by the mirror. Where she was, there was grass, a few trees here and there, and a worn out dirt path going off into the distance. Wherever here was, it definitely wasn't in Canterlot, which could mean there was only one other place she could be...
She was in Middle-Earth! If the situation were different, she would've jumped for joy. Ever since learning about the place, she always wanted to go there. She wanted to travel with her friends to Gondor and meet Aragorn. She wanted to go to see the Elves, whatever remained at least, as they had all departed for the Undying Lands during the Fourth Age. But most of all, she wanted to see the Shire. She wanted to go to Hobbiton and see for herself what a hobbit really looked like, as hearing about something and seeing it are two totally different things. She wanted to go to Bag End, and meet Samwise Gamgee, whom she had heard about through Twilight's cookbook section of the journal. There was just so much she wanted to learn and explore here!
However, that was not what she was feeling right now. On the contrary, she was feeling afraid. She didn't know where in Middle-Earth she was, where to go, or what to do. She imagined Twilight being here to guide her through all of it, but that was definitely out of the question here. There was no sign of her friend or Starswirl anywhere. She was all alone in the middle of nowhere.
"Ugh, my head. What happened? Where are we?"
Or perhaps, not entirely alone. As she turned to see who had made that noise, she saw that Starlight was beginning to stir as well. She had also taken human form, but she was struggling to control it. True, she had been to the human realm before, but she was only there briefly. Not nearly enough time to get the hang of her new body. Not to mention she hadn't gone through the mirror in a long time. Even Twilight struggled getting reacquainted with her human side after coming to help with the Dazzlings.
Rushing forward to help her friend, she grabbed her by the arms and gently helped her up to her feet, "Easy Starlight, just take your time. There you go. Now are you okay?"
Starlight held a hand up to her head, "Yeah, I think I'm okay. But, where are we? We're definitely not in Canterlot, so what is this place?"
Sunset was surprised Starlight was being slow on the uptake, perhaps the fall had messed with her head a little bit. No matter, she would be back to herself in a few minutes, "Well, you're right about one thing, we are not in Canterlot right now. So that can only mean that we are-"
"It means we've been transported to Middle-Earth."
Both Sunset and Starlight jumped at this new third voice. Turning around, they saw none other than...
"Stygian, is that you?" Starlight asked. Stygian had, like the rest of them, taken the form of a human. He was slightly taller then the both of them, and his skin was his usual gray color, covered by brown pants, a blue shirt, and a long brown robe. His dark blue hair was ruffled and scruffy looking, but also controlled and restrained at the same time, which made no sense, but there was no other way to describe it. He looked quite handsome, and both Sunset and Starlight couldn't help but feel a little weak in the knees around him.
"Yes, it's me Starlight," he said at last, "I woke up about a half hour before you did and tried to evaluate our predicament. I figured we should try and take the road east, and see if we can find a settlement there to get our bearings. But I figured I should wait until you woke up before making any real decisions."
"Wait a minute, a half an hour?!" Sunset said bewildered, "You've been walking around on two feet with no problem for about a half an hour?! It took me days before I could get it right!"
Stygian chuckled a little bit. Not that kind of chuckle when your in civilized conversation and trying to be polite, mind you. No, this chuckle was that kind of real, deep down chuckle you felt when someone told a really funny joke.
Once he calmed down a bit he said, "What, you can't expect yourselves to be the only ones to have used the mirror, can you? You forget, I was there when Starswirl invented the mirror, I had plenty of practice when me and the other Pillars would go to the human realm to check on the Sirens."
Sunset and Starlight suddenly remembered that Stygian was over a thousand years older than they were, and any fantasies they had about him were suddenly silenced. Clearing their heads of these kind of thoughts, they got their minds back on their situation and how they were going to get home.
Starlight, finally being able to let go of Sunset and find her own balance, was the first to ask questions, "But if we're in Middle-Earth, does that mean our hypothesis failed?"
Stygian shook his head, "No, I think our hypothesis was correct. But factors out of our control had caused the process to become unstable. If I remember correctly, Twilight told me that her friends and herself retained their pony forms when traveling to Middle-Earth. Is this correct?"
Sunset, who had heard the story from Twilight herself, nodded her head in confirmation. Stygian continued, "So that must mean that we only partially fixed the mirror. More specifically, we fixed the part that forces our bodies to adapt to the environment of the Human Realm and prohibits our magic. You can't use magic right now, unfortunately."
Now both the girls were terrified, Starlight more than Sunset, who was not used to not having magic in her day to day life. Sunset wasn't as shocked as Starlight was, as she was used to having limited to no magic available, but the aspect of having no magic at all was still a dreadful thought to a skilled unicorn such as herself.
After hearing this news, both unicorns turned human were trying their best to channel their magic, but to no avail. Without a horn or some kind of conductor for their magic, there was simply no way to perform even the simplest of spells. To say they were in a pickle would be a huge understatement.
"Without magic, how are we supposed to get home?!" Sunset asked rather loudly.
Stygian put his hand below his chin and said thoughtfully, "Well, even if we had our magic, the chances of us getting home are slim. Twilight said that even with her magic, the magic mirror closed behind them, and there was no way for them to get back to Equestria. When I awoke, I looked for any signs for the mirror that we came from, but I fear that it has already closed on us."
And he was right. The mirror, or any portal of some kind, was nowhere to be found. The only thing within a five yard radius was two teenage girls and one man in his early twenties standing in the grass besides the road.
"So what do we do now?" Starlight asked, still not quite done hyperventilating by the fact that they had no magic.
Sunset gave it a moments thought and decided, "Well, we can't stay here, that's for sure. Even if Twilight finds a way to open the mirror and come get us, we have no way of knowing when she'll show up. It could be months for all we know. So I think we should follow Stygian's idea. We no longer have magic at our disposal and we don't even know where we are. We should follow the road and see where that gets us. Let me check Twilight's journal and see where the closest village is.
Hoping beyond hope, she reached into her pocket. Breathing a sigh of relief upon learning it was there, along with a few other unimportant items from her pocket dimension, she flipped through the pages to find the map. That relief was short lived as she gasped in horror.
"Sunset, what's wrong?!" Starlight said, even Stygian leaned forward to see what was wrong.
"The pages," Sunset meekly whispered, "Half of the pages are blank!"
She pushed the book into their view. The map of Middle-Earth, the Language Manuscripts and the pages about the different species and their customs were still there. But half of Twilight's notes and all history past the first half of the Third Age was gone! Erased as if it was never there! An entire half of foreign knowledge, gone!
Being a little of a bookworm herself, the aspect of all that knowledge going to waste was a horrendous thought. No doubt Twilight would be screaming with terror if she was here. She began hyperventilating like crazy, quite forgetting about everything else at the moment. It took a few shakes from Starlight and a slap in the face from Stygian to bring her back to the present.
"Sunset, listen to me!" Starlight shouted, "It's fine, everything is fine! We can rewrite the journal when we get back! But right now we need a plan, which is to find a safe location to plan the next move we make! The map wasn't erased from the journal! As long as we have the map, we should be okay!"
Sunset, now a little more calm than when she originally was, took a deep breath, and tried to reel in the Twilight part of herself, "You're right. This is no time to freak out. Until Twilight or anypony else from Equestria comes to rescue us, we need to plan how we're going to survive the next few days. Thanks for snapping me out of it, Starlight."
Starlight wrapped her up in a hug and said , "Hey, what are friends for, right?"
After a few minutes, Stygian broke them up and said, "Not that this isn't a touching moment, but we still need to find out where we're going. Can I see the map for a moment?"
Sunset obliged and handed the journal over to Stygian. He spent the next few minutes looking over it and muttering to himself before finally declaring, "Okay, from what this map says, we're somewhere near here, by the Barrow Downs. The closest town from here is a little town called Bree. If we start now, we can make it there by this evening."
"Well, that seems a good a place to start as any. Let's just hope they're friendly to outsiders," Starlight responded, "Shall we get going then?"
"Wait!" Sunset suddenly shouted, "Before we go, we should leave a message as to where we're going."
Going over to a small tree not far from the road, she pulled off a small branch and etched a message of equestrian writing into the ground, "When she was here, Twilight told me that she would leave messages for Princess Celestia explaining what she was doing and where she was going should she ever come here to look for her and her friends. She wrote it in the equestrian language so that nopony but herself or anypony from Equestria could read it. I'm just writing to Twilight that we're all okay, and that we plan to go to Bree. Okay, that should do it."
"Smart thinking, Miss Shimmer," Stygian replied, as Sunset finished writing her message.
Sunset blushed, "Oh please, just call me Sunset. No need to be formal among friends."
Stygian was a bit surprised. They hadn't knowing each other for a good forty-five minutes and she was already calling him her friend? She really was a lot like her mentor, "Very well, Sunset it is then. Off to Bree, everypony!"
And so the three friends started on their way to the small town of Bree, none of them knowing that they were about to take part in one of the biggest adventures Middle-Earth had ever seen.