Tales Through the Mirror: Twilight Sparkle and the Defender of the Realm

by FancyFan

Prologue: Through the Looking Glass

It was another average day in Ponyville. The sky was sunny, with a carefully regulated eight and half percent cloud cover. The birds chirped, the bees buzzed, frogs croaked and the library had fluorescent mauve smoke coming out of the chimney. Yes, just another average day; for about the next six minutes.

Twilight Sparkle walked up the stairs from her private lab in the basement. She had a grin on her soot stained face, with only five explosions today's experiment had been a rousing success. As she opened the door with her magic she called out to her assistant, “Spike! Come on, we’re going out for lunch today.”

Spike answered back from the main room where he was sorting books, his voice joking, “You won't fool me changeling, Twilight never comes up for lunch when she’s doing science.”

Twilight rolled her eyes, “Ha ha, now come on, I finished early today since I was able to stabilize the reaction between..”

“Twilight it's too early for a detailed description of whatever it is you were doing.”

“Early? Spike its noon. How is that to early?”

“You know I follow about half what you say when you talk about your experiments, and that's if I’m lucky. Now come on, I’m hungry!”

Twilight laughed as they walked out the door. Heading to the town square in amiable silence, they enjoyed the good weather and each others presence. The silence was broken when they turned north onto the main thoroughfare that ran through the heart of town and then went on its way across the plains till it finally wound its way up the side of the Canterhorn to the regal city of Canterlot. The layout of the town was done in such a way so as to allow an unobstructed view of the capital city of Equestria when one stood on the road. Today, there was an obstruction.

About about a thousand yards from the edge of Ponyville was a wall of rippling air, stretching as far as she could see in either direction. Actually, Twilight realized as she looked up, not a wall, but a dome, centered on Canterlot. A part of Twilight’s brain started to mentally calculate where the center of the dome was assuming that it was spherical, while another checked it against known landmarks to determine how spherical it was(*). “Spike, what is that?”

“What is what Twilight?”

“The giant dome! What else could I possible be talking about?”

“What dome? I don’t see a dome.”

Twilight was flummoxed. How could Spike not see it? Sure it was translucent, but it deflected the light enough to be easily be seen, plus it was MASSIVE…. hold on, did a cloud just hit it and vanish? Twilight scanned the sky along the border of the dome. Clouds were indeed floating gently into the wall, and while the dome didn't seem to give them any resistance, as they passed through they vanished. Twilight stared in shock, she had never seen, and more inclusively never read about, anything like it in her life. And it got stranger. Clouds spontaneously crept their way out of the interior of the dome, in the reverse process as the clouds outside disappearing. So intent was she on examining the strange dome, that Twilight failed to recognize that the its border was expanding until it reached the just over the town line.

“Dear Celestia its getting bigger!”

“Seriously Twilight, what are you talking about? Did you forget to close the fume hood when you were working in the lab this morning?”

“Spike I am not seeing things! Now get behind me, it’s getting bigger, and it looks to be doing so to fast for us to outrun it for long. I’ll try and protect us with a shield.”

Spike rolled his eyes and said “Come on, if you want to start trying jokes again, I suggest that you get Pinkie to train you first” as he started back down the road. Right toward the expanding dome that was now mere moments away.

Twilight dove forward, trying to position herself between her charge and the oncoming whatever-it-was even as her horn lit up casting the most powerful series of shield spells she knew(1)(2). But it was too late, Spike walked right into the shimmering air and disappeared. Twilight, though her shields had fortunately finished going up, was being unable to stop her dive and followed shortly behind.

It felt like she was being simultaneously squeezed and stretched on all sides while watching a kaleidoscope of colors that would have done Discord proud as whatever magic was in the wall of the dome began overwhelming her shields. Twilight could tell that whatever she was going through was making no active effort to destroy them, but there was so much power present that her shields were being torn apart like someone running a hoof over wet toilet paper. After what seemed like ten minutes, Twilight didn't know if it was her sense of time was being messed with or if it actually was taking much longer to pass through a wafer thin wall of power than it should have, Twilight finally landed on the inside of the dome with only two of her shields remaining intact(3). In Ponyville. Which looked exactly like it had before she went through the dome. Confused and drained from using entirely to much magic in to short a time Twilight promptly blacked out.

*. A daunting prospect for most ponies, but Twilight doesn't have six doctorates for nothing(A)(B).

A. Thaumaturgy, History, Physics, Mathematics, Law and History.

B. Yes only six. She was currently working on writing her dissertation on poison joke for Biology, the final dissertation review for Diplomacy was next weekend and she was trying to get started on the one for Temporal Mechanics, but ironically enough Doctor Whooves never seemed able to keep his appointments for an interview. So almost eight.

1. At this point the part of her brain attempting to determine the origin of the dome finished its calculations arriving at the heavily secured Artifacts Vault, deep in the catacombs below Canterlot. It neglected to inform the rest of Twilight's brain, as she had more important things to deal with right now.

2. At this point the part of her brain attempting to determine the shape of the dome concluded that it was, in fact, spherical. It told the part responsible for the positioning of the dome, which politely thanked it, and still did not tell the main portion of her brain, as Twilight was still very busy casting shields.

3. The outer was intact in the same way that a piece of cardboard that has been used as a shotgun target for a day is intact.

Comments

[touileasaso]

Bit of advice for you: the last paragraph should be in the Author's Note section. Other than that, this looks interesting, and I'll be keeping an eye out for this.

[FancyFan]

3305455
Thanks for the comment! I'm not that experienced at writing, so any suggestions or grammar checks or whatnot are really appreciated.
I'll definitely be taking your suggestion into consideration, but most of the stories I've read here have in universe footnotes like that at the end of the chapter before the authors notes.

[ColdGoldLazarus]

Loving the footnotes and the general writing style; has a Douglas-Adams-y feel to it.

[ForSpite]

An interesting and amusing start.

shields reaming intact

Remaining.