Monster Huntress Diamond

by HappyPillz

1. Pandemonium

Sunlight played through the stained glass of the windowpane and danced off the mirror’s surface, causing the swirling fluid within to emit a dangerous, bewitching, and mesmerizing shimmer. It would be enough to draw anyone in for closer inspection, but here in Twilight’s castle there were only two ponies: the one who lived there, and the one that definitely was not going to be drawn in for closer inspection.

She went in for it anyway.

“Twilight, are you sure you’ve repaired it correctly?” Rarity stood in front of the mirror portal and eyed it suspiciously, stealing a cautious glance back at her friend. “ I do want to visit our human friends again, but… We really don’t want any… mishaps… like there were last time.”

Twilight sighed, rolling her eyes.

“I told you already, Rarity, I’m sorry about last time, ok? There was no way I could have known that the calibration core had slipped from its housing by one millimeter after the solar flare incident." Twilight motioned to the small jewel atop the mirror, seated in a specialized casing.

“No way other than routine inspection, which you should have been doing all along.” Rarity grumbled under her breath.

“I know! I know! Look, at least it was only a small miscalibration and it only sent you off course by a mere fifty miles.”

“A mere fifty miles?” Rarity gasped incredulously. “I’ll have you know that not only was I in the middle of nowhere, that mirror spat me out in the middle of a swamp, a good six feet off the ground so I had one hay of a landing when I came out! I’m just lucky there was water to break my fall or I could have been seriously injured!" she scowled. “The place was positively dreadful. There was slime and muck and weeds and algae and you’d better thank those lucky stars on your flank that I didn’t still have my tail to get it all out of. Getting it out of my hair was bad enough.”

Twilight rubbed the back of her head. “Yeah, again, I’m sorry about that. I mean, I didn’t expect that a solar flare could affect the mirror like that, and we still don’t even know what caused it. The last time Princess Celestia had a solar flare occur was several hundred years ago, and they’re still unsure what caused that one as well. And that’s not even to mention the other strange natural phenomena going on lately.”

Rarity bit her lip. “You mean like the earthquakes?”

Twilight nodded. “And trees randomly being uprooted. I’ve also heard of spontaneous wildfires on clear days out in the middle of nowhere, as well as freak windstorms or electrical storms.”

“And it’s not Discord?” Rarity queried.

Twilight shook her head. “He’s as confused as we are. Besides, it’s not his style. This is just straight out destructive, not chaotic and mischievous.”

Rarity nodded and slowly turned back to the mirror, which loomed up in front of her. Before it had seemed so pleasant, and they had used it so often without a care in the world. After the incident, though, and with all the disasters going on recently, something about it seemed much more sinister, as though the mirror itself seemed as though it somehow held some ill intent.

“So, is the mirror still functional and stable then? I think I’m even less sure than ever, now. Still, I did promise the students at Canterlot High to help out for their upcoming Fall Formal, and I am not one to back out on commitments." Rarity glanced at the saddlebags next to her, then simply sat down, her eyes transfixed on the eddies that formed and dissipated in the portal.

Twilight scoffed. “Of course it’s fine! I told you, I fixed it! Only the calibration core was affected, nothing else about the mirror changed, and now we know to do full checks before we send anypony through! Lesson learned, you taught me a great deal, it was very valuable, thank you very much, can we be done being mad at me and doubting me about everything now? Thank you!”

“Wait… what did you mean by ‘nothing else about the mirror changed’?” Rarity stood and slowly turned and eyed Twilight, who cocked her head to the side in confusion.

“What do you mean? Nothing else changed means nothing changed. As in, everything’s the same? What else would it mean?” Twilight looked at her friend as though a few screws had fallen loose.

“What I mean, Twilight,” Rarity stared her straight in the eyes, “is, what if something else had changed? What else about the mirror could have changed? What else could have happened?”

Twilight made something of a strangled noise followed by a small fit of coughing; one might have thought she had swallowed a small passing insect. Whatever question she had been expecting, it was obvious it had not been that one. She attempted to regain her composure and began slowly, trying to phrase her answer in the least alarming way possible. She doubted she would succeed.

“So the mirror could… have its magical energy drained from the power amplifiers on the sides if those were interfered with, affecting the tether between worlds,” Twilight began.

Rarity would have paled if it had been possible.

“Its transmutative properties are influenced by the apparatus above it, so any change to the alignment of that in reference to the mirror would affect any transformations that occur,” she continued.

Rarity began to whimper slightly.

“And its dimensional coordinates are set via its positioning in actual space, which is why it is firmly secured in place, I might add." Twilight gained a little composure back. “And as I said, we do full checks to make sure every system is in the perfect place. Down to the millimeter.”

Rarity was trembling almost imperceptibly, but her voice still wavered as she responded. “All fine and good, Twilight, but you still haven’t told me what could have happened before you decided to start doing your full checks.”

Twilight shrank back under the intense gaze of Rarity. “Oh! Uh…” she fumbled. “Uh… well… you could, um, well…”

“Yes?” Rarity’s eye began to twitch violently.

“Hypothetically speaking, of course." Twilight was visibly sweating.

“Yes?” Rarity was beginning to look like she might become slightly deranged if Twilight didn’t start talking immediately.

Twilight, unlike Rarity, could pale, and by Celestia, she did.

“You could… be sent to an incorrect dimension, go through an incomplete transformation, have alterations in physical or magical composition…”

Rarity stamped her hoof in exasperation, letting out an indignant snort. “Is there any other horror you could have unintentionally exposed us to without any of us knowing?”

Twilight spoke in a barely audible and high pitched whisper. “Um… Incomplete… teleports?”

“Incomplete…” Rarity began looking nauseous. “As in…”

Twilight nervously bumped her hooves together. “As in… only… part… of the pony… is teleported…”

It was then that Rarity fainted.

It was also then that all hell broke loose.

Echoing from what seemed like everywhere but with no discernable origin came a distant yet powerful roar, deep and rumbling, unlike any that Twilight had ever heard before. She felt its vibrations travel through the walls and floor, rattling the windows and making her knees buckle. The roar was cut off abruptly, followed by long seconds of eerie silence, as though the entire world had stopped in response to the creature that had created the noise. Then the silence, and the window, was shattered as the monster bellowed again at a volume that sounded as though it was right outside the castle door.

Twilight screamed as glass rained down from the window, generating a magical shield to protect her and the still unconscious Rarity from the glistening blades. As the last of the shrapnel hit the floor, she abandoned her post and flew to the window, ready to face whatever being she might find.

There was nothing there.

The reprieve, however, was short lived. Her confusion was interrupted by another roar, much different from the first, though no less frightening or powerful. It was much higher, truthfully more of a screech than anything else, but what set it apart most was the feeling that accompanied it. While the first had come with deep vibrations that could shatter windows, something about this felt… off. Twilight could feel the latent magic in the air and ground becoming untethered haphazardly.

She heard the first roar again, causing her ears to fold back in pain, her hooves clutching her forehead in agony. Outside, small patches of brush began heating up from the violent vibrations, causing flames to begin jumping up from the dry leaves and twigs.

In an almost instantaneous answer, the screech rang out in vehement opposition. Twilight immediately felt the magic in the environment shift intensely, and she could feel small gravitational pockets forming around her. A loud groaning noise came from the direction of the Everfree Forest, and she looked out the window in time to see trees beginning to be ripped from the ground, hovering in the air for a few seconds until the pocket dissipated, then falling back to the ground with a crash. Twilight marveled in fascinated horror as objects all over Ponyville reacted in the same way as similar fields opened up in what appeared to be a line going from the Everfree Forest, evidently heading toward the sound of the first roar by her castle.

A metallic wrenching noise behind her caused her stomach to drop as dawning comprehension hit her at what was going to happen next. She turned just in time to see the mirror portal dropping face down onto Rarity with a crash, then sliding across the floor to rest against the wall, leaving nothing behind but an empty floor where Rarity had once been. Twilight slumped to the floor as she stared slack-jawed at the empty space that had been occupied by one of her best friends only moments ago.

The fact that there was some invisible battle between ghost monsters that only affected the environment around them somehow was completely unimportant to her right now; all that mattered was that her friend was gone, and she had absolutely no idea where she had gone, and more importantly, no way to bring her back. All she could do was pray to Celestia that, wherever she ended up, she at least was safe.