//------------------------------// // Strangest of Peoples // Story: A World of Colorful Feathers // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// Luster dawn was wracking her head around all the books piled up on the wooden table in front of her. The sun had not yet set and was still filling the dusty, massive library of Canterlot castle with golden, caramel-colored light. The mare was currently studying a book recensing all the known pony wizards of the world...although, from the faded red cover and all the tears in the binder, it was definitely an out-of-date edition. Luster carefully peeled the book open and used her hooves to carefully pull and place the pages down. The princess would have her head if she damaged anything. She would find what she needed in there, perhaps. Something to impress princess Twilight and keep the student out of Ponyville's 'Friendship School'. "Wizards...Who's in here?" she wondered. "Starswirl the Bearded, O'Connor the Thoughtful, Meringue the Savvy... Xianpu the Torturous?" Luster froze a moment. "What kind of name is that?" She batted through the pages for several minutes until she found one name that interested her. "Dusty Trail. A researcher into spatial magic? That sounds like teleportation." Dusty Trail's list of recorded exploits enamored Luster Dawn so much that she had to replicate at least one his spells. The young mare had to light up a few oil lanterns on the tables with her magic thanks to the disappearance of the sun. Enthusiast, the mare found a spell about an 'Air Door' connecting two points, regardless of distance, together. Anypony could use it too, but she would need a magical artifact to bind and hold the spell, otherwise the caster would be drained of all their magic in seconds. The library had a storeroom filled with magical artifacts gathered from all across the time that the rulers of Equestria reigned from this castle. Unfortunately for Luster Dawn, the storeroom was off limits and protected by multiple magical charms that were millennia old. Only Twilight, someone with the necessary spells, or a person the caster trusted very deeply could unlock it. The concept was flawed, but the princess couldn't do anything about it. Still, it was worth a try. The student would not relent in her quest. A few minutes of traveling and Luster was standing in front a heavy, black metal door glowing purple with Princess Twilight's new magic and the faint multicolored magic of the rulers of old mixing about in swirls behind Twilight's star; The only source of light in this place. It was floating a few inches in front of the door, like a warning sign, and knowing that she was about to do something wrong in front of it made Luster's heart beat faster in fear. Luster took a deep breath. "It's okay. You'll just use the spell to lead to the princess' room and wait for her there. No harm done, and she'll be impressed that I used a spell no pony even remembers." Luster sat down and rubbed her hooves together. She touched the spell with her hooves, expecting to explode, but she was only met with a slight pushback. The student saw it as an opportunity and pushed back with her own magic, and the spell started to unlock itself. The mare jumped up and down in joy. Twilight trusted her enough. With a hum, the spell split in two and slid to each side of the door, letting Luster enter unhindered. The room was...surprisingly clean, and the whole chamber was illuminated by an unseen source of light. No dust or cobwebs filled any corner or crevice. Instead, the chamber had been enchanted to change in size within it rather than without. Luster had to look for the easiest artifact to transport, and one with the least danger. Some were small enough to fit on podiums; Things like books, parchments, and fragments of what once was a vase or a statuette. The student couldn't help staring agape at all the pieces of history before her. She could even see the black crystal throne of King Sombra. It had crumbled -or been destroyed- and held no ounce of his dark magic anymore. There was a jagged, fossilized changeling queen horn on a podium further down, a large assembly of golden orbs stuck on broken beams in their own spot, and many others. The mare had to focus, though. She came here for a dead or dormant artifact, not partially active or completely destroyed ones. After some time, Luster came upon exactly what she had been looking for: A tiny black statuette filled with light cracks. After verifying its magic potential, she determined that it was dead. It was perfect. Levitating it in her magic, the mare could better see its form at every angle: A flat, circular pedestal holding a shape vaguely resembling a bowed crow's head with two wings spread open to its sides. "I guess whomever made this was really just in a hurry to have a receptacle for magic." Luster chuckle. "Just a big clump of clay." She let out an involuntary yawn. Luster now had her dead artifact with a solid enough body to support her spell -she hoped- and a book with the spell she wanted to cast. "Hm. So, place the magic at these points of my horn...Twist and bend at these spots..." She rubbed her cheek. "This is a lot harder than I thought it would be." She looked at the book then back at the artifact. The castle creaked and cracked as it set in with the cold night air, tugging itself to sleep. "I should test the statuette first" The student looked back at the text. "Maybe avoid the complicated parts first," she mumbled to herself. The mare spent the next few hours trying to replicate the simplest placement in the spirals of her horn. "I think I've gotten it down." She steadied herself and placed her hooves on the floor. "I should at least be able to see if the artifact absorbs the magic this way." Luster's orange-pink magic lazily ebbed off her horn and towards the artifact, exhausting her in the process. The statuette glowed briefly, as though its thirst was not yet quenched. The mare almost collapsed from the effort and used a nearby table to prop herself up. "I shouldn't have done that while I was so tired." The sun was just barely starting to rise outside. Luster had pulled an all-nighter, and she groaned internally at the realization. "Well. It looks like it worked." She yawned and stretched herself. "I'm going to grab something to eat and then go to sleep." Luster slapped herself on the side of the head. "I can't just leave the artifact there! What if somepony sees it?! I should put it back and take it out during my experiments." Luster checked it for any extra damage and was about to pick it up, but she froze in place. The statuette's 'head' had twisted around and was staring at Luster with glowing yellow flames. It let out a shriek reminiscent of a dying bird and a dragon echoing within twisted musical instruments. "What's happening?!" she shouted. The statuette crashed onto the floor but did not break. Instead, a giant vortex baring the colors of Luster Dawn's magic form above it. Deafening like a tornado and just as destructive, as everything around it swirled and broke apart. But the pieces were cast to the side, thrown with such strength that the mighty stones of the walls were cracked and chipped. It didn't want those. It wanted the conjurer, and it had latched onto Luster Dawn. The door to the library was burst open by guards wearing golden armor. "What's going on here?!" one shouted. "Help!" Luster pleaded. The guard wasted no time on hesitation. "Quickly! Grab her with anything you can! And get Princess Twilight!" Several unicorns used their magic to hang on to their bulkier earth pony comrades as more and more guards swarmed in to save Luster Dawn from the own peril she had created. For a time, it seemed to be working. Some of the pegasi were able to cast away the more dangerous debris being thrown haphazardly in the direction of the would-be saviors, and it seemed that Luster was being pulled back to safety. "When she's out of there, I want the unicorns to form a seal around whatever th--" The guard was unable to finish that the artifact pulled much harder, dragging even the mighty earth ponies into its grasp. The noise became as deafening as an enraged hurricane destroying everything in its path. Luster's would-be saviors were unable to hold her as the pull became stronger and stronger. "Luster? Luster Dawn?!" a familiar voice cried out from the hallways. "Over here, princess!" one of the guards shouted behind clenched teeth. "Luster!" Twilight screamed with pure fear and terror. "I'm not losing any student, let alone my first!" "Princess, help me! It's pulling me in!" Twilight's eyes and horn glowed with the white and lavender radiance her magic was known for at this point, and she engulfed the guards and Luster in her grasp, gradually pulling everyone back effortlessly, but the vortex wasn't going to give up its maker without a fight. The princesses grunted. "What is this thing? It's so strong, and it's just getting stronger!" The walls started breaking and falling apart, and the windows sitting high above it all shattered and sprayed themselves in all directions. Twilight and the guards were cut by the smaller shards while the pegasi did their best to use their armor to fend off the worst shards. Unfortunately, the vortex grew once more and pulled down a portion of the wall opposite the entrance, taking some of the roof with it. Through reflex, the guards pulled back, but that loosened the grip enough that Twilight was thrown off. In but that single second, Luster was taken into the vortex. "Princess Twilight!" Luster Dawn cried out. Then the vortex closed, and Twilight did not feel horror. or disgust. Or misery. She felt determination. "That vortex was a some sort of gateway gone awry. Try and find whatever you can so I can figure out just what she did in this mess and bring her back," the princess ordered the guards. Twilight looked at damaged statuette on the floor and stiffened. "What did you do, Luster Dawn?" Luster was kicking and screaming on her way...down? Up? Left? Right? She had no way to know in this swirling stomach grinder of directions and colors, unable to reorient herself no matter how she tried. "It's okay, it's okay!" she yelled to herself. She was yoinked aggressively to the left. "It's just a small spell gone wrong. Princess Twilight will get me out of here any se-!" Luster couldn't explain the direction she just felt herself go in. It was like she was going inwards, but further than she was meant to. The roaring of contradicting shapes crashed into each other the longer Luster Dawn was trapped in the tunnel, tumbling all over the place. The mare was constantly being thrown in every direction like a rollercoaster ride, and it was making her sick. She tried to use magic to encase herself in a protective sphere, but everything she focused into her horn was sucked out and into the vortex. "No!" she cried out. But, something was appearing further away from her. It started out as a small, almost unnoticeable speck, but it quickly grew in size. "What's that?" she said. From the speck came a bright light and a loud noise, but it was nothing like the screeching and banging in the vortex. Unwillingly, the student was pulled towards it. Shapes began to take place, and the sounds became more distinguishable. "Those are...those are voices!" Luster said. "That must be the princess." She started to 'swim' towards the growing opening. "Princess Twilight, I'm here! I'm here! I'm..." The opening led to a large assortment of tall, colorful buildings, but Luster wasn't sure what she was seeing because of the speed. She kept forcing magic into her horn to keep her protected, but it wasn't working. But finally, she left that terrifying rollercoaster. At least there was that. Finally, Luster had successfully created the protective sphere she needed the moment she left the vortex, and plunged from a hole in the sky into a crowded area, knocking lots of ponies down until she was finally caught and stopped. Her barrier went down, and she had to throw her hooves to her mouth to keep herself from ejecting her innards. "I'm...so sorry. I don't know what happened." A very deep voice answered, weary and annoyed. "It's those wizards experimenting again." Thick, pokey fingers grabbed Luster by the whole of her back and placed her on her hooves. "Get up and be on your way, apprentice. We don't want to deal with your 'spells' today." "What?" Luster involuntarily let out a scream. What stood before her was not a minotaur. It was something far bulkier, with solid legs and upward-pointing spines all over its body. Even its face was not spared from the growths, but its eyes were somewhat protected by vertical eye slits and a single hole on the middle of its face serving as its airway. The creature was visibly insulted. "Why did you scream, pony?" he asked. Luster looked around at the crowd forming, but her mind couldn't make sense of anything. There was too much happening around her. "Sorry. I guess I'm just still dazed." The giant stepped back while Luster Dawn looked around. "Where am I?" "You're at Canterlot." He chuckled then walked away. "These wizards can't help themselves with their experiments halfway across the world." The student was left to her own devices, trapped in a sea of mystery on a crumbling raft. This Canterlot was not what she remembered. The streets were no longer wide enough for a single wagon to get through. The whitewashed stone blocks covered seven times that size, and the buildings lining the streets were an assembly of different styles, many the mare had never seen before. Most were made from wood and possibly mortar, with wooden beams crisscrossing and colored in a wide assortment of choices on the visual spectrum. Houses grew to three or four stories tall. Some had a protruding garden lifting over the passages below it, others had moss covering their entire front. Walking forward, the mare noticed that a majority of the buildings had open doors where people came and went. A vast assortment of sweet odors assaulted Luster's nostrils. She could clearly smell sweetened pastry freshly pulled out of the oven, unveiling its fruity contents for all to enjoy. There were even warm gusts of a thickly sweet, syrupy stench that the mare had never once smelled in her life. She drooled. "That smells delicious. I could definitely do with some peach crumble to calm my nerves." She put a hoof to her chest and sighed. Luster screeched once more and fell onto her back when a sword-like leg crashed in front of her from overhead. It belonged to yet another creature unfamiliar to her who seemed oblivious to her presence, at least until the screech. It turned back to face the student, revealing what Luster thought to be somewhat cute. Its tailless body was a flattened ovoid, topped with what the mare could only qualify as an angler fish's light rod. They emitted a cyan light revealing the very dark blue of the rest of the creature's body and the two long stripes running along its back. Its head was just as flat as the rest of it, and its eyes had a sharpened diamond shape to them. Two of the angler rods were on the top of its head, but they held more mobility than the others. They seemed more like antenna. Was this a bug? It tilted its head several times then resumed its traveling through the city. All these colorful buildings had their own assortment of designs, from spires to uneven floors jutting out from each other. More -that the mare could see- bore glowing signs upon them and image projections from an unknown source. They stood out in the darkness of the partly cloud sky, and large shadows slowly slid across the streets and building faces. Airships were floating about the sky at different altitudes, and each bore its own colors and symbols. "I hope those are pegasi and griffins tending to those ships. I don't want anymore surprises..." Luster had to dodge more and more from the amount of creatures rushing through the streets. There were so many she couldn't keep track of them. Even the Canterlot she knew, on the rare occasions she would leave the castle, was never this busy! She witnessed several ponyless wagons driving on their own. A unicorn sat in the coach's seat and wore a horn cover linked to the rest of the wagon by loose wires swinging limply in response to any bumps on the road or a slight breeze passing them by. The mare stared agape at the contraptions. Creatures were creatures, but she never witnessed such things. She wanted to know how they worked. "The Halo of Canterlot Castle is pulsing!" It came from a pegasus flying through the air. They were clearly a guard, because of their golden armor, but there was something off about it. Luster just couldn't quite put her hoof on it. "What's that sound?" She had been hearing an almost imperceptible droning in her ears that she had ignored up until now, but it was getting stronger. "Where...What. Where's the mountain?!" If the houses were extravagant enough to surprise Luster, this alleged 'Canterlot Castle' was something else entirely. It existed in place of the mountain, taking its height and width like a nail hammered from below ground to pierce the sky. Extravagant spires whose paint was stolen directly from a sunset were saturated enough to burn Luster's eyes out. "Where is the princess' star? There's just a giant sun and moon in its place. Who puts airship-sized suns and moons above a castle spire?!" She stared at the icons for a moment. "Are those...Princess Celestia's and Princess Luna's? But nopony has seen them in such a long time." The student's outrage was abated by her eyes being pulled towards the blue halo that had partly disappeared behind the engineering feat growing brighter and brighter. It pulsated, growing, then shrinking and leaving a dissipating white outline. Luster looked around to see what everypony else was doing, and all of them had lied down in the streets or were holding on to something. No one was talking anymore, leaving only silent streets. The mare didn't understand. Then, the halo thrummed loudly, projecting a shrieking sphere of light that passed over and through everything. There was nowhere to run to, and Luster's teleportation magic was hardly at a level that could get her far away in several flashes. She would exhaust herself before even finishing the first spell. With a grunt, Luster was engulfed by the expanding dome that pushed people and hanging plants away. She was briefly caught on the barrier until it finally ceded and let her through, leaving the distraught mare to watch as the 'halo' went on its way. As everyone got up, some started looking at Luster with suspicion. "She was pushed back by the dome," one said. "But then she was let back through. What's the problem? It's happened before," another responded. A blue-gray stallion with a metal prosthetic left leg pushed Luster on the shoulder. "Are you a spy of some kind? You used a hex to get through the barrier?" "A-a what? Hexes aren't real!" Luster stammered. The stallion and few others gathering around laughed. "Then how did you get through the barrier?" One of the spiky giants pulled the stallion back. Her black spikes were tipped with orange. "No need to keep pushing her for something she doesn't know about." The stallion pulled his foreleg out of her grasp. "Fine. But I'm reporting this to the guard." The giant shook her head and knelt towards Luster who pulled back in fear. "It's okay. You act like you're going to explode from fear." Luster hesitated to speak. "I...I just want to get to Canterlot Castle. I need to find Princess Twilight," Luster said. "Who?" the giant said. The mare frowned and glared at the giant. "Princess Twilight. The one who leads Equestria." Luster was stared at from the side. "I don't know if you hurt yourself or you're just scared, but I've never heard of this 'Twilight', let alone one who would rule Equestria." She stood up and pointed a massive finger towards the assembly of intricate spires in the distance. "That is Canterlot Castle, but you would need an audience first to...to..." The creature looked around but couldn't find her until she spotted the pony galloping up the light slope of the city. "Hey, wait! The guards will stop you!" Luster Dawn didn't care. She needed to find the princess. She needed to be sure that she was alright. Where exactly did she end up in? Where was Princess Twilight? Where were her parents? She absolutely needed to know. "If I can't find the princess at that castle, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but it's as good of a place to go as any," Luster told herself. "At that giant...terrifying...super tall castle." She took a loud gulp and felt her blood freeze and heart rate quicken. She came upon a large group of ponies and those other creatures clogging a four-way crossing, each merrying in drink and food and wearing a wide variety of different colored clothing and paraphernalia. Luster didn't care. She just needed to get past them, and instead of trying to ask them to move, she teleported beyond. For some reason, those that saw her do it were shocked. "What's wrong with them?' she thought to herself. "Haven't they ever seen somepony teleport before?" The mare hurried towards the castle, but a tall, angular, white wall barred the way. Nothing could jump it, and it was easily ten stories tall, but she didn't have time to wait around, regardless of the guards patrolling in front of the massive, wooden gates. "Halt!" one of them ordered. "I don't have time for you!" Luster responded. "You will not enter the inn--" Luster vanished from his view in a flash. "Where did she go?" "She's over here!" a pony at the top of the walls shouted. "She got through?!" There was a pause by the wall patrolpony. "I think she teleported," she said. "What rune did she use?" The patrolpony shrugged. The 'castle' was becoming larger and larger, and Luster was finally approaching its base. There were three other walls she had to get past, something that increasingly became both aggravating and exhausting. "I didn't train for this much teleportation," she wheezed. The closer she got to the castle, the more extravagant and wide the buildings became. Many even had artificial streams of water running out of small openings in the walls and along miniature aqueducts that would spiral down hollow paths in pillars or cubic carvings into transparent pathways underhoof. Some waterways had even been filled with coloring, and while many opted for vibrant yellows, blues, and purples, a few had chosen red. Luster felt herself twinge with unease when she saw those paths. Finally, she was near the foot of the mountain castle and was going to reach it when an outstretched wing or limb grabbed her from a space between the tremendous houses and locked her against its owner's chest. The owner was an avian-like entity with a 'finger' to his face. Several dozen guards bolted past them, including a few self-driving wagons plated in thick slabs of metal. The avian creature leaned over to the side, peering around the corners to check for any threats, and then let go of Luster Dawn who was just about to yell at him before he raised his large wing-arms, revealing the three digits at their end. "You caused quite a stir in Canterlot, pony," he said. His voice was strained and quiet as though he had been yelling for weeks on end. "Best wait here a while until they leave. Then you can go rushing towards the castle again." "Who are you?" Luster Dawn asked.