Shadow Fire stepped out of the mirror and into the castle library. The Alicorn surveyed the mounds of books tossed haphazardly around the room. His jet black coat gleamed in the ethereal blue glow cast by his flame like mane. He stretched wings that seemed more draconic than avian, the membrane replaced by the same blue ethereal flames of his mane and tail. He nudged a book out of the way with a hoof, the golden chains around them clinking quietly. There was a matching chain wrapped loosely around his neck. His attention was drawn back to the mirror by the sound of hooves hitting the floor.
A unicorn stepped out of the mirror and braced himself against a stack of books. His body seemed to be made more of magic than flesh, his skeleton visible beneath a layer of purple energy. He wore a red greatcoat, well fitted to his pony form.
"Are you okay Gaster?" Shadow Fire asked his friend, only mild concern evident in his voice.
"I realize that you explained that this would happen, but it does not change how jarring of a transition it is." The unicorn replied in a strained voice.
They both turned as a third pony stumbled from the portal and landed in a heap on the floor. The pegasus was primarily pastel orange with a green mane and green highlights on the inner portions of her avian wings. She stood up shakily, the hood of her orange jacket falling loosely over one shoulder.
"Are you alright Leyna?" Gaster asked as he helped her to steady herself.
"I don't think I will ever get used to that feeling." She groaned as she leaned against the unicorn. "I think I'm gonna hurl."
"Do not worry about it too much child. Interdimensional travel is not easy to get used to." Gaster said with a sigh. "Even I was shaken by this journey."
Shadow Fire wasn't listening as he explored the room, poking through books and looking through various instruments laying strewn around the room. His brow furrowed as he looked at the mess. Books had been damaged and instruments broken. What he had originally assumed was just another of Twilight Sparkle's book organizing sprees was appearing to be less and less of a simple cleaning.
"Something doesn't feel right." Shadow Fire said to his companions.
The two of them looked at him quizzically. "Whatever do you mean Shadow Fire?" Gaster asked the Alicorn.
"I mean that this place shouldn't be a mess like this. Neither Twilight nor Starlight would needlessly destroy the books here." He replied. "I'm going to take a look around. Let's stay in the castle for now."
"Well so much for a peaceful world" Leyna grumbled as she stretched her new wings.
Shadow Fire left the library and began walking the empty halls of the castle. With each room he checked, his worry began to grow. Even after finding the bedrooms that he assumed were for Starlight and Trixie, he found nothing. Nopony was here, despite it being late at night. A fact made evident by the moon visible in the sky through one of the castle's many windows. Most of the rooms appeared to be in similar states of disarray to the library.
He was about to give up his search, when a faint pulsating light caught his attention. He rounded the corner to find the open doors of the Friendship council room. The doors had been blasted almost entirely off of their hinges by a magical attack, evidenced by the scorch across the floor. Shadow stepped gingerly into the room. He felt a sinking feeling in his gut as he approached the crystal table that had held the Friendship map.
Shadow Fire had convinced his companions to come here after spending several years watching Equestria and its people from the space between worlds. He had believed this a peaceful place, somewhere to find sanctuary from the things that plagued him and his friends in their worlds.
Shadow Fire put a hoof on the table. It had a large fracture running down the center of the table. The object seemed inert, lifeless. He was about to turn and leave when the map flickered into view. It was unfocused and parts of it were unreadable due to the damage to the table. Shadow Fire leaned over the map as cutie marks momentarily appeared, glitched, and vanished all across the map. The map began moving spastically like a failing hologram before managing to focus on Canterlot. He felt a strange warmth from his cutie mark, a black horned draconic skull with glowing orange eyes set over a blue flame, as a dull glow pulsated out from it. His mark was hovering over the map as well as two others: one a silvery lightning bolt outlined in black and a Gaster Blaster set over a book with six finger bones wrapping around it. These were the marks of his friends. He tilted his head slightly to one side; was the table calling them?
"Shadow Fire, what is going on?" Gaster poked his head through the door of the council room, looking around at the mess within. "We were looking around when the markings on our flanks began to pulsate. From my limited understanding, that is not a normal thing for them to do."
Shadow's brow furrowed as he turned his back to the now fading map. "No it's not. I don't know why, but the map is summoning us to Canterlot. I didn't even think that this would be possible for outsiders like us." The map faded completely from view as he said this.
Shadow left the council room, his mind jumping erratically from possibility to possibility as he tried to think of what might have happened. Gaster followed him wordlessly.
Leyna joined them as they got to the entrance, having found nothing of use on her search. "I don't know what happened here, but I tried the mirror again and it wouldn't let me through." She reported to her two companions as she saw them.
"Somehow I don't think we will be able to leave here for the time being." Shadow said grimly. "We might as well try and find out what happened and if there is anyone still here."
"Good news is there are still rats, I saw a couple on the way here." Leyna commented. "So at the very least we didn't end up on a dead world"
The other two ignored her comment and walked up to the big double doors. Shadow paused a moment before speaking.
"There is a school and a town near this castle. We should check them out and see if anyone is there." Without waiting for an answer he pushed through the doors.
The first thing he saw was the school, or what was left of it. To say it had been destroyed was a gross understatement. The outlying buildings had been reduced to their foundations, with only the occasional corner still standing. The main building hadn't fared much better, with only the innermost portions of the structure still standing. The entire ruin was blackened as if someone had attempted to burn down the mostly stone structure. Upon closer inspection he noticed many of the stones had, in fact, partially melted under the heat of whatever had destroyed the school.
Shadow Fire felt the unease in the pit of his stomach grow even heavier. He turned from the ruined school and broke into a gallop in the direction of Ponyville. It didn't take long for him to spot the ruins of the town in the dim moonlight. Houses had been reduced to piles of ashy rubble, some almost entirely destroyed. He tripped over something in the darkness, falling hard, and pushed himself up with a groan. Looking back at what he had tripped over, he recoiled in surprise and disgust as a mostly blackened skull of pony leered up at him from the ground. Tufts of scorched fur clung to the body of the dead pony as Shadow took a step back. He had seen death before, he had watched massacres and murders play out. He had even killed many of them himself, but this was not something he was prepared to see in this world.
His attention was pulled from the corpse by the sound of galloping hooves. Leyna and Gaster caught up with him and stared at the scorched corpse at his feet.
"Well, at least whatever killed it isn't still here by the looks of things." Leyna said with a sigh. "Isn't it just our luck? We're stuck in the middle of some sort of war. Either that or it was one hell of an experiment gone wrong."
"What happened here is in the past now. The Tree of Harmony seems to believe that the survivors need us. We have to go to Canterlot." Shadow said. He wasn't sure what they would find there, but he was sure it wouldn't be the peace he had come here in search of. "We can follow the train tracks. Something tells me we are going to have to walk there."
The other two nodded and they made their way through the town. Scorched corpses littered the streets and hung from the remains of windows throughout the town. Shadow Fire's sense of quickly changed to one of dread. What had happened to this seemingly peaceful world?