//------------------------------// // Something Amiss // Story: When Darkness Falls... // by XTech309 //------------------------------// A series of loud, hurried knocks eminated from the front doors of Twilight's castle. Spike, who just so happened to be walking past when it happened, turned around to answer it, albeit reluctantly as he had been on his way to take a nap. He pushed the door open. In his half asleep state he didn't immediately recognize the pony standing before him, and started giving the same answer Twilight told him to give for unfamiliar faces. "Sorry, but Twilight's busy right now, maybe-" He paused, thinking for a second while he stared at the hooves of the pony in front of him. He looked up, and then his eyes widened in shock. "Daring Doo?!" He cried out in surprise. "I need to see the princess, now!" She said. "A-and then it went KA-BOOM!" Daring said, hovering in the air above Twilight and Starlight as they finished making their way to where the anomaly had occured. "And you're absolutely sure it happened here?" Starlight inquired. "Positive!" Starlight gave a worried look to Twilight. "This doesn't make any sense." Twilight whispered. "How has the forest not grown back by now?" She said looking around at the marks still clearly visible in the surrounding area from their fight with the intruder. Starlight placed a hoof to her forehead. "We should've kept a closer eye on this place!" She said scolding herself. "Who knows what other left over effects there could still be!" Twilight bowed her head down in shame, knowing Starlight was right. They shouldn't have placed so much faith in their Element magic. They were dealing with something completely new here, given the obvious fact that this villain in particular and the magic he used was still so unknown to them. Twilight looked back up to Daring, who was using a pair of binoculars draped around her neck to scout the path ahead. "Do you happen to have any other way of telling us what you saw? A drawing, or something?" "Oh! Yeah!" She responded, landing and digging around in her saddlebags, puling out a journal and proceeding to tear out a page. "I made a rough sketch of it while I was flying to your castle." She handed the page to Twilight, who grabbed it in her aura and hovered it in front of herself and Starlight. "It looks like cracked glass." Starlight stated, noticing the glaring similarity. "Aka, yet another thing we've never encountered before." Twilight said in an exasperated tone. "This is it!" Daring called from in front of them. Twilight and Starlight looked past the page they'd been examining towards the clearing ahead. They recognized it as the location where the Elements had been used, where Twilight had been frozen and where the other portal leading to the human world was located. They both silienty thanked their lucky stars that Daring hadn't accidentally fallen into the portal. What lay in front of them, where there had once been lush vegetation like anywhere else in the Everfree, there was now nothing except the quicksand portal off to the right, everything else for a good twenty feet gone leaving a barely noticeable crater, and the vegetation beyond that blown over at an angle from the shockwave. "Thank you Daring, I think Starlight and I can handle this from here." Daring let out a relieved sigh, before waving goodbye and taking off without another word. "Okay, let's think." Twilight said to Starlight. "If this was a portal, or rift or something, there had to have been some kind of disturbance here that would mess with reality enough for this to be possible." "The energy output from that device and the Elements." Starlight said. "Since whatever powers that being used aren't of this world, the leftover residue is probably what made this possible, hence why it's here of all places." "So our first order of business is making sure nothing else is still left over." Twilight said lighting her horn. She and Starlight both did so, scanning for anything else out of the ordinary. "Nothing." Starlight said after a few seconds. "Good, then what Daring did likely finished reversing the effects of what happened here... somehow." "So we don't have to worry abour anything else happening here?" "...Maybe. We still know so little about that being and what he was capable of, so unfortunately the only way of knowing is by waiting. I think we should write Princess Celestia and have a Royal guard battalion stationed here just in case." "What about what Daring described was in the portal? It sounded eerily similar to what Sunset showed me shortly after it happened, maybe there's a connection?" "Most likely, it sounded too similar to be just coincidence." "Should we tell her?" "...No, this doesn't concern her, we'd just be worrying her. If what we've put together from what little we know is correct, we shouldn't have to worry about anything else happening." She turned and starting trotting back the way they'd come. "Come on, I need to write that letter to Celestia and get back to the castle, all this reality, dimensions and other universes stuff is really starting to wear me down. Hopefully Celestia knows something we don't." "Starlight! I have good news!" Twilight exclaimed upon appearing with a teleport in-between Starlight and Trixie, where the former had been teaching the latter in front of Trixie's caravan, which was parked to the left of the entrance of Twilight's castle. "What? Have you gotten a reply to the letter you sent to Celestia? That was quick." Starlight replied after getting over the shock that came with Twilight's sudden appearance. "Yes! Turns out we have nothing to worry about!" Twilight said with considerable excitement and relief, her wings spread out. "Well, don't leave us in suspense." Trixie interjected. "She confirmed that our current thinking was true, and that as long as there isn't anything else left over, it's not possible for any more anomalies like that to occur!" "How does she know that?" Starlight inquired. "Well, as it turns out, she knows about the multiverse, or whatever it's called, as well. She learned of its existence when she, Luna and Starswirl created the mirror portal connecting this world to the human world. The reason she said she was so sure that there was nothing else to worry about is this: One of the key reasons why they never went further than the portal to the human world, besides the obvious implications of continuing to mess with reality, was because they couldn’t, even if they had wanted to. The human world portal was possible only because of the similarities it has with Equestria, with it essentially being a mirror of ours. Other realities are simply too different, and so it's impossible to reach them. She told me that this works both ways, which is what made the intruder so dangerous, since he was an exception to this, and why these things are so rare." "So, that's it?" Starlight asked with a raised eyebrow. "We can finally put all this multiverse stuff behind us?" "Yes!" Twilight said. Starlight looked back to Trixie, who shrugged. "So! What is it that you two have been doing? If you're teaching Trixie here some new magic, could I help?" "Sure!" Starlight replied. And everything went back to normal.