It's All A Little Strange To Me

by Essay Jay

Issue 3.3 ~ Mirror, Mirror

The two sorcerers raced across the halls, following the chanting with no break in step. Starlight and Jade could not stop for a single moment, because they knew what was coming. They had seen it with their own eyes within the Zebrican Citadel, and they could feel the charge in the air now. Mordo was here, and he was ready to bring the Citadel down.

“Mordo!” Jade yelled as she and Starlight slid onto the balcony overlooking the foyer. “Stop!” When it was clear he wasn’t listening, Jade turned to Starlight and said “We need to stop them, now!” before jumping over the railing and tackling one of the henchponies to the ground. The other, still chanting, was slow on the uptake, and suffered with a quick buck to the chest as Jade quickly recovered.

Already, it seemed the ball of concentrated magic they had summoned seemed stable because the henchponies started focusing their brute strength on Jade, pinning her against a wall. Starlight, thinking hard about what exactly she could do, was startled into action when Jade yelled “Starlight, what the tartarus do you think you’re doing!?” Shouting in frustration as she fought off the two henchponies, she shouted up the balcony. “Get down here and fight!”

Starlight knew it wouldn’t help. There wasn’t enough time. Remembering something the Ancient One had said, she quickly slipped her ridge gauntlet on and let her cloak activate, allowing her free movement in the air. It was at that moment that Mordo smirked in victory at Jade, who glared at him before he thrust his talons down and the ball followed suit.

Knowing it was futile but trying nonetheless, Jade screamed. “NO!”

Mordo’s talons hit the ground, and the mass of energy followed suit. Everypony braced themselves… to find a brilliant expulsion of shiny green mana blasted outward in a harmless fashion.

Slowly, with intrigue already building within them, they turned toward the one pony not on the same floor as them. Starlight hovered above them all, her hooves stretched out with effort as if to say she had done something extensive to even pull it all off. “The Mirror Dimension,” Starlight said with a grim smile. “You can’t affect the real world in here.”

Mordo merely smiled back, his gaze turning to Jade as the feathers on his head ruffled in amusement. “Are you going to tell her, or shall I?”

“Buck you,” Jade growled.

“Ah well, suit yourself,” Mordo shrugged before popping his talons and spreading them apart. Quickly, he made several movements Starlight couldn’t follow before she felt the world around her suddenly seem… wrong, and for good reason. Starlight found her gaze falling downward and she immediately understood why.

What she saw was as psychedelic as it was real and mind-breaking. It almost didn’t register in Starlight’s brain, until the sound of Jade struggling to break free of her captors’ hold reached her ears. Creating a whip out of her magic, she made Mordo roll to the side, allowing Starlight to reach Jade and battle against the two zealots. As Jade was freed, Starlight pulled her forward and ran past Mordo, ripping his ridge gauntlet from him before running out onto the street.

“He can’t escape, right?” Starlight yelled more than asked as they faced the building they had just come from. “I mean, I took his gauntlet!”

“Baka!” Jade cried, smacking Starlight upside. “You idiot! Their connection to the Dark Dimension makes them more powerful in the Mirror Dimension. This wasn’t being smart, this was suicide!”

Starlight gawped helplessly as Jade fumed, staring at the advancing Mordo and his goons. It was mesmerising, really, because the building itself had begun folding into itself and spreading out like a mosaic of indescribably wonder. Wonder that could kill.

“Run!” Jade yelled. Needing no further motivation, Starlight began to gallop, with Jade easily keeping pace.

Starlight took this time to defend herself. “Look, how was I supposed to know that? The Ancient One said we used the Mirror Dimension to contain threats! And besides, he was about to destroy the citadel! What else was I supposed to do?”

Jade huffed, keeping her gaze forward. “I dunno, jump down and help me fight them when I told you too? You could’ve taken Mordo down while he was still charging it!

Starlight groaned, wanting to facehoof but unable to do so. “Fine. Okay.”

They darted past ponies, jumped over carts and slipped through the crowd, doing their best to survive the onslaught of semi-real ponies and objects. All the while, Mordo and his zealots continued to follow. For a moment, it seemed like the duo could outrun them. That all changed, however, when they stopped at an intersection and realised something.

“Celestia on a unicycle…” Starlight muttered thoughtlessly, looking up at the detached roads and floating parts of Canterlot City. The mountain it resided on was split into four, and the roads were all bent and disconnected in such a way that it hurt Starlight’s brain trying to process how it works.

Jade shoved Starlight in the side, turning her to a straight path and yelling “There! Start making a portal, maybe we can trap them before they catch us!”

Nodding, Starlight tapped her gauntlet and began running on three legs, waving her left in front of her. A portal began to form, it’s blue outline hazy and still uncertain. With Starlight’s thoughts in a mess, the portal showed the first location that popped into her mind: an open meadow atop a hill overlooking Ponyville. With clear skies, a nice breeze, Starlight could already feel the scent of freedom.

Her world was quite literally turned sideways, however, when gravity shifted and instead of solid ground, Starlight found herself falling through air. Waving her hooves frantically, the portal dissipated and she began to scream. Falling towards the side of a wide spire, Starlight braced herself, but only felt the air around her come to a dull roar. Looking down, she plopped onto the stone of the spire, and found Jade jumping down beside her.

“Boots and Cloak, remember?” Jade smirked before she began running again. Starlight glanced behind her and saw that her cloak was flapping in the wind almost as if amused. Shaking her head, she caught up with Jade and began to form another portal, this one opening up to a warm purple hallways in a crystal castle. Just as they reached it, Starlight felt the stone beneath her begin to wobbled before it completely tripped her, and she went flying forward. Sprawling onto the stone, she looked behind her and saw Mordo stretch his talons out with beaded concentration… and the spire split into two.

It was as if the world slipped under Starlight as she plummeted downwards once more. To put it quite simply, it had. As she watched the tower bend in an impossibly strange coil, she braced herself for a landing. Just because she knew she would be okay, did not mean she was okay with falling. That would have to come later. Much, much later.

Landing on solid stone that was, thankfully, more solid than the spire had been, she ran up to it’s edge and watched the chaos that had become of Canterlot unfold. Entire blocks and streets were now floating free of any attached land; Buildings and solid rock formations all rolled into each other and built bigger constructs that still managed to house clueless ponies that didn’t know any better.

“This was a mistake,” Starlight muttered, her eyes frantically darting around trying to take everything in.

Jade, who had taken it upon herself to catch up with Starlight, turned to her with the most incredulous look Starlight had seen on anypony ever. Starlight could almost hear the words “Are you serious?” just from looking into Jade’s eyes.

At that moment, the world lurched, and they went into freefall. Everything had boxed into itself. Reality around them bent inward, as if everything had become a triangular prism. It was almost too much. Starlight, in her attempt to reconcile normality with the insanity around her, focused instead on where she was going.

A set of twisting metal cones began to converge around where she would land, and she did her best to swing herself into the centre. Falling through them, she and Jade crashed into a cobblestone pavillion, one which Starlight slid down and could not hold a grip of. Falling a few more feet, she nearly landed on a metal awning with a hole. A hole she slipped into just as Jade came around to help her up.

Starlight watched the hole seal itself above her before her eyes darted around and she broke into a mad sprint. Her hooves clanged and clacked against metal and stone, a ramp that had been forming before her instantly curving away as she trod it’s path. Chancing a glance behind her, she saw herself being pursued by Mordo and and one of his zealots, while Starlight somehow ran past Jade who was scuffling with the other.

She focused her attention forward. As much as she tried, she could not help but notice the wavering path she was running on, the materials and buildings that flew past her, the many different happenings of reality warping and shaping into something new. All she could do was run. Run she did.

A zealot, the one who had been fighting Jade, blew past her, falling forward as she lost her balance, and Starlight did not hesitate to keep moving. She pushed her way through a closing stone gap, shoving them aside and causing them to billow in a strange pulse. Her hoofsteps began to wobbled the metal underneath her to the point that it was almost putty. Seeing the platform she was on end just a few feet ahead of her, she made way to jump towards a column that was floating into view.

Starlight hit the column with a grunt… and found herself slipping. Her eyes widened as she desperately tried to find hoofing around the beam but to no avail. It was shifting and reshaping, along with everything in the twisted Mirror Dimension, and she lost her grip. Admittedly, she wasn’t expecting the ground to meet her in the way that it did, because the next thing she knew she was face down on a wobbling cobblestone path.

“Ow…” Starlight moaned. Slowly getting back to all four hooves, she found her footing dangerously slippery as the cobblestone she stood on felt like it was foam floating on water. Tentative as she was, upon looking behind her and seeing three cultists hell-bent on killing her, she didn’t need much more incentive.

Starlight started with hopping, her hoofsteps uncertain and slow. The more she did it, the more confident she became, until she felt the sudden need to start galloping when a near-invisible etheric blade wooshed past her. It was almost like a game, she thought. A very tricky game that required as much concentration, efficiency and speed to win, as well as an impossible amount of luck. Kinda like Oatzee, except there were no dice, the cup was rigged, and the scoreboards were against you.

Speeding up her pace, she darted across the floating stones until they fused together to make a trottable path. A path that was already dissipating as fast as it had been created. Running for her life, she could never have anticipated Mordo appearing from beneath the stone she had been running on, and she was thrown over his shoulder and into the ground.

Starlight swore as she slammed into the smooth rock, a kick to the barrel shoving her back a few more feet and winding her. Coughing, she could see spots. A pair of talons grabbed her. Blinking her eyes, Starlight focused. Above her stood the leering Mordo, his teeth wickedly sharp as he grabbed Starlight’s ridge gauntlet. The next second, Starlight could see him rub his hands before a long ethereal blade appeared. Murder was in his eyes, and there was nothing Starlight could do.

With a yelp, Starlight flinched. The blade came down. With a heavy jolt, Starlight felt a thud, and she held her breath. Still holding it, she blinked and looked around, seeing herself floating away from Mordo’s quickly-snarling face, his blade having sliced straight into the stone with ease. Starlight had no problem imagining what it would’ve done should it have touched her.

Struggling to her hooves as more and more material joined the platform she occupied, she widened her eyes. All around her, buildings and rock and wood and glass flew as if they had a mind of their own. In all the chaos, geometric designs began to emerge, everything solid being torn apart to make something new. Her platform came to a stop when it joined an impressive circular design, where holes were slowly being patched up by more stone and rock that floated up from nowhere.

Beside her, she saw Jade float in on her own piece of rock, her relieved gaze turning into one of dubious nature as Jade looked up, past Starlight. Turning her attention as well, Staright could only gape at the haggard Ancient One, her white robes lightly dusted with grey and a tired look on her face. Her attention was not on Jade and Starlight, but Mordo and his zealots.

Jade could only stare in bafflement. “I had hoped…” she whispered, before sighing. “You were right, Starlight.”

This was one of those times Starlight really wished she wasn’t.

Author's Note:

Comments

[Ze1a7in]

9001766
Well, considering the Griffon is named Mordo, I say 50/50. Because Mordo's actual character in comics is always villain. Him being Strange's ally in the movie? He was bound to go evil eventually. Jade is more the Librarian character. What was his name? Wong?

[Nightflight406]

9150232
Yes. Wong. Hahahahahahahaha. That is funny.

[mishun]

I'm kinda starting to suspect this isn't going to be continued