"Let’s see, this is the right place, isn't it?" Intri said, recasting the locator spell to make triple sure that this pile of rubble in front of her wasn't just a big pile of rocks like the other two miscalculations had been. While well versed and skilled with spells and rituals, she had been somewhat stunted with something every other unicorn knew nearly from birth, telekinesis.
A light blue glow surrounded her horn as she pulled some of the smaller rocks away from the base in an attempt to get the larger ones to move on their own. If they wouldn't roll off on their own then Intri would be forced to a rather more drastic measure than she was willing to take. Most unicorns could just move the whole lot away, but even the smaller rocks were forcing a bead of sweat from her brow. She had been teased so much when she was younger, as she couldn't even move a rubber ball back then and she hadn't come very far. She had one friend initially... and she had been barely one at that, her neighbor Twilight Sparkle.
They had trained with each other, at first both equally inept at magic, mostly sticking together out of necessity rather than really getting along. Even now Intri was certain that she would barely if even remember her if at all. She was far more liable to remember her brother, who would take her out of her study to play with her when she was bogged down. Intri had no such sibling, and to this day her jealousy of her neighbor had formed a strange sort of crush on him.
When Twilight had gone to do her magic test she had advanced, but not incredibly so past the little foal next door. However, the blast she made in the room had been heard throughout Canterlot and was the talk of the city for days, alongside that she had been made the personal protégé of Celestia.
The next day, when Intri had gone in to do the same test, the moment they saw her weak telekinesis they sent her from the room, still talking amongst themselves of The Twilight Sparkle. She had gone home a disgrace and, not being accepted into the Canterlot university of magic, and had gone to Manehattan to find her special talent since it obviously wasn't magic related.
She had been very, very, wrong. Some years later, when she was working at a small bookstore she had been drawn to some magic books. As a filly she wasn't allowed the more potent form of magic book, her studies being restrained to telekinetic manipulation like all fillies and colts till they passed their magic test.
When she opened the book, she had spent the rest of the day reading, she was fired and barely even noticed it, just nodding, paying for the book, and then walking back to her dingy apartment, too engrossed to care about much at all. The next day, the oldest she had ever heard of, she got her cutie mark. It was a single line, but it twisted and curved under and over itself so many times that it would take true master to ever figure it out. She had memorized it and figured it out two minutes after she noticed it.
Her telekinesis hadn't gotten any better, but she could see the flow of magic as clearly as any unicorn. All it took was a simple push and she had spilled over the barricade that was a flaw in her horn. She still had the power, she still had the skill, she just couldn't use them for the most basic of basic abilities a unicorn possessed.
It took her a few days, but she mastered every spell in her old bookstore and then began on the spells in the mages library. after a day spent going through all the books they had available to the public she had been approached by the leader of the Manehattan mages guild and after a brief show that she had and could learn complex spells faster than any he had seen before, took her on as a personal apprentice.
She had worked under him for many years, learning all the spells there were to teach and some more she came up with herself. She was intent on surpassing her old friend. Twilight was what Intri strove to beat, and in her eyes, they were rivals, though the purple unicorn might not know it.
And that was what had led her here today, straining as she practiced her near useless telekinesis on a pile of rocks sitting at the edge of a cliff in the middle of the Everfree.
She had caught wind of her rival having sealed a 'mirror pool' away from the public after an incident in the town she currently resided in. Intri had heard of it and after some short goodbyes to her old master she set off for Ponyville and the Everfree.
It took a surprisingly long time to find out roughly where it was in the Everfree, nopony seeming to know where the cave was and only after a full day of asking around was she reluctantly pointed towards the confectionery store.
That memory has and will remain repressed from Intri's mind until the hour she dies.
Regardless, she got the location and after plugging in that she was looking for a pile of rocks five feet high and about three feet wide in a small area she had been given five results. After the first two were busts, she had moved on to the first, deciding to get some practice with her pathetic magic.
Deciding that the largest rock of the bunch wouldn't move, she started to cast a spell, one that combined several other spells to a work of art. The first rule in all Intri, spells were that they could require no direct physical manipulation, or very very little if she was ever going to be able to use it herself. The spell she cast was a mixture of a time warp, a cooling spell, a heating spell, a small containment field, and finally a hint of a directional spell.
Her horn glowed briefly and the rock exploded, debris and rubble being flung off to the side, some of it molten, burning holes in nearby tees while other pieces were icy cold and left trails of frost in their path. That was a minor issue to Intri; she was more focused on the gaping hole the rock had left. She squealed in excitement, and her horn glowed again, feeding her back the atmospheric composition of the whole cave, along with its layout.
she memorized it instantly and noticing only a bit of leftover rocks littering a perfectly good set of stairs, she carefully made her way down, using her mind's layout to navigate around the rocks littering the stairs till it was light enough to see properly. And when she did see, she was captivated by the beauty of the cave. Every craggy wall was covered in vibrant moss, and the floor of the room was perfectly smooth up until the pool in the center which was brilliantly clear and radiated light into the rest of the cave.
Intri slowly made her way down the stairs, drinking in the magical aura of the place, the pool practically radiated power. Intri wasn't here to duplicate herself, no; she had heard enough to know that it would only bring mischief. no, what Intri wanted to do was far better, she wanted to study it, and maybe, if she could learn it's secrets, harness it's power for herself, then she would be able to stand amongst those who shunned her... no, above them, if she could take this power for herself, she could stand with the gods.
She wasted no time in getting to the edge of the pool and with the beauty of the place forgotten, she cast her mind and magic out to not only the pool, but to the whole cave. Her mind traced all of the residual magic of the place, even the minutest rivulet of power she traced outward to its finale.
She quickly realized why this place was where it was. And she had no idea why it was at the same time, or more accurately, why she had never heard of it before now and why there wasn't already a mages guild built over this very spot. it was at the crossing point of two of the most powerful ley lines Intri had ever seen, rivaling those that crossed those in Canterlot, yet she had never felt them or heard of them before now, they weren't on any maps, or in any book, they just seemed to disappear outside of the cave.
She couldn't explain it, she could feel the vast magical flow extending beyond the walls of the cave, but had read nothing outside of it. Needless to say, she was very puzzled, but that was not something to study now, the pool was. Giving it a last look over, she returned her attention to the pool.
It was fascinating; the way it was built could hardly be described, and its function, well that took a while to figure out but figure it out Intri did. It did not, in fact, create a double as it was described, that in of itself would be astounding, but what it seemed to really do is the moment a pony stepped into it, it created a parallel universe and took the stepping pony into this one. Its power was also its downfall, where even doing the things described was beyond even Celestia's power, this pool could. But, it would have succeeded in cloning, Intri assumed, so vast was its power, but no, in the creation of a whole separate dimension it could not afford to duplicate their memories, merely their form and basic personality.
In essence it pulled a whole new being into existence, along with a copy of every other pony, gryphon, dragon, and parasprite, essentially creating a whole new baby universe where everyone was essentially a grown baby... then took out the one who matched the pony who entered on this side.
It was impossibly complex and such a wasted effort as after a little searching, Intri found a minor cut spell that would sever and end the new plane of existence only a few seconds after it was no longer needed.
The prospect both daunted and awed Intri. If somepony were to use this... they would give birth to thous- millions...and then kill all of them moments later... all but one, the one whom was their copy.
It took Intri several hours to deduce all of this and she decided it was time for a break. She withdrew her mind and her magic. As it all came back to her she let out a sigh, raising her hoof to her head and unconsciously moving back a few feet from the pool.
Her next step, after hearing her stomach rumble, was to reach into her pack and pull out a sandwich, then she started to think out loud to herself as she often did "so... the most complex and powerful spell work I have ever seen, though natural... also probably the most genocidal... and I have to figure it out. She raised her sandwich to her lips to take another bite; however, something in her brain that was ticking away, solving the problem, noticed a small issue.
It was minor but it did ring a little alarm bell and Intri put down her sandwich, unbitten and looked around the cave. There, off in a darker corner she saw something that disturbed her, a split in the stone wall, one that she had not sensed before. It was not recent that much she could tell, yet her memory informed her that the wall had been and more disturbingly when she sent out the same mapping spell again, still was smooth. Yet she could see a crack, not a big one, but big enough for a pony.
on top of that information, she had first been drawn to look over in that direction when she had subconsciously noticed that this was not in fact, directly over the intersecting ley lines, but a few yards away... in the direction of the crack.
most would have not have noticed it, the power emanating from them was as powerful as the ones over Canterlot, but when she had been in the flow and solving the riddle that was the mirror pool she had noticed that on one side of the intersection the power grew very very slightly weaker as it spread outward, whereas in the other direction, it seemed to stay the same. after a brief exploration with her magic she noted it didn't stay the same, but grew slightly in power the closer to the crack her magic got, till it hit the opening itself and seemed to disappear for a wrinkle in space she hadn't noticed before and then extend out, growing weaker after that point.
That was very suspicious, and Intri couldn't help but be intrigued by that faint gap.
She wasn't used to not knowing her surroundings, and if something was interfering with her spell it would have to be both powerful yet subtle, the very thing Intri professed at herself, also something she had noted that nearly all other unicorns forsook in favor of raw telekinetic power. It seemed that this was something somepony -for no natural power was known to hide itself- had placed to keep something hidden. If it had been a wall of cleverly wrought force, Intri and other weaker unicorns would be powerless so force it, but this had been placed with such a weak protection it barely registered, instead relying on that very fact to keep it hidden.
In some ways it was better even, for all it took to take down a wall was something stronger, why not just disguise the item it was protecting perfectly, it was already out-of-the-way. It was nearly perfect, nearly, and that nearly was what let Intri find it.
Already excited with the mirror pool, Intri quickly made her way over to the gap in the wall and probed her hoof into it, already knowing that a mapping spell was useless. When her hoof was about a foot into the hole it passed a strange wall of nothing. There was no resistance, but where the line was Intri could tell perfectly, both from a slight loss of feeling in a line across her forehoof and from how everything past that line felt like it was buzzing with power.
She quickly withdrew her hoof from the barrier and her mind was alight with new questions, along with renewed wonder. The pool was a vast and powerful natural phenomena, but this, this was obtainable power, power that she had felt flowing through her veins only moments before. Intri had never felt so much power and it was just her hoof.
Two sides warred in her brain, her usual cautious side and her hidden greedy side. It would normally have been no contest, but that mere taste was fresh in her head, the taste of true magic. As such, there was still no contest, and Intri placed one hoof before the other as she walked forward into the hole.
As her body passed the threshold, she experienced a short moment of dizziness and lack of cognitive thought before... euphoria.
It wasn't some fake high from drugs, she had felt that before at a certain low point, no, this was real, she could feel all the magic of the world converging here, pooling in a vast well.
when she opened her eyes, now fully through the barrier, she could see a cave similar to the one she had just left, only the pool was much larger, and as opposed to reflecting perfectly, this one seemed to be gazing into another world, on with vast luscious rainforests and laden with natural magic.
She could feel herself drawn to it, and even without using her magic she could feel the flow and weave of power around her. they lay lines which seemed to get weaker past this point outside of this cave somehow got even stronger and at the exact point they crossed over the center of the pool, a thin beam could be seen dipping down into the center and beyond.
It was so alluring, the center of power. Intri had never been so sure of anything before now. Were she to step into that cross, that intersection of power, she would become so much less, yet so much more. Her body would melt away, but she would become part of the endless flow of magic.
Her steps were nearly involuntary, slowly walking closer and closer to the edge of the pool and to the source. She forgot one important fact however, and that was that it was not a straight walk to the center. so engrossed was she in the power flowing through her being and with the sight before her, when her hoofsteps got to the edge of the pool, about ten feet from the center, she didn't even halt, and with her next step was sent tumbling down into the world of green.
< =>
When Intri finally woke up from the slumber she found herself in when her head had been jerked and hit a rock after falling through the portal, she noticed three things. First, she was most definitely not in Equestria anymore, the trees surrounding her must have been thousands of feet high and hundreds of feet thick, their roots covered the ground, but on them there grew more regularly sized trees. Not any that she had ever seen in Equestria, but normal sized trees nonetheless. And the world was so green and lively, moss growing alongside vines up into the distant tops of the trees while lush grass covered the roots of the largest trees. Off in the distance she could see motes of light swirling around and over a gushing stream a fair distance away
Second, the power she had felt before was gone. She still felt more powerful -she noted that for later research- as though her magical pool had grown, but the buzzing of her every cell with untold power was a distant memory, along with the feeling of nearby radiant power that had come with being so close to the heart of magical power.
Which lead to the third point; no matter where she looked Intra could not see the portal. She looked high and low; she looked back to the stream and up and down its visible length. But the portal was nowhere to be seen.
Intri cast her mapping spell and was shocked. It reached out for about a mile in all directions, mapping everything down to its minute detail. Her brain struggled for a moment to comprehend the massive amount of information and clutched her head in surprise.
That was when a second presence made itself known "Hello? Are you alright?" it was a light and girlish voice, but came from above and behind her, sounding as though it came from a very large creature.
Despite her intense migraine Intra managed to pull up a sudden shield -a spell that had always been extremely difficult before now- as her senses could not tell that there was anyone behind her, and her locator spell had seen nothing of size that was alive for a full mile.
The moment the light blue shield sprung into existence a delighted squee came from the same place as before "ohh! You have magic! What's your name, I’m Subeta"
Intra slowly turned around, focusing more on any sudden movement rather than turning quickly. When she did finally see who was talking to her heart shuddered to stop for a beat or two.
The being before her was larger than most of the dragons Intra had heard of. It was lying down, its two legs, only one joint in the middle Intra noted, kicking up in the air. It had four wings, appearing bug-like in nature with two large on top and two smaller wings jutting lower from the wing joints on its back.
Intra stood in awe as Subeta giggled "I am curious by the way, what are you? I’ve never seen anything like you here on Felarya." well that told Intra where she was.
"I... I’m a pony, unicorn to be more specific. What are you?"
Subeta giggled and raised herself off the ground with her elbows, showing Intri that she must be female; two mammary glands adorned her chest and seemed to have swelled for feeding young. That also told Intri that this was a mammal despite her bug-like wings.
"Oh, you're a traveler, are you? Which dimension did you come from?" she smiled at Intri and then Intra heard a low grumble emanate from her stomach. "Sorry," Subeta blushed, abashed, "haven't eaten today yet... and I’m a fairy."
Intra was well aware of Subeta's gargantuan size and she had not put her shield down, but when the fairy reached forward with what appeared to be a covered hand to pick her up, it passed right through and Intra found herself, hyperventilating, right in front of the giantess's face, altogether too close for her liking. "Umm, can you put me down please?"
Subeta shook her head ""sorry, no, as I said, I haven't eaten yet and you're the first one I’ve come across on my way to the dungeon, you never told me your name..." with that the giant threw Intra into her suddenly open mouth and then snapped her teeth shut around her.
It was such a sudden change that Intra was too shocked to realize what had happened for a moment, one second she had been speaking to a seemingly nice creature, the next she was being tossed and turned in a warm mouth, saliva coating her body as the large tongue licked her all over.
Teleportation had always been out of her reach, it was the highest form of physical manipulation, but oh how she wished she had it now. The tongue explored her every part and blushing, Intra tried to think of a spell to cast; her mind reached for the first one she could use offensively and her horn flashed as a large portion of Subeta's mouth was heated and cooled rapidly in its containment field.
But nothing happened. The giantess gave a slight moan of pleasure as though she hadn't even noticed and then tilted her head back, giving a large gulp and sending a stunned Intra down into her throat.
< = >
Subeta hummed happily as her snack slid down into her belly to be broken down and used for nutrients. The spell the little unicorn had used was clever, but Subeta was a fairy, and as such knew to insulate her mouth and throat when eating something that could use spells.
Her stomach grumbled happily as it started its work and Subeta patted it before shrinking down back to her normal six foot height, her food shrinking with her. It had been tasty, the unicorn, she had a certain spice that appealed to Subeta's tastes and she licked her lips, knowing there would be less talking if she ever found another.
With that last pat of her contented belly she took off, heading once again in the direction of the temple she aimed to plunder, now full of energy and ready for anything it had to throw at her.
< = >
Celestia was in court when it happened. She had been listening to a civilian request some more money for new roads in some portion of Canterlot or another. And when she opened her mouth to grant him the stipend, she froze, a brief tic in her brain telling her that the portal to her home had been crossed.
She finished the sentence with only a brief pause to tell she had had to think of something else before hurriedly excusing herself from the court to leave up to her room, telling the guards she had something important to attend to.
When she left the room however she went straight to her sister’s room, barging into the pitch black room and flooding it with light.
Luna sat bolt upright blinking rapidly "what in Tartarus was that for!?"
Celestia quieted her with a look and soundproofed the room "Luna... the portal has been crossed, if queen Nemrya finds out, our rule here could end in a second"
Luna's eyes widened in fear Nemrya can't find this place, we stopped recognizing her as our queen the day we changed our shapes to fit in with the inhabitants of this realm, she couldn't find the portal anyway, it’s too well hidden!"
Celestia rounded on her sister "This is Queen Nemrya we are talking about, one of the Guardians. If she hears of this pony that went through she will most definitely find the portal... and then our little buffet ends."
Luna shook her head "but... were so powerful here, can't we take her on?" her voice grew quieter till only Celestia’s enhanced hearing could have picked it up.
"Have you forgotten who the Guardians are sister?" Celestia whispered, "If a fairy finds the pony, then there is nothing that will stop Nemrya from finding out and from finding this place"
Luna looked around her room, and thought of everything they had built here, a kingdom in exchange for a few subjects a week, ones that weren't productive anyway, Equestria had found it acceptable, even if it had never known "and if she does come? What then sister?"
Celestia looked grieved "Then we will die and Equestria will have a new queen."