Gathered friends,
I wish to welcome you to this, the newest volume of our collected tails. This is the fourth, and indeed, the greatest of all the works I have assembled and labored to bring to you all, as the world deserves to know the truth of the Great Calamity that occurred all those years ago. And it falls to me to tell this tale, being the only one still alive of the heroes who fought that day to save the world from the darkness.
I suppose it is only fair that we begin at the start of the tale, and for this I shall return you to the place where these tales all began. On a small island off the Coast of America lay a small town. In this small town, lay a small house, split into two flats by the owner who leased both bits out to different tenants. Within this small house lay a series of rooms, occupied by the one of whom I write today.
This man's name was James Thomas Hook, who was normally referred to by the shorthand of Jimmy for reasons best known to himself. If one were to enter the room in which he made his rest and worked for much of the day, one would have seen a series of mannequins on the edges of the room next to the back wall. One of them was human shaped, and had a magnificent blue dress sat upon it with a voluminous skirt so wide it took up much of the corner.
But the other two were of more interest. Both of these mannequins were shaped like horses, and one even had wings applied. The first of these had a white headdress positioned atop the head of the mannequin, and the body had a white, see through dress of a design familiar to anybody who had lived and worked in hot parts of the world. The light green necklace around the neck did little to dispel this notion of a being from Egypt were it not for the shape clearly being designed for the shape and form of a pony- a pegasus pony, admittedly, but a nonetheless.
The other mannequin was of a similar design, but the clothing that sat upon it was not. Instead of anything resembling that, it had a golden necklace sat around the neck, with several fabric bands around the head and ears. A bracelet, cast in bronze, sat upon the left foreleg, and some fabric around the upper chest too. Most notable of all was a green skirt with a cream band around the bottom, which extended over the faux tail attached to the mannequin toward the floor.
Both of these displays were reminders of past journeys, for they were the garments of Somnambula and Mage Meadowbrook, two of the greatest heroes that the world has ever known. The former had been seen more than a year before these events I recall, having faced down the mighty Sphinx in the California desert. The latter had been sent into the deepest swamps of Louisiana, and emerged alive and well on her long journey back north to civilization in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
But let us turn our attention to Jimmy once more. Right now, oblivious to the presence of anybody else, he was reading about a recent discovery made in China of an ancient relic. A relic that threatened to change everything that had been ever known about China in the Liao Period.
The artifact in question was a flower, an impossibly ancient one that had been dated to the 11th Century, along with the inscriptions in the walls of the tomb in which it had been found. The inscriptions told of the story of a mighty sorceress, beloved by all for her kindness and incredible beauty. But when darkness fell upon the land and an evil warlord attempted to destroy her village, the sorceress sacrificed herself to defeat him and drive evil away from her home.
But the legend didn't end there. The sorceress had transferred a small fragment of her life essence into this flower, meaning that a piece of her lived on. This flower had been just found, in perfect condition despite being over 1,000 years old, as well as the embalmed remains of the sorceress. This was what had stunned the archeologists who found the remains.
The embalmed body was of a horse.
Jimmy looked back over his shoulder to the two sets of garments sitting there, and looked at the article again. "Looks like Equestria has been connected to our world for longer than we thought," he said. He had head a report of a pony with a giant beard being sighted in Vancouver, but had dismissed this as mere rumor. After all, he was the only shapeshifter apart from his small circle of friends, and they hadn't reported anything.
He was so intent on looking at the article, he didn't notice when it began to cloud over. The cloud levels increased in magnitude as he sat there, still looking intently at that flower on the screen. It eventually became so dark that he finally took notice of what was happening.
"What the?" he asked. "Where is this cloud coming from?"
Indeed, the cloud levels were so great now that the world was covered in a blanket of darkness, with thunder and lightning roaring outside.
"There's no storms forecast for today! How did this get he-"
A voice boomed outside, laughing loudly. "At last! I've got the final one!"
Jimmy had no time to ask who the voice belonged too before a black cloud appeared in his room and zapped him up. Moments later, he found himself falling down a black tunnel made entirely of cloud.
"SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"
Lightning and storms shot past him as he continued to fall. Or was he climbing? There was no real sense of gravity in this place, which seemed to ignore the laws of physics in all senses of the word. Clouds and fire flashed onwards as his speed only seemed to increase with every passing second.
At long last, his speed seemed to slow, and he was spat out into a small courtyard. He got up from his feet, only to see the area still shrouded in fog and smoke. It was also very, very cold. "Hello?" he called. "Is anybody there?"
The area was completely empty. There was no trace of anybody, anywhere. Was this an abandoned place? He had absolutely no idea where in the world he was as he rubbed his arms up and down to try and generate some heat.
"HELLO! IS SOMEBODY OUT THERE! PLEASE ANSWER ME!"
Almost in response to his words, a fire suddenly started up in the distance. Jimmy wandered out of the industrial estate and towards the light, crossing over a snow drenched road and into what looked like a car park in front of a very shoddily built hotel made entirely of portable office buildings. As he closed in, the notice became readable. "Prudhoe Bay Hotel, Deadhorse, Ala..."
His heart skipped a beat. "How the fuck did I end up in Alaska?"
His attention was then drawn to the fire, and he sat down in front of it. It was then he saw a flower. It was in a grey pot, with green petals and a green stalk. The head of the flower was pink, with the inner parts being purple, and the center being red, with a white center to that and a white border.
"What the?" Jimmy asked, as he got closer. "That's the flower that was in the news article. What's it doing here, in sub zero temperatures?"
Suddenly, strange ethereal energies flowed off the flower, and floated in his general direction. The energies surrounded him, lifting him up high (though the fog still hung around), and a voice hung on the wind.
"One of suitable stock and noble build. He can continue the work I started, and stop the Evil One."
Jimmy had no chance to process what this meant as his entire body was consumed by raging agony.
The storm only seemed to intensify, the wind howling louder and louder as much of Jimmy's clothing was torn away. His shirt, however, was not the collar shifting downwards as a bow pattern appeared on the front. The sleeves shortened in length, becoming extremely short, and a belt like object attached itself to the bottom of the shirt, with a dark blue ribbon and light blue fabric panel on top of that.
The collar pattern and bow turned a light blue, with the rest of the shirt turning a dark blue, and the fabric under the belt turned an even darker blue. The fabric underneath the ribbon turned a light grey. Jimmy had little chance to process his change in attire following another energy surge. He screamed as his entire frame was compressed in length to a fraction of its former dimensions and untold amounts of muscle and fat sloughed off him, followed by his hips starting to ache.
"No! Not thaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"
His former manhood was pulled into him, followed by a loud crack as his hip bones broke and reshaped to a wider stance, with the equivalent mare bits appearing behind. A tail popped out of her rear, a long, flowing, green mass as her legs snapped into a backwards stance.
Every bone in her feet shattered as they were compressed in length, becoming nothing more than messy stumps attached to the bottom of her legs. Hooves, maybe?
Her arms snapped into a backwards stance, with the discarded and breaking bone fragments causing Jimmy unspeakable agony. Her fingers were soon sucked into her hands, resulting in another pair of stumps.
Her neck began to randomly elongate, moving her point of vision higher and higher up like a giraffe as her hair came flying out in the gale.
"Whomever created this thing is a real sadist!"
The bones in her face shattered and broke apart before her mouth and nose stretched forward on her face, eventually merging into one another to form a pony muzzle. Another item then met its fate; a pair of red glasses fell off and were sucked into the storm. Her eyes grew in size and turned azure blue, followed by her ears vanishing into her skull and then regrowing on top. But these weren't normal pony ears. They looked more like rabbit ears.
A curved horn emerged from her forehead as a green mane erupted from her head, curving upwards atop the top of her head and then flowing backwards, giving her a very prominent fringe. Pink fur grew all over her body, the colour gradient down her legs lightening until the fur was basically white when it reached her hooves.
A symbol which looked like a cloud appeared on her flanks as the storm died down, and she was lowered back down to the ground. She looked about in confusion. "What- where is this? Hello? Is anypony there?"
Fortuitously, there was a puddle formed by some melting ice, so she trotted over to it and took a look in the puddle.
As she looked in the water at whatever this being was, a bolt of blue energy came once more from the flower, wrapping itself around her and feeding into her memory. She knew her name and her origin, but nothing else.
"I wish I could shake this headache," she groaned. She then lit her horn and decided to try a teleportation spell.
Nothing happened.
"What?" she asked. "Something's wrong with my magic!"
She tried casting a number of different spells, which ranged from trying to grow plants to even basic telekinesis and levitation. She was only able to use her telekinetic spells, although lifting anything heavier than a car proved to be exhausting.
She quickly checked her repository. Magic communications might have still been working, so she decided giving that a go was worth a try. She lit her horn, and suddenly a menu appeared in front of her.
YOU HAVE MAIL! said the display. Mistmane reached up with her hoof and touched the button, and moments later the message appeared before her.
The first thing to appear was a symbol of two wreaths held in place by a pegasus at the top, wings outstretched, with the letters IPNV in the center.
"Imperium Nubes Vallis," Mistmane whispered. "The seal of the Cloudsdale Empire."
The seal dropped away, to reveal the face of Flash Magnus, one of her friends. He had his helmet off, clearly revealing his face, and his skin was covered in scars. His fur was matted with dried blood, presumably his own, and he coughed repeatedly as he spoke.
There was just one problem. Mistmane couldn't understand what he was saying.
The transmission ended, with Mistmane only having understood select words, and then faded out. "Flash Magnus in trouble!" she said. "I have to find him! But I have no idea where I am, or where he is!"
She turned around, to see the flower still there. She gently levitated it up and looked closely.
"I suppose I should bring you with me, shouldn't I?" she said, and putting it away safely set off into a raging blizzard.
Little did she realize that a shadowy figure was watching her. "I'd better relay this to the Colonel," he said. "He won't be happy."