Luna took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of roses, lilacs and freshly trimmed bushes. She had always loved that smell, it had always calmed her frazzled nerves and soothed her tired mind. Unfortunately it had been weeks since the last time she had walked through the Canterlot royal gardens, and she had missed it terribly. She made her way along the shoulder high hedges, enjoying the familiar path. Out of the entire city, this was the one place that hadn’t changed dramatically through her thousand year banishment. The water features were all the same, bushes and flowers planted around the small rivers and waterfalls. When she had finally returned, and was purged of her curse, it became an oasis of calm where she could retreat when the skeptical, or even the suspicious looks become too much.
She let out a tired sigh, pausing in front of a hedge that had been crafted into some sort of modern art piece. She tried to focus on deciphering the meaning that the creator was trying to imply in its loops and curves, but other thoughts niggled at the back of her head, vying for attention. To say she had been busy for the past week would be a dramatic understatement, so even this moment of peace was a blessing, one she wish she could enjoy without her responsibilities driving away any relaxation she looked for. After all, the sun was pleasantly warm against her back. While she enjoyed the caress of her sister’s sun, deep down a large part of her wished it was her moon's rays that shined down on her instead.
“Curse those Griffons and their petty squabbles!” she said with a pout, complaining to no one in particular.
Princess Celestia had been away for nearly a week, intermediating a conflict between two of the larger clans that resided in the griffon territories, which of course had left Princess Luna in charge. Normally such things wouldn’t have require the presence of one of Equestria’s rulers, but the tract of land that the conflict was about laid particularly close to a pony village. Thankfully her sister was due back by the end of the day, and she could finally return to her normal sleeping habits. Not to mention pass off the handling of all the nobles that Celestia seemed to love so much.
With another long and fatigued sigh Luna spread her wings and took off, making her way to Celestia’s private study with steady strokes of her wings, deliberately taking her time in a desperate hope that the large tower of paper work waiting for her would simply disappear.
“Seriously Twilight, I think I can handle getting something to eat by myself!” Spike explained with practiced exasperation.
“It's okay Spike, give me a few more minutes and we can go together” Twilight replied, forgetting she said something very similar not twenty minutes before, much to the annoyance of a now mumbling adolescent dragon.
Spike’s remarks of annoyance are lost to the once again engrossed pony, as she buried her face back into her the pages of her book. She was surrounded by stacks of them, reading and researching a subject that would put Spike to sleep if he had bothered to ask about it. To Twilight however, the mapping and tracking of secondary ley lines, which is what her current research topic was, and what the stacks of books were all about, was a fascinating subject. Star Swirl the Bearded attempted to map them out hundreds of years ago but had failed. Twilight hypothesized that his failure was because he hadn’t quite worked out a true understanding of the law of improbability in magical concentrations at that time. She had traveled all the way to Canterlot to scour the royal library for more detailed descriptions of the elusive veins of magic, and had been at all morning.
She had been sad to hear that Princess Celestia wasn’t here to visit with, both because she was looking forward to asking her opinions of her current research topic, and because she hadn’t seen her mentor in months, and she missed her dearly. By now Princess Celestia would have come to the library to convince Twilight to take a break for lunch. As if on cue, her stomach rumbled, as the mere thought of lunch made her realize how hungry she was. She sighed, simultaneously also realizing how unfair she was being to Spike.
“Alright fine Spike, if you stop whistling we can go get lunch.” She said as her ears twitch from the whistling and her back and neck creaking as she stood up. “You know how much that annoys ponies”
“That’s not me Twilight.” Spike remarked, his voice coming from behind Twilight. “But if it means we can eat I’ll stop anyways”
Twilight looked back at him, and then over in the direction of the sound, realizing that he was right, it wasn’t coming from him.
“What? Then what’s making it? Surely they know how annoying that sound is.” She said as she made her way to the southernmost wall and the window it held, following the sound to the opening.
“Great, now I’m never gonna get lunch” Spike mumbled dejectedly, as he reluctantly follows Twilight to the window, knowing that with her curiosity peaked, it was likely he would be hungry until dinner.
“Sshhh Spike, it kinda sounds like it's coming from… above?” She scans the sky confused, looking for what now sounds like a pegasus in a steep dive.
“Look, over there!” Spike points as best he can, standing on the tips of his feet to see over the sill of the window. Twilight followed his pointing, finally seeing a rather quickly descending figure.
“I hope they pull up soon…” Spike says, worry starting to creep into his voice
“Me too, something seems off about the way they are diving…” Twilight said, matching Spikes anxious tone.
As they looked on, the distant pony began to spin and rotate. Twilight’s adrenaline immediately kicked in as she realized the familiar sit, connecting it to a certain flight competition gone horribly wrong.
“That pony isn’t diving, they are falling!” she shouted as her brain jumped into overdrive.
Hurriedly estimating how far away the tumbling pony was, Twilight desperately fired up her magic, her horn glowing as she clenched her jaw and reached with all her might. The strain from the distance quickly grew, she could feel it draining her magic more and more, until finally she managed to latch on to the unfortunate pony. The drain was massive, and she gasped as her spell wavered slightly. She poured more magic into her spell, struggling to keep it going over the massive gap.
The sound of whipping air, and the sensation of falling woke Andrew from his unwilling nap. A deep fog filled his mind as he plummeted past the cloud layer, piercing a rather wet nimbus with a barely audible Poof.
“Wha..?” is all his still muddled brain could come up with, and even that utterance was quickly torn away by the howling wind.
He watched the clouds get further and further away, as his mind slowly creaked into motion. Flailing about his arms he spun around, finally able to see the ground below. Only then did his brain catch up to the situation.
He was falling.
Fast.
Very Fast.
His heart shuddered into overdrive, beating faster than he thought was possible. His mind screamed as he watched the far way ground rush up to greet him.
“What the hell is going on?!” He bellowed as his mouth decided to match what his brain is doing.
He could feel the pure speed of his descent as the wind pulled at his skin, and tore at his clothes. Panic took over as he continued screaming and flailing, fear induced gibberish and nonsensical words of prayer spewed from his mouth as the ground grew closer and closer. With each passing second more and more details revealed themselves, but few are noticed over his adrenaline fueled panic.
“Oh god, fuck this!” He yelled, squeezing his eyes shut and throwing up his hands, as if denying the imminent arrival of the ground would make it go away.
He counted the seconds, morbidly wondering in his panic addled mind if he would die on contact, or if he will linger long enough to feel the damage it will do.
Suddenly a warm sensation covered his body, tingling strangely as it wrapped him up. More important than the sensation of his bones being tickled though, was the blissful feeling of deceleration. He could feel his free fall gradually slow. For a brief moment, relief burst forth and he opened his eyes, expecting… well anything other than what he actually saw. For even though he had slowed, when he opened his eyes, the now purple tinged ground still rushed forward. Without time for a new bout of panic, or even a stray thought, his question of what impact would feel like was rather swiftly answered.
“No!” Twilight shouted, the pained yell echoing through the library as she felt her spell break from the impact.
The pony had been moving too fast for her to completely stop their fall, and despite her best efforts, the crash had still been quite violent. She bit back panic, and whirled around to face her assistant.
“Spike, I need you to go to the hall and tell the first guard you see that there has been an accident in the southern most courtyard, and tell them to hurry. I managed to slow their fall but they still hit the ground hard!” She said, and without waiting for a response, teleported away to see if she could still save the no longer plummeting pony.
In an instant she arrived in the center of the courtyard, her adrenaline still thumping in her veins. Frantically she looked around, looking for where the unfortunate pony had landed. Desperately searching, her ears twitched as she heard a raspy groan. She ran toward the low utterance, hoping beyond all hope the pony was still alive. When she arrived her eyes opened wide and she skidded to a stop.
“What in the world?!” She shouted, suprised to a standstill
It hadn’t been a falling pony at all. In fact, she wasn’t sure what it was. She looked at it in shock, trying to fit the odd creature into a group she could identify. Her brain had just shot down the idea of a minotaur foal when another groan, this one longer and more ragged than the first came from the creature. It was still alive! Whatever it was, she wasn’t going to ignore its pain.
“H-hello? Can you hear me?” she asked as she rushed to the side of the fallen being, although now with much more trepidation. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the wounded creature spoke.
“Hello? Sorry to drop in like this…” The decidedly male creature said through its pain, clenched teeth and eyes.
Twilight was dumbfounded by the words that came out of the broken beings mouth. Not only had it spoken in perfect equestrian, it had chosen this moment to tell a joke. A rather bad one, but a joke none the less. Maybe the creature wasn’t as hurt as it looked.
"Are you ok? I uh… I can’t tell if you’re hurt or not.” Twilight looked over the body of the lanky creature. He was covered in cloths, and his arms and legs seemed to be bent in a few painful looking angles. Were they broken, or where they supposed to bend like that?
“What? Yeah, I’m pretty fucked up” Coughs racked its body as it spoke, an blood speckling its lips “I can’t feel my legs, but I can feel my arms just fine, and I’m pretty sure they’re broken. Sorry, I’m just gonna pass out now. Fingers crossed I don’t die.”
“Wait! You’re not supposed to…” Twilight started, but from the sudden slump she could tell that he was already out before she could finish.
This was bad, very very bad. She had no idea how to treat him, and according to him, he was pretty severely hurt, the quips and sarcasm aside. She started to fire up a basic scanning spell to identify his injuries, hoping that “I can’t feel my legs” didn’t mean a spinal injury when she heard the hooves of ponies rushing to the courtyard.
“Over here!” she shouted, hoping to get their, hoping that Spike had managed to alert the guards and that they had taken him seriously.
To her surprise, around the corner came Princess Luna, as well as a few doctors, Spike, and her friend Fluttershy. Despite her shock at seeing her friend and the Princess she again shouted.
“Quickly! Over here!”
The group rushed to her, and to the credit of the doctors, they only hesitated slightly before beginning to inspect the broken creature. Their expert hooves danced over the now unconscious victim, one doctor applying pressure to a blossoming red spot on the creature’s clothes.
“What happened?” One of the doctors, this one wearing glasses, asked “and uh… what is it?”
“I don’t know what he is.” Twilight replied as she watched with morbid curiosity as the doctors applied tourniquets, bandages, and began to deploy a portable stretcher. “But Spike and I saw him falling out of the sky! I tried to help, but with the distance and how fast he was falling… I just couldn’t get a good enough grip to stop him completely…”
As the doctor nodded and went back to work, tears began to well up in Twilights eyes, until she felt a warm feathered touch on her shoulder. She turned her head to see the dark blue Princess draping her wing over her.
"Peace my friend, for thou arte surely the reason this strange beast is still alive at all. Had you not seen its plummet and tried to stop it, he would never had lived through the impact.” The Princess said, trying to comfort her friend, her sister’s student.
Princess Luna looked back to the doctors, who had finished getting their patient onto the stretcher. She caught the eye of the the lead doctor, the one who was wearing glasses. He nodded, acknowledging that the patient was ready to be transported.
“Now we must quickly get it to the hospital. I shall teleport the doctors, but you three must remain behind.” She said as she looked at Twilight, Spike and Fluttershy “Teleporting three doctors and a patient is complicated enough, anymore and I can’t guarantee accuracy.”
Twilight nodded, wiping away the tears that had formed around her eyes, as Princess Luna walked towards the doctors and fired a spell, disappearing in a flash of blue magic.