Finally, Twilight managed to excuse herself from her family and went to bed. It had been the most confusing day she could remember, and she remembered far too many days for a foal of her age. This morning she had woken up as a unicorn foal, now not only was she an alicorn, but she was daily sure she’d been crowned as the princess of Equestria, or perhaps would be? Knowing events that had yet to occur, events that should have occurred but didn’t, and some things that she was sure happened but couldn’t have happened, was giving her the mother of all headaches. Oh, and she was an alicorn, years before her first ascension, had she already tried to process that? Flopping down on the pillow, the last thing Twilight thought was that this would be a problem for tomorrow, sleep was a solution for now.
At least, that was her plan, before abruptly waking up in a free fall. Acting on instinct and training, her wings shot out in an attempt to turn her fall into a glide, instead of gliding; however, Twilight came to an immediate stop and was now standing upon solid darkness. It was most curious, Twilight knew that her earth pony magic made her more resilient to physical trauma, but she didn’t even feel any discomfort from her abrupt landing. More concerningly, a flap of her wings told her that the area she was currently in, seemed to have no air for her wings to push against.
“Ok, checklist, six lavender foal-sized limbs, tail, and mane. Color view of myself disproves dark vision enchantment, however, no visible light source would imply some other kind of magical effect. Lack of air resistance implies a vacuum, however breathing, speaking, and hearing myself, disproves that motion, can an alicorn survive in a vacuum? Science for later, focus Twilight. Ahem, while an air spell would allow breathing, any sounds I would hear would be muffled. Conclusion, Luna? You got me, you can come out now.”
Silence.
Due to being nearly immortal, the most logical explanation for her current situation was that she was dreaming. Though she’d been brought into the Dreamscape by Luna several times, and into the Aether Sea during her ascension… First ascension*, her current environment was much too close to Limbo for her liking. At least the Pony of Shadows wasn’t here, but where was Luna?
There is no Luna. Twilight’s memories took over, remembering the last nightmare night, walking through Canterlot as a foal alongside Shining, chasing the supposed demons of the night away. But she also remembered hosting a haunted castle alongside Luna in the Castle of Friendship, in Ponyville. But she was a foal, not a mare, so Luna was still Nightmare Moon, and stuck on the moon, but then why did her memory with Shining lack any mention of Nightmare Moon?
“Rainbow?”
A voice? Looking around, Twilight could tell no one else was there, just her and the darkness.
“Discord?”
There it was again. With a flap of her tiny wings, Twilight sored over to where she believed she heard the voice. Flight in a vacuum? More proof of a dream.
”Twilight?”
Now she knew she heard some creature, and unless she was mistaken, they were calling for her.
”Somepony please help me”
Some pony was here and was asking for help, closing her eyes, she channeled magic through her horn, Twilight searched for the source of the voice, and when she found something among the nothingness, she pulled.
The realm flashed cyan, whatever Twilight had done, the realm was now filled with motes of cyan lights and the floor appeared to have streaks of magenta swirls just below its translucent surface. Observations of the new lighting had to wait, however, as whatever she had pulled was approaching her, very quickly.
********************************
She was falling.
Fluttershy was not the terrible flier she used to be but as she plummeted towards the ground in an uncontrolled spin, she found her wings had frozen to her side.
She’d been with her friends, sans Rainbow Dash who was about to complete her second loop around the world, when Twilight Sparkle had cast her spell to message Rainbow, her world flashed white, and now, maybe this was the end? She was falling so fast.
Or, wait, wasn’t she at flight camp?
Fluttershy’s eyes shot open, above her was the flight camp and a Sonic Rainboom. Of course, Rainbow was racing against those bullies, but they’d knocked her off her cloud. Whatever other thought Fluttershy was about to have was interrupted, as lots of tiny somethings, cushioned her fall.
********************************
In a clearing, Fluttershy was now surrounded by butterflies, ducks, frogs, and many other animals, including a rabbit who was a spitting image of Angel Bunny, didn’t Angel Bunny die surrounded by his children years ago? Fluttershy began to study her environment, and she recognised where she was, no pony forgets where they found their Cutie Mark.
She was back to the day she earned her cutie mark. She was once again a foal, and the sky above still shone with the aftermath of Rainbow’s first Sonic Rainboom, but why!? This wasn’t what Twilight was planning was it? But any further thoughts she had immediately came to a halt. A butterfly had fluttered closer to her, and settled down, just above her nose. Looking up, Fluttershy notices that the butterfly was perched on a small, yellow object protruding from her forehead.
Raising a hoof to the offending object Fluttershy eventually came to a conclusion. She had a unicorn’s horn, but still had her wings, only one type of pony had both wings and a horn … She’d become an alicorn.
“Oh, oh no.”
********************************
“After that I sort of … panicked. I ran deeper into the forest to get away from anyone who might find me, I didn’t want to be seen as an Alicorn, no offense. I knew I shouldn’t have been an Alicorn so to prevent any issues, I kind of decided to hide, once my animal friends caught up to me and calmed me down, I must have fallen asleep.”
After a chaotic entrance that resulted in a tangle of limbs, manes, and wings, Twilight managed to untangle herself from the yellow and pink invader, only to discover that it was none other than a foal-sized Fluttershy, who had also become an alicorn. It had taken a few minutes to calm down the ex-pegasus, and persuade her to recount what had happened to her immediately after “the incident” as Twilight was now calling it.
“I can understand, I hid my wings when I realised what was going on. I might be able to weave an enchantment to affect you on the mortal plane from here. If I cast the spell here, and channel it through you here, I should be able to have the spell take effect from your magic source in the waking world, or material plane if we’re being scientific.”
Twilight grinned, of course, the technique was theoretical, she’d never manifested strongly enough in the Dream Lands before to be cast magic like Luna could, until now at least, but it wasn’t like they had other options.
“Twilight.” Fluttershy asked, “What's going on? And how are we here?”
“Well, I don’t know, I just woke up here. I’m fairly certain we’re in the Dreamlands, a place Luna used to connect to ponies' dreams. I heard you calling out for help, so I thought you might be here somewhere, so I reached out with my magic and pulled a bit.”
“Oh, ok. But if we’re here, do you think the rest of the girls are here too?”
“Oh,” Twilight hadn’t thought of that, if the two of them were there, could the others be here too? Trapped, alone, and confused, just like Fluttershy had been.
There was only one thing she could do, once again she channeled her magic, and reached out in the hopes of finding her friends. She found something, the magical signature of four creatures, they were impossibly far away, yet if she repeated what she did with Fluttershy, could she bring them to her?
“Please be my friends.”
With a small prayer, Twilight grasped the four magical signatures, and once again, pulled.
********************************
If some pony looked up with a powerful telescope and happened to spy on a particular crater, they would be in for rather a large shock.
Instead of the usual slowed sides, this crater had been altered to have large steps in a semi-circle facing one side; that side had been flattened to create a perfect 90-degree surface. If the pony had studied ancient Ponish architecture, they’d probably say something crazy like, “It looks like somepony made an amphitheater on the moon.”
Sadly, no pony noticed Luna on her impromptu lecture stage, scratching against the rocky wall.
“Taking Alphas, Sirius, The North Star, and Faustas as focal points, we can calculate the angles connecting these four stars and attain a galactic measurement between these points. Normally this would need charts, but as the Alicorn of the night, I don’t need them, since it was I who set everything up to work perfectly. So, with these figures, we can use the Luna Drift equation to work out the change in time since I set the base point ... Or as with the last four attempts, we can prove that Celestia sucks at astronomy. At least the North Star is in the right spot.”
Taking a few steps back to check her work, she concluded three things, one, her math skills were indeed excellent, two, being back on the moon was not good for her sanity. Finally, Luna was fairly sure, that something had gone very wrong, hopefully, Tia, Twilight, Cadence, and Flurry would be able to handle it. They might even be able to bring her home.
Taking some time to relax, Luna took a seat on the front step where her audience would have sat, if there were other creatures else on the moon. After her first attempt to calculate how long she might have been stuck on the moon, Luna decided that a more suitable location was needed, maybe her next project would be a house or a “Send noodles” sign. Luna looked up toward Equus, or at least the place she was fairly sure was Equus, after all, she was fairly certain that …
*PPPPhhhhhhhhhhhtttttpp* something loud honked right into Luna’s ear causing the alicorn to jump off of the bench. Rounding on the offending noise, preparing to defend herself from the source, Luna sighed in defeat at seeing her new guest.
Rolling on the floor, clutching his sides, was the one and only Draqonaquees, Discord.
“HAHAHAHA, Oh your face, you should have seen it! If you’d jumped any harder, you might not be able to come back down. Oh wait you can see it, look.”
Luna stared blankly at the claw offering a photo of her shocked face. Any other time, and she probably would have found it funny.
“Discord! Tis neither the time nor place for such tomfoolery! I swear, if I'm stuck here because of you then ...”
Discord placed a talon on Luna’s muzzle, cutting the alicorn off before she could say something violent enough to ruin his mood,
“I’m afraid not, but trust me when I say that I wish it was I who was responsible. My work would be much easier to fix. I’m afraid that I didn’t have a claw or talon to do with this, I’m almost disappointed in myself, I’m losing my touch.”
Sighing to herself, and giving herself a moment to collect her thoughts, it would be poor manners to assault the one creature who she’d seen all day.
“If it was not thee, then explain what thou are doing here, please?”
“Ah, when I woke up this morning, to my horror I discovered that I couldn’t move, not even my tiny pinkie here was able to wiggle about, it was truly awful.”
Luna nickered in annoyance, Discord might have been answering her question, but did he really need to include his theatrics? At present, his smallest claw (which now had a pink poofy mane) had bounded up his arm and was currently weeping into his elbow.
“I also couldn’t see, now I’ve spent 1000 years as a statue before, but at least then I was vaguely aware of what happened around me, but this, absolutely terrible scenery. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone petrified me and threw me into Limbo.”
Discord looked at Luna expectantly. Luna looked at Discord with mild contempt. Sure the two were on amicable terms, some might even call the two friends, but Luna was in no mood for playing games.
“You were meant to say, where were thou if not in Limbo? But fine, I can see that you want to skip ahead to the boring part so, I’ve been sealed, encased in rock, and buried somewhere boring. It’s really quite horrible, who would have thought getting stoned would be so dull.”
“If that is your situation, then how have you appeared on our moon?”
“Now, please don’t overreact, but I felt a kindred spirit and was able to manifest here.” Luna’s eye twitched. “And when I saw that you were going a bit loony, I decided that I would leave you to it and check out what's going on before I interrupted you.”
Now this got Luna’s attention, while Discord did have his quirks, he was helpful and caring in his unique way, undeniably powerful, and knew how to avoid disintegration from overly stressed alicorns*. “Please Discord, if thou knows how we have become trapped upon our moon then say it at once.”
“Oh well, you see …”