J´zar felt the sun above him, floating with laziness in the clear sky. It was hot, and J´zar quickly felt uncomfortable on his armor. But he had been trained to tolerate even the harshest conditions, and so the sun did nothing to him.
There was not much to see around him. Both to the left and to the right of the dusty path there was a forest. A forest whose trees where tall and filled with green leaves. Their roots where elongated and kept them outside the swamp they had grown in. It was an almost virgin forest, J´zar could tell. Yet there was a road going through the middle of it. ¿Why would somebody build a road which pierced through a virgin forest instead of just making a highway around it? Obviously, that dimension had been the brewing ground for a great empire which had tried to extend its borders into the jungle. Or maybe they had constructed a fortress deep in the forest to hide something valuable. Either one of those two or the inhabitants of that dimension were really stupid. But that was impossible ¿who is stupid enough how to build a road leading from nowhere to no place?
All of that went through J´zar’s head before he heard the voice:
"¿Mister?" the voice said.
His training flew to his mind; he remembered with exactitude how, almost fifteen hundred years ago, his instructor taught him to locate the neck of the speaker by just hearing his (the speaker’s) voice. With a single, fluid motion, J´zar drew his sword and placed it just a few centimeters away from the creature’s neck.
"¿Who are you? ¡Speak now or be forever silent!" he demanded with haste.
He finally realized who he was speaking to. Before him, a little below his waist was a pony. But it was no common pony. It had yellow wings, a human-like face, his flanks were not round as it was with common ponies, he had square-like legs, and his hooves where the same yellow color that his legs. Yet the most stunning of all was his mane and tail which were bright pink, with the mane thrown to one side of the head, like some sort of hairstyle. His appearance was hard to describe, but it looked cartoonish.
"What…I mean, ¿who are you?" J´zar asked, quickly sheathing his sword.
The creature mumbled something unintelligible.
"I´m sorry, but I can´t hear you" J´zar said, this time slightly worried about the creature "Speak louder please"
Yet again, the pony said something that sounded like “flemmenbanel”.
"¡Speak louder!" J´zar shouted, now fully concerned about the creature’s apparent lack of lexicon.
"¡FLUTTERSHY!" The creature yelled, shaking the waters of the close swamp and making the birds in the entire zone fly away.
"Well, hello" J´zar said, quite surprised by the extreme reactions the creature displayed."My name is J´zar and I am here with exploration purposes. You have no reason to fear me. Or at least not yet"
"Umm…well then…um…eh… hello" the mare babbled.
J´zar looked at the creature with curiosity.
"¿Is there anything wrong?" he asked.
"No" she answered.
"So… ¿are you a pony?" He inquired.
"Yes" Fluttershy's voice sounded muffled.
"¿And you’re a woman… I mean mare?" J´zar asked more.
"Yes, I am a mare" Again, her voice seemed to be hiding somewhere.
"¿And you’re speaking?" J´zar released the question that troubled him.
"Yes" Fluttershy was almost whispering.
“This truly is another dimension” thought J´zar. “¡A mare that speaks! ¿Who could have guessed…?”
"¿Is there a town nearby?" J´zar switched to more important matters.
"You are at the entrance of the Everfree forest. Which is near Ponyville" Fluttershy explained.
"¿Ponyville? ¿What is that?" J´zar pursued her answers.
"Ponyville is the small community you see over those hills" Fluttershy said, more confident this time.
J´zar gazed upon the nearby hills, which he had not noticed in the first minutes. Beyond them he could see houses, and
even further away what seemed to be a plowed field.
"¿And who’s in charge around here? ¿A president? ¿Prime Minister? ¿King? ¿Emperor?¿Prince?" J´zar wasn't sure what kind of government this dimension had.
"We got Princess Celestia. But she lives up the mountain at her palace" Fluttershy said, pointing her hoof at a mountain with the top getting lost upon the clouds.
In the middle of the mountain there was a castle. J´zar wondered how it could have been built in such a hard position. Of course a ruler had to live on a secluded and easily defendable place, but that one was borderline paranoid. No roads? No ways up? “The Princess must be a hard ruler” J´zar thought, “She must be afraid of her people, and so she protects herself by living in such an inaccessible place”.
"I need to speak with the Princess" J´zar affirmed.
"Well, there must be a chariot somewhere in town" Fluttershy vaguely suggested.
"Okay. If you say so… I will have to go into the town" J´zar accepted.
J´zar then simply walked down the road towards the town, with Fluttershy following him.
Reaching the town, J´zar noticed a lot of other ponies.
They were all of different colors, and some sported stylized haircuts. “Perhaps I should say “manecuts”?” J´zar asked himself. All of them had something in common though: In their rumps, they all sported marks. Everybody had them yet nobody shared the same mark. “Maybe it’s to affirm that they belong to some sort of guild?” J´zar thought, remembering the Nameless Rune carved with fire in his left hand. “If it´s that way, they have really small guilds”. Yet J’zar had seen smaller ponies which had no mark on their rumps. “Of course children (¿foals?) Are not allowed into guilds” J´zar explained to himself “¿Should I ask Fluttershy?” The idea was quickly dismissed. Maybe it was of bad education to ask about marks.
As they made their way towards the main plaza, a pink pony with a manecut which J´zar would have considered from the sixties walked besides them, but then noticed J´zar and gasped with exaggerated force, attracting the attention of the few ponies which walked along the streets.
"¿Does she always act like that?" J´zar asked Fluttershy.
"Pinkie Pie has always been a little bit crazy" she said, blush reaching towards her cheeks.
The damage had been already done, and now a group of curious ponies was gathering around J´zar, their loud buzzing quickly overthrowing Fluttershy’s attempts of explaining herself.
"I'm just here with diplomatic purposes" J´zar managed to yell at the crowd "I need to speak with the Princess!"
"Speak with the Princess?" A pair of voices answered from behind the crowd, which opened up to reveal a golden chariot drawn by two pegasii. J´zar had never seen such a majestic creature before "¡All you had to do was to ask us! ¡C’mon, get up!"
J´zar stepped inside the chariot mumbling “thanks”. The pegasii started flying towards the castle without allowing him to say good bye.