Phoenix in Another World

by Cheer

8

Sunset’s eyes felt dry and dirty as she woke. “Ugh… where?” She mumbled as she looked around and her memories returned. The alley, the forest, the wolves.

“Oh, fuck,” She cursed as reality hit her. She was even further from Equestria. At least on Earth she knew how to get back. The portal that opened each month, but now? She didn’t know how she got here. She didn’t know how to get back. All she knew was that this wasn’t Earth. It wasn’t Equestria. She was still a human, and Earth most certainly did not have those… things!

This was a problem. A big one. But, this wasn’t the first time she found herself in a new world. She could handle this.

She let herself wallow in the reality of the situation for a little before finally groaning and pushing herself up as she smacked her dirty face, “I am Sunset Shimmer. I’m not going to get beat by this!” She declared.

She took a breath and dusted herself off. Yeah, everything was all kinds of messed up right now and she was a mess, but that wasn’t about to stop her. She frowned as she noticed the blood on her shirt. That was just… disgusting. She’d just have to deal with it for now, the idea of walking around shirtless was certainly less appealing than wearing what she had, even if that was a shirt covered in flaky, dried gore.

Once her attention diverted away from her shirt, she noticed a stone doorway, one door cracked open. This was the safest place she’d been in for a while, so her usual caution was lessened.

She peeked inside, frowning as she couldn’t see anything. It was too dark. With a grumble, she pressed against the stone door and grunted, pushing against it.

“Wah!” She screamed as she fell. The stone door looked like it should have weighed hundreds of pounds, but it opened as if it were made of styrofoam. She would have said it was strange, but it was starting to seem as if that were par for the course. At least it wouldn’t get too much weirder, right?

Of course, she was quickly proven wrong the moment she took her first step and her world went black.

When she could see again, everything was a blinding white. Nothing as far as she could see except two rows of tall braziers leading up to a set of stone steps. At the top were a pair of obsidian thrones.

“What are you doing here?!” She shouted, spotting a dark memory she wished to forget. Herself after turning into that thing at the fall formal. But this was different from her nightmares. Starting with little things, like it’s hair being down instead of aiming skyward, to larger discrepancies, such as her being nude. Sunset would have blushed if she wasn’t so confused.

Though the biggest thing that tipped her off to the situation just not being right, the silence. There were no threats. No insults, jabs or anything. It just sat there watching her.

“Well?!” She shouted again, hoping for an answer. She was used to that form shouting at her back, so this one sidedness was starting to make her feel like the bad guy. It was weird.

She stared at the pseudo twin for a while. Sometimes trying to shout her into action again but it just stared. When it finally moved, it simply moved it’s hand towards the other throne and held it there.

Sunset waited to see if anything else would happen, but it simply stayed in that pose. Eventually she had enough and scoffed, “Fine,” Before walking up the stairs. Nothing happened though. She had expected some sort of trap to be sprung, but from the bottom of the stairs to the top, nothing appeared.

She stood there, staring at the red skinned version of herself. With the hair down and a crazy look in her eye, Sunset hated to admit that she could see the resemblance.

It just watched her, waiting for her to take a seat. Sunset didn’t try to egg her on or shout this time. She just sighed and took the seat. That seemed to placate the other as they looked forward and raised a hand straight outwards.

Sunset watched carefully, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice as it raised it’s fingers and snapped. Instantly the braziers started to light with a bright, calm flame. As Sunset watched them ignite, the other Sunset turned and looked towards her.

It took Sunset a couple of moments to get it “You want me to do it too?” Her only reply was more staring causing Sunset to sigh and lethargically raise her arm “Fine,” she mumbled before snapping. To her surprise the braziers on her side lit too.

She didn’t have long to bask in it however as her vision once again went black. When she came too this time however, she was still at the first step of the long stairway down.

“This place is friggin weird,” She grumbled, looking around again. Honestly, a part of her felt like going down there was a really dumb idea now, but at the same time she didn't feel like going into the woods again, and it did feel safe here.

"... fuck it," she said, leering at the steps as she began her descent.

After a minute or so, she turned around to see how far she'd gotten. "What?!" She shouted, finding herself still on the first step. Even after all the walking she'd done she hadn't moved an inch.

She tried again, keeping a close eye on her feet. She lifted her foot, moved forward, and stepped down… onto the step where her other foot still stood.

She immediately stepped back and thankfully had no issues. She took a few greedy breaths as she inspected the entrance-way. There was nothing out of the ordinary as far as she could see. No runes along the walls, no enchantments she could feel. Nothing. Just the stairway.

She took a deep, hopefully calming breath and stepped in once again to the same results. She couldn't get any further than this step.

With more tries and more time passing, her emotions turned towards curiosity. She may not have been in the position for many years, but she had been Celestia's student and a researcher in her own right for around a decade.

She tried many things. Throwing things had turned out to be the most dangerous. Fortunately, she had tossed the pebble gently since shortly after the throw she felt it collide with her back.

From her observations she could discern a few things. The teleportation back to the beginning of the stairs has two triggers. Touching any of the stone, meaning the walls, ceiling, or steps. The other was going deep enough without touching anything. Luckily that test didn't have as dangerous an outcome as she expected. When she'd thrown a rock deep inside, instead of continuing it’s flight through the air, when it returned to the first step it was simply sitting on it.

All the while during her tests, that… whatever it was... stayed near the forefront of her mind. What was that vision? Why did it appear? Was there a trigger? What did the vision itself mean? Too many questions with no answers.

She sighed as she ran out of things to test. Without anything to record her findings it was best to only test simple things, and without tools there wasn't much she could test anyway.

The only thing left was what she had contemplated after that vision. It sounded dumb from the start, and she really didn't even want to consider the idea that something might happen.

Even so, she raised her fingers with a sigh followed by an eye roll, then snapped.

Author's Note:

Fuck. well I guess I made a 1k word chapter by accident. I'm trying to not make this a habit, since this chapter took a few tries to get out... but it also felt better to write in a way... ugh. Well. We'll see how I keep going on length XD

Comments

[Spellflame]

What’s wrong with long chapters,

[Cheer]

9925950
Like I say in my description of the story I was using this as a bit of an experiment in doing smaller chapters