Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto


Journey Through the Dark - Part 1

"Are you sure about this?" asked Celestia, watching Twilight place the tooth on the sandy ground in front of her.
"I doubt I'm ever sure of anything these days," Twilight replied. "But it's the best choice, from my point of view, and I can't afford to look uncertain when it's up to me to decide."
Celestia almost opened her mouth, then changed her mind. She straightened, and stepped back slightly.
Twilight stepped away from the tooth, then cast her spell on it. "If you don't hear anything within twelve hours, close it," she said, begging to walk towards the portal.
Celestia again opened her mouth. "I wish you..." She realised Twilight would be on the other side before she could finish that sentence. "Safe travels," she said instead.
Twilight gave one brief look of acknowledgement in her direction as she was stepping through, then she stopped being there.
Celestia fought for a good five minutes against her impulse to follow behind Twilight. Not a fight she could win, but one she could stall long enough for her common sense and logic to put an end to it by acknowledging Twilight would by then be too distant for following her to be reasonable. Once that had passed, she turned and walked away, towards the other portal, the only other note of something different in the boundless desert. Then she was gone too, then so was the portal she'd stepped through, leaving only the one Twilight had used.


Twilight had chosen to fully forgo any kind of defensive spell, and fully focus on camouflage. She knew the world beyond the portal was perfectly habitable, so it was the most reasonable thing. The portal's exit being in the middle of the forest helped with hiding it, and though that would make it harder for her to enter the castle it was far more important to make sure that it was not found. The odds of her making it back to it even if she was found out were far higher than those of her managing to safely get back to Equestria if an ambush was placed along the way.
Once she'd cast every spell in her mental list to ensure no one else could spot the portal or herself, and double-checked it all, she finally began to make her way towards the castle.
It wasn't hard to spot it, not with it towering over everything else in the area. She could have reasonably flown in past the walls, but she doubted it was a safe approach to things. And it wouldn't lead her any closer to where she meant to go.
She was familiar enough with the castle in her world, from books and actual visits, to know both how similar and how different the one she would be infiltrating was. The general structure was the same, even down to the halls and corridors, but the laboratories she was interested in definitely weren't there in her Equestria. The good news was, knowing what she knew still meant having a pretty good idea of where things could be reasonably added. She just had to hope not to set off any alarms.