The first thing he noticed was a very harsh light. It encompassed his vision, taking over anything that he may have been looking at.
He couldn't tell if the light was on him for hours or seconds, it stopped just as suddenly as it started.
He was falling. Head first, towards something. Everything was dark around him, like space without the stars. But, he could still see his hands and clothes. He decided to look up to see where he was headed.
There was a large, multicolored pillar, very wide around; enough space that it would fit a few cars. It looked like it was some sort of mosaic, forming a picture out of colorful bits of stained glass.
He approached it rapidly, and he was soon able to make out more details. On the right side it appeared to be him, body leaned into the curve of the circle that formed the surface. His eyes were closed, and he was wearing clothes similar to what he was wearing now.
He wasn't quite able to make out what was on the left though. The rest of the space was taken up by a five-pointed star, but with no lines; each point being filled by a different colored gem. The one on the top left was a light purple, then moving around to the right, red, orange, green, and light blue. There was one gem in the center that was a darker purple, closer to lavender.
He had no idea what it all meant, or why he was on a mosaic on the top of a pillar that led into darkness. All he wanted to know was why he was flying towards it at one-thousand miles per hour.
"Brace for impact," the more sarcastic and annoying part of his subconscious thought.
Impact never came. He started to slow down, and flip over. He came to a gentle landing, feet first, on the surface on the mosaic, he was between the picture of himself, and the gems. He looked around, and took a step forward. Then another.
He realized he wasn't dead, and had a flash of joy; that was soon replaced by anxiety, because being alive meant that he could be hurt, and then die anyway. He still had no clue where he was.
He wandered around the boundaries of the pillar, pondering its meaning, but not being able to think of anything. He paced for a while, considering all his options for escape. "Well, going down is out. I'm pretty good at climbing, but there are hardly any footholds, and I'm no Ezio Auditore. There's nothing around me, so even if I somehow managed to get down, it wouldn't make any difference."
He thought along those lines for much longer, and at some point, his subconscious decided that he wasn't going anywhere, so his mind wandered to more interesting topics.
He kept pacing, and pacing, and pacing. When boredom set in, he stopped and sat down, running his hands down his face, stretching it. "What do I do n-" His thought was interrupted. Apparently, in all his pacing, he did not notice the sudden existence of a very large door, sitting over by the six gems on the mosaic. The door was elegant, a light pink in tone, with gilded spirals decorating the whole of it.
He walked over to it, half-stumbling over his feet, completely dumbfounded that he did not notice it in the first place. He slowly made his way there, and then saw his own hand reaching for the door handle, grasping it, then slowly pulling it open.
A brilliant light shone forth, causing him to squint. He almost stopped, remembering the last light that seared into his mind, but he knew he had to continue if he wanted to leave.
Halfway open. He knew that there was no turning back at this point, that his opening of the door was inevitable, so he just yanked it the rest of the way. He walked straight into the light.
He rose his arms up in a cross before his face, to shield him in any way possible, for he had no idea what would happen next.
He walked straight through, and the light began to fade, becoming less harsh every second. He began picking up on his surroundings, smelling grass, and hearing birds chirping in the wind that blew by him. He lowered his arms slowly, then opened his eyes, it was still a little too bright to see.
His eyes adjusted. He looked around in disbelief at his surroundings.
They were completely.
Utterly.
Normal.
He was standing in a patch of grass, about 10 feet wide in all directions, and he was ringed in by trees that stretched up into the sky. The sun was bright in the sky, giving everything a harsher tone, and making the leaves on the trees hard to look at, because they reflected the sunlight.
He felt a breeze stir by him, and could still hear the birds chirping far off into the trees.
His main astonishment was that he appeared to still be alive, and in one piece, no less. He had his ritual messed up that badly, and only managed to teleport somewhere else on Earth!
He raised his arms to his shoulders, and removed the backpack that he had put on before the ritual. Thankfully, it was still there, and still in one piece. He unzipped it, then reached inside, digging down farther than he should have been able to with a regular backpack. After a while of rummaging through its contents, he felt what he was searching for; a heavy book, with a torn cover.
He removed it from the pack, being very careful not to damage it on the way out. He then put it in one hand, while zipping the backpack up, and slinging it over on one shoulder with the other. He ran his hand over the mostly torn cover, still bearing some of its original cyan coloring. He cracked it open to a random page near the center, then began turning them back, looking for the section he wanted.
"Alright, I obviously just got teleported somewhere in the world; nothing a 'return home' spell shouldn't fix." He began to set it up when he found the right page. The spell was simple, a circle drawn on the ground, and a few words read from the book.
He set the book on the ground, and grabbed his backpack off his shoulder. He unzipped one of the front pockets, and looked through its contents. "Scissors, no. Duct tape, useful, but no. Ah, here it is." He produced a canister of white spray paint.
He shook the can up, then popped the lid off and sprayed a medium-sized circle on the ground. He put the lid back on the canister, and then returned it to its pocket on the front of the backpack. He zipped it up, then slung it across his back again.
He sat down on the grass, cross-legged. He picked up the book in front of him and read through the procedure of the spell. It was one of your classic, run-of-the-mill spells; one that had a predetermined statement, plus a fill-in-the-blank in the middle. In this case, it was "wizard speak" for returning home, and a bunch of similar statements, the fill-in was where "home" was.
He stretched his mind out first, feeling for the ever-present leylines of mana that fueled all magic.
His mind came to a complete halt. The leylines were there alright, but what froze him was that they were in different places then where he was used to. As part of his training, he had to learn that leylines crossed all over the planet in the same patterns. The patterns that he was sensing did not belong to Earth.
He felt like his world got flipped upside-down. Well, not literally, because he was on a world that isn't his.
He felt blind fury right after that. He shoved his book back into his backpack, and closed it forcefully.
Then he lost it.
He started screaming at the sky, directing his rage towards his cat, who was, "too stupid to understand that lights are not food," and things such as that. His rant continued for a few more minutes. Completely incomprehensible to himself and anyone who was there to listen to it. Which, coincidentally, there was.
At the end of his rant his just stood there, panting. His legs were spread slightly, his knees were bent, and his arms were lowered, level at his waist with his palms facing out and fingers curved. A basic mage fighting stance.
He was like that for a few more seconds, when he heard a small squeak from behind him. He immediately perked up, and slowly turned his body to face the source of the noise.
His mind nearly exploded at what was before him. Eight somehow surprised-looking horses, all staring at him in bewilderment. What blew his mind even further was that two seemed to be wearing jewelry, two had wings, and two more had horns. The ones with the jewelry had both wings and horns.
"What. The. Hell."
Twilight, the princesses, and the rest of her closest friends galloped as fast as they could. Getting ever closer to the area that Celestia said the magical spike originated from. She dodged past a tree, and pushed a low-hanging branch back with her magic. There was a clump of vines obscuring the next part of the forest from their view. Twilight stopped for a moment to charge up some mana to move the heavy vines out of the way.
With them out of the way, they pressed on in silence. Minutes passed, and the suspense increased. The running gave the eight ponies time to think about what they would face at the end of the trail.
But Celestia and Luna both thought back to the last time a foreign species landed on Equestria.
The memory spun through the minds of the princesses, causing them to slow down for a moment. They remembered how confident they were back then, believing they were invincible, heading off into danger without a second thought. "How foolish of us." Luna thought, "believing that we could challenge anypony and anything on the planet. That marked a day in our journey that I never forgot. The day I learned of what it felt like to be mortal."
Celestia merely shook her head and continued on, knowing that they had both grown from that experience, and knowing that they would prevail this time, no matter what the cost.
"What the hay is that noise?" Applejack asked. As they progressed through the forest, They had begun to hear a screaming noise, coming from a few yards ahead.
"I'm not sure, Applejack, but I have a feeling we're about to find out." Twilight replied, sounding more confident than she felt.
They continued on at a slower pace, crawling through the undergrowth, rather than trampling over it. The noises continued, and they began to make out words between the screams.
"Something about a cat...?" Rainbow Dash trailed off, attempting to interpret the words.
Hearing the words put them all at ease slightly bit, now suspecting the screaming thing to be a pony that just got lost while camping.
They walked toward a clearing in the trees, a small break in the otherwise secluded forest.
"Excuse me, but-" was all Twilight could get out before her speech was cut off by a squeak that had risen from her throat. What they saw before them was not a pony, as they had not suspected.
It was some sort of bipedal creature, with an odd looking pack strapped on to it. It had zippers all across it and tons of string tying it together unnecessarily. Its back seemed to be turned to them, and its top was bent halfway over, limbs low at its sides. It had things attached at the ends of its forearms that Twilight knew from her studies to be hands, with fingers at the ends.
Its upper body was covered in green cloth that cut off at the tops of its forearms. Its legs were clad in a coarse-looking material, light blue in its pigmentation. A simple and crude brown belt was barely visible around its waist, a knife and sheath was strapped around its upper leg. Its legs ended in black flat ovular things and Twilight could only guess at their purpose.
Its flesh was visible in some places, a pinkish/orange-y tone that was similar on its hands and up its arms. The back of its neck was showing, partially covered by the green cloth. It too was light in color, like the rest of its exposed flesh. Its mane was colored light brown, standing out in stark contrast with the rest of its body. It was short, cut close to the top of its head, and it seemed to spike a bit in the front.
It picked up on Twilight's squeak, and began to turn, slowly. The ponies gathered their breath and their courage, steeling themselves for what its face would be like.
Actually, it wasn't that bad. It had features similar to that of any pony. Aside from the total shock that his, she decided it was male, face betrayed at that moment. He had slight stubble around his snout, and she guessed he was still young.
"What."
He didn't know what to think. In fact, he didn't think at all. They weren't like any monsters he had ever encountered before. The clearing was completely silent, even the sounds of the forest around him ceased. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop even if it was into the grass, where it would make hardly any noise.
The two groups just stared each other down, neither party knowing what to say first.
Now that he had calmed down - as much as he could with a bunch of semi-mythical creatures in front of him - he could analyze them a bit better. There were two taller ones on the far left, wearing regalia and bearing both wings and horns. Then, moving to the right, were two unicorns and two regular horses, with pegasi hovering in the air between the four of them. The tallest one had a white coat, and the one next to it was dark blue; their mane's were both floating in a non-existent breeze The first unicorn had a purple coat, and the second had a white coat; like the tall one. The regular horses were colored orange and pink, and the pegasi were yellow and cyan.
He had no idea why they were all multicolored in pastel, or why the two tall ones had flying manes, but he did know that they were sentient. He could see that spark of intelligence in their eyes, even from the long distance he was away from them. He knew that they were there to meet him, that it was no accident that they ran into him. He was sure of it.
He began to move, simply. He took his arm and dragged it through the air until it was resting behind him slightly. The sudden, but slow move caused each of the horses to jump at the same time, obviously scared if he was going to make a move.
He stretched his mind out, briefly. He wanted to quickly familiarize himself with their positions and then test the minds of those in front of him. He drew mana out of the lines fast, not wanting to keep his mind open for any longer than he needed to. He stretched out further, heading towards the sparks that represented the minds of the eight horses. The two on the left grew the brightest, along with the purple one, but that was just barely smaller.
He knew from experience that that meant that the three of them were of greater intelligence, and possibly aligned in the arcane arts, just as he was. His consciousness grew closer. It touched the whole group at the same time. The two on the left flinched, acknowledging his presence. The rest made no move, not realizing that their minds were just touched by an alien presence.
He now gathered that the two on the left were definitely experienced in the arts, and possessed extremely large mana reserves. That was bad. He would have to pacify them if he wanted to make it out of there. At least they seemed to be just as surprised of him than he was of them. He could use that.
The whole process took about ten seconds.
He began to charge up mana in his right hand, behind his back, encasing it in a purple glow that stretched only to his wrist. He prepared a simple spell, one used primarily for distractions. It would cause a bright flare to be conjured; it would shoot up into the air, then whistle and explode. It was one of the first spells a magician would learn, a Firework Spell.
He brought his other hand behind his back and charged up mana in that one too. Its aura colored his hand orange, this being a spell from a different school of magic. It was a Basic Stun Spell, one used to pacify aggressors and put them into a deep slumber for about ten minutes. It would serve well, hopefully.
He raised his right arm up and launched the Firework. It screamed up into the air and exploded, distracting all but the two larger horses on the left. He was right, they wouldn't go down easy.
His other hand was up almost immediately and firing the stun spell at the larger ones. He was close enough to see their horns glow, one in gold, and the other in dark blue; then the spell was deflected straight up. The orange bolt spiraled past the fading Firework, thus bringing the attention of the six previously distracted ponies back to the situation at hand.
"Why did I think that would work?" He had underestimated them by a bit.
The white one lowered its face towards the ground and its horn glowed brighter. Faster than he could say, "Oh, shit," an invisible wave of force tore up the ground in front of it and barreled right into him. The blow knocked the wind out of him, and he was thrown back to the edge of the clearing. He rolled backwards and sprang back up, automatically lowering his body into the mage's fighting stance.
The blue one immediately followed up with a deep blue bolt of pure mana. It shot at him at a moderately fast speed; not faster that a bullet, but fast enough that he wouldn't be able to dodge it. He brought up a shield, the strongest one he could muster in the short time he had. Cyan mana swirled and hardened in the area in front of him, and he brought his elbows up in a defensive position.
The bolt struck, and his shield shattered almost instantly, sending crystalline shards of solid magic flying everywhere.
The force from the blow launched him backwards, clothes smoldering in some places. His back struck a thin tree and it snapped in half from his weight. He fought through the pain plaguing his spine and got to his feet.
He was up just in time to see another bolt headed right for him.
He recalled a lesson taught to him by his mentor, "What you cannot absorb, you deflect."
Quickly, he brought up a thin shield, but this time he angled it to the side. As he expected, the bolt shot off the side and flew into the forest. It shattered- not just broke, shattered- three trees in a row before dissipating into nothing. He looked back to the two powerful ones to see that they have moved in front of the other horses in fighting stances. It looked like it would be a fight just between them.
He charged up some mana in his left hand and brought it close to his midsection. He looked down to see it glowing a slight orange. This was a sight he was familiar with, as it was one of his favorite spells; even if the idea was stolen from his favorite video game.
He raised his hand up and aimed it at the two horses, then he splayed his fingers out and released the pent up energy. The spell rumbled across the ground, moving too quickly for the eyes to follow. Several pebbles and chunks of dirt raised up into the air as the spell shot along the earth. It reached his attackers almost immediately, and lifted them up into the air.
As they went up, surprised looks on their faces, he charged his Stun Spell again, and fired two shots off quickly. The two saw it coming and the bolts were absorbed in a cloud of mana.
The effect wore off, and they fell back down to the ground. But he already had his next move prepared. His hand glowed green, and mana was coursing through them. A bit of it crackled through the air on a random discharge. When he felt he had gathered enough, he slammed his hands down on the ground. In response, pillars of earth raised them up into the sky. They were cut into neat squares, and each one was elevated at a different height. He put himself on the highest, and his aggressors on the lowest, on the other end.
They grimaced, and looked at each other, no doubt trying to plot out their next move. But, he didn't plan on letting them.
Breathing slightly hard from the epic discharge of mana, he brought even more in and prepared a conjuration spell. His knife wouldn't cut it; it was too lethal. So, he chose the next best thing; a giant warhammer.
The behemoth of a weapon materialized in his hands, ready for action. Since it was his conjuration, it didn't quite follow the rules of the universe. He estimated that it weighed only half of what it should normally, thus allowing him to carry it around without much trouble.
He used a terraforming spell to carve out a slope in his newly made battlefield. It slanted downward at a steep angle, aiming right for his opponents. He cast a quick spell to freeze the surface of the stone, then jumped forward and slid along the ice. He reared his hammer back and readied to deliver a massive blow.
He reached the two, and they braced, shimmering mana shields materializing quickly before them. He swung.
The hammer whistled through the air and crashed straight through the construct. It shattered like glass and fell to the ground in shards before evaporating into the air.
He looked at his quarry. They were both slightly dazed, stunned by the magical backlash that comes with having a construct shattered. He took his hammer back, lined it up like he was hitting a baseball off a tee, then swung away.
He hit the white one first, in its chest, and sent it smashing into the blue one. They both flew off the battlefield and crashed to the ground. It wasn't a pacifying blow, but it had enough force to let them know that he meant business.
He lowered the marble pillars back into the ground and walked off smoothly.
He stood next to the horses, each getting up slowly, and waited for them to get their hooves back under them. After about ten seconds, they were both up and ready again.
He ran back over to the opposite side of the clearing, turned to face them, and bowed. They, looking slightly confused returned the action. As their heads came back up, looks of recognition appeared on their faces. "Of course they would know the rituals in place for beginning magic duels; its universal. I can't believe we didn't do this at the start."
With the proper actions done, they began once again.
He popped off a shot of fire to the blue one. The attack was swatted to the side by a haze of indigo along with a look of confidence. Or was it arrogance? "That could be useful," he thought.
He tried again, but with the white one. Same results, but the confident look was not present.
His hands glowed green, and he raised them chest level, palms facing the ground. As they went up, so did several chunks of earth. They broke off in jagged shapes,suspended in the air. He activated the mana, and surprised the two attackers with a few pebbles to the face.
He grinned. They didn't. The earth dropped back to its original place in the ground.
The blue one shot a nod to the white one, which was returned a moment afterward. Then, the blue one took off into the air, and he lost sight of it almost immediately. The other stayed on the ground, head down in a battle stance.
It shot off two small bursts of energy, then a larger third. It was an attack pattern he was used to dealing with when fighting other magic users. He ducked the first one, deflected the second one with a hastily made shield, and the third's impact was absorbed by a pillar of earth that he raised in front of him.
Chunks of it blew away off the sides when it hit, and he was able to feel the heat of the energy from where he stood. When the attack ended, he kicked forward into the pillar, or what was left of it, and sent it sliding forward.
He rolled to the left to see how the white one would react. Unsurprisingly, the horse jumped left also and landed gracefully. He frowned at his attack's ineffectiveness.
Just then, he was struck in the back by a bolt from the blue. A bolt from the blue horse, that is. He stumbled forward a bit, and he could smell his shirt smoking a bit from the energy of the attack. It wasn't one meant to incapacitate, that was clear.
He looked up and registered it fly by out the corner of his eye. "I forgot about that one. Sloppy."
He got into his battle stance, determined not to be caught off-guard again.
He let off a quick burst of energy at the white one, it was deflected. It then followed suit, launching a similar attack at him. Just as it did to his attack, he deflected it to the side.
Eventually, the two were locked in a quick give-and-receive magic duel, neither of them gaining the upper hand. He closed his eyes for a moment, and let his mind slip into the world below. He saw the energy signatures of himself and the white one, along with the mana they were exchanging back and forth. "Where are you?" he thought with an audible growl.
A blue flash appeared behind him towards his left, approaching him quickly. He raised a shield in the trajectory of the attack with a quick flick of the wrist. He didn't even turn around.
The battle never stopped. It went on for either minutes, or hours. The passage of time was nothing to the mage, just the receiving and returning of attacks. But, to his attackers' credit, it never let up. The fight was never boring, like some others he had dueled. His enemies did a good job keeping him on his toes at all times.
Then, the blue bolts stopped coming in. He was confused for a moment by the cease-fire, but it was the feeling was immediately waved away when the dark cloud of energy came rushing for him. It was going for a melee attack.
He made the most of his prediction by making an arm go full circle from his back to the ground in front of him, the earth behind him following the motion. He sensed the cloud glance off his dome. It wasn't a direct hit, nor was it meant to be, but the effects were immediate.
He brought his mind back to the surface and let the earth slide back into its previous position. He looked up to see the blue one spin out in midair and crash into the ground beside its counterpart. When the dust settled, he saw that it had hit its wing on the side of his dome, damaging it. It wasn't a full broken bone, and he was oddly relieved by that, but it was enough to keep it grounded for the rest of the fight.
The battle paused. The two sides waited, breaths coming in short pants, for the blue one to get up. When it finally did, they resumed.
All the mana discharge was taking its toll on him. Expending too much mana in one sitting was... unhealthy to say the least. The "friction" of expending all that magic could cause a person to burn up, literally. In other words, he didn't have too much fight left in him. If the battle kept the pace that it was at, then the horses would be the least of his problems.
He gathered up and stored as much mana as he could for the moment, then focused it in his hands and the balls of his feet. His opponents were preparing themselves for an attack, choosing to wait for a counterattack option, no doubt. They were smart, but there was no way they could foresee his next move.
When the sufficient magic energy was gathered for his next moves, he struck.
He turned and performed a leg sweep, simultaneously forming a spell out of the mana stored there. It rumbled across the field, and the two didn't have time to dodge again. They both floated up into the air.
He ran forward, crossing half of the distance of the field in a few strides. He used the rest of the magic in his feet to launch himself a few extra feet in the air upon jumping. He activated it and flew upward.
In midair, he conjured a ghostly electric scythe using the mana stored in his hands. It had the ability to expand, and he swung it down low and caught his attackers in the crook of it. He brought them eye-level with himself and allowed a smirk to grace his lips.
He took the lightning scythe's energy and squeezed it into a ball that he held between his hands. He used a moment to pump the spell with as much mana as he could manage without burning up. He had finally reached his limit.
When it was full to bursting, he pushed his arms out, and the ball expanded into a sphere that encased the two of them. He then used seismic energy to bring them in a circle around his whole body once, and then hurl them straight at the ground.
He could barely see a shield form before they flew into the ground at breakneck speed.
Panting hard, he lowered himself to the ground slowly, the effects of his jump spell wearing off. His limits were reached, and nearly broken, but he did it. The dust still hadn't settled, but he detected no movement from within the crater.
He laughed once or twice, chuckling off the now-excess adrenaline. Green sparks of mana crackled gently around him, the extra energy being released into the atmosphere. Now all he had to do was run and find a place to lay low before he found a way home.
In all the fighting, he did not notice that the six other ponies had circled behind him, and had donned brightly colored necklaces, with a gem in the center of each one. He landed back on the ground, not noticing the "lightshow" going on behind him.
The gems glowed brightly, and they all combined together to make a rainbow that shot into the air, then cascaded down toward him. He turned around at the last second, and looked at them, and then it.
"Well, shit."
The rainbow crashed down into him, and all he could see were the colors of the rainbow.