Daring Doo boldly made her way through the Everfree. She'd heard whispers before, whispers that Twilight and her friends, by now the most famous heroines in Equestria, had faced an unknown foe in these very woods only a month before. Now, under normal circumstances, that would not have piqued her interest, but this time was different. Unlike anything else she'd ever heard of, what exactly had happened remained shrouded in mystery, kept under wraps for some unknown reason. Still, it didn't take long for word to spread. After all, it had been hard to miss that the sun and moon had been temporarily seized from the control of the two sisters.
It was this mystery, and the rumor that it all had to do with a mysterious, all-powerful artifact, that motivated her to make the trip to Ponyville, and set out into the forest where it was believed to have happened. Not only to find out what had happened, but to find and retrieve the artifact if it had been lost. That is, if there was one. As time passed, she had heard many stories of the wild and fascinating adventures the six of them had had, and she had come to admire Rainbow Dash in the midst of it all. She chuckled as she used a machete to cut through another vine that was in her way, remembering how it used to be the other way around. Funny how things worked sometimes.
It didn't take her long to find confirmation that something had indeed gone down there. She quickly found various uprooted bushes, pushed aside vines, and even the occasional felled tree. This immediately piqued her interest. It was unheard of for the supernatural Everfree not to grow back almost immediately and cover up any damage that had been done to it. A magical disturbance perhaps? Something that hindered or completely stopped the forest's usual regenerative properties?
She continued forward with renewed vigor, soon after discovering three very distinct trails, plant life pushed aside in three straightforward paths, one far in front with two others flanking it just behind. She sheathed her machete, no longer needing it. With no large plant life in these unnatural paths, she could now use the clear moon in the night above to be doubly sure of where she was, in case there was some interference with her compass. She began to think about what could have made the trails that she was traveling on. It didn't take her long to narrow down two of the tracks to Twilight and Starlight. The way the plant life had been pushed aside suggested something spherical as the cause. And since there were no large boulders around, it had to be a shield bubble moving at high speed.
"Twilight and Starlight must have used shield bubbles in combination with accelero," she thought. But that still left the third trail. She concluded that it must have been whoever they had encountered here, since using the two spells mentioned before was something beyond the abilities of the rest of her friends.
She looked at the surrounding trees, noticing clear blast marks along the trees near the third path. She smirked, figuratively patting herself on the back for putting it together so quickly.
A few more minutes of trotting and she found two more trees bent at awkward angles. Both looked as if something had been thrown into them. She couldn't be sure what, though, until she got closer. The first one was to the right of the left trail. And though it was very faint, Daring could almost make out the outline of a pony in the dirt underneath.
There. Something just sticking out of the dirt in the upper right corner of the outline. She used a hoof to gently uncover it, then picked it up. A feather, a light blue feather.
"Rainbow Dash?" She asked aloud.
She put the feather in her saddlebags before moving on to the next tree. It was mostly the same as the previous one, and with her new knowledge, she knew that a pony had to have been thrown into it, the question was, who?.
"Twilight." She said upon messing with the ground and discovering several purple feathers. She looked back to the tracks. From where Twilight had supposedly been thrown into a tree, her trail and the third one quickly merged, the right one stopping about a hundred yards past that landmark. Where the right trail stopped the vegetation was broken in a way that indicated somepony tumbling through it. Following the damage, she found the very clear outline of Starlight in the dirt.
She put a hoof to her face and thought. "So Rainbow is thrown into a tree, followed by Twilight. Something happens to Starlight and Twilight goes on alone." She began to worry now. Rarely did one of them fight alone. After all, they were the Elements of Harmony, and strength through unity was practically their motto. That something could eventually leave only Twilight as the last one standing was worrying, to say the least. She was beginning to understand why this was being kept under wraps; even with what she had pieced together so far, there were still a lot of unknowns, and she couldn't imagine what exactly had happened here. Nevertheless, she continued, she had not come all this way for nothing.
"Huh?" She said after walking another few hundred feet. In the distance, hidden by the new plant growth and vines, she saw something bright shimmering through the undergrowth. Her trot turned into a gallop, and she drew her machete again as she closed the distance. As she cut down the brush in her path, she gasped.
"What the..." She said in shock. In front of her was some kind of - portal. A rift in reality itself, hovering a few meters above the ground. It resembled shattered glass, with a large hole in the center where she saw only static. Her senses of adventure and self-preservation clashed within her, both wanting to know what this was and at the same time wanting to turn tail and run. Eventually, her curiosity won out. She approached it, but with extreme caution. It didn't change much as she got closer, only getting bigger as she drew nearer. She was only a few hoofsteps away from it now. What she could see on the other side hadn't changed. She tentatively reached out a hoof to touch it. She closed her eyes in anticipation when her hoof reached it. She let out a sigh of relief when nothing happened, but now there was something else she had to worry about as well. How could she just reach her hoof through it and nothing happen? She moved her hoof around in a circle to be sure, before pulling it back in favor of her head.
To her shock, what lay on the other side was infinitely larger than she'd expected. What had just seemed to be static ended up being much more than that, a massive void instead. She looked around and saw what appeared to be large islands floating in the abyss not too far below her, each of them covered in a strange black substance.
Daring continued to stare in awe at what she was seeing. Then something began to move on the island below her. Her eyes opened wide in horror as the black substance started moving. It built upon itself, quickly forming a towering column that was at her eye level. Even though whatever it was did not have eyes, she couldn't help but feel that it was staring into the very soul of her. She pulled her head out of the portal, more and more horror rising in her as the massive column of darkness began to move toward her, tendrils growing out of it and reaching out for her.
"AH!" She screamed, falling backwards onto her haunches. She quickly got to her feet again, desperately trying to figure a way to close whatever it was before that thing got to her. She had a lightbulb moment. It was a long shot to say the least, but it was all she had. She used each of her forehooves to grab onto either side of the portal, before using all her might to try and pull them together. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but after a few seconds, it began to give way, finally closing completely with a resounding THWOOM. It threw her back a few feet, just before whatever was on the other side reached her.
Daring scrambled back to her hooves before retrieving her hat and saddlebags, which had been blown away in the explosion. She stood there panting for a few seconds, deeply regretting her decision to come here.
"I have to tell the princess!" She exclaimed before galloping back the way she had come, waiting to gain enough momentum before spreading her wings and taking off, leaving a greyscale trail in her wake as she flew.