Chapter One
A small white mouse sniffed at the air, searching for his morning meal. He scurried up a wayward branch that had fallen to the forest floor, climbing to its edge and standing, he sniffed again.
Suddenly, a strong gust of wind surged past his tiny frame, nearly sending him flying off of his branch. Only barely managing to catch himself, the little mouse quickly scurried down the branch to the relative safety of the forest floor. He paused for only a moment, wondering if perhaps it had been a bird’s failed attempt to capture him that had caused the sudden wind. It was then that the wind returned, and the tiny mouse bore witness to a most peculiar sight.
The wind surged into the small forest clearing from all directions, culminating in a miniature tornado that shook the trees nearby violently. Slowly, the wind began to coalesce into a whirlwind of colors ranging from bright white to darkest black.
The little mouse looked on, transfixed by the strange event that he couldn’t hope to understand. And then, without warning, the whirlwind slowed to a crawl. The polychromatic tornado flowed like liquid, and a silhouette of deep black appeared in its center.
The little mouse’s eyes widened as the shadowy figure finally emerged from the colorful wind… and then promptly emptied the contents of its stomach all over the ground.
The colorful wind vanished then, and the mouse, shrugging a little mousy shrug, returned to foraging for food. After all, he was just mouse, and dealing with whatever had come from the color tornado certainly wasn’t his problem.
The shadowy figure dry-heaved several more times before gaining its bearings, and was quick to sit down in the shade of the nearest tree. Silence descended upon the forest then, and the shadowy figure simply took in its surroundings for the moment.
It coughed weakly, sputtering its first words in this new and strange world.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding. I’ve got throw-up on my shoes!”
Standing back up, the shadowy figure was revealed as a stray beam of sunlight pierced the tree canopy. She practically glowed in the sunlight; her hair flowed around her in an ethereal rainbow of colors, her large feathery white wings extended outwards, her long alabaster horn ended in a sharp point above her head, and the white t-shirt and white jeans she wore also added to the whole ‘angelic’ look that she had going on.
She brushed off her jeans, frowning slightly as she took in her surroundings, “Am I in a forest?”
She turned slightly to check behind her, and got a face full of feathers for her trouble.
“Oh! Plegh! Urgh! I got a feather in my mouth! Gross!” She blanched, and pushed the wayward wing that was totally just a part of her costume and not at all a newly acquired limb away from her.
Unfortunately, she caught a wave of air with her wing and ended up spinning herself in a circle before falling to the ground in a heap.
Grumbling, she quickly righted herself and fluttered her wings in agitation, the action only managing to make her more flustered than she already was.
It was then that a stray lock of her hair floated down in front of her face, ignoring the fact that it seemed to be blowing in some kind of invisible breeze, she quickly tried to brush it away. The fact that it bent around her hand and remained resolutely in place was not helping her quickly deteriorating mood.
“Just what is going on here!?” she yelled, placing a hand on her forehead and accidently bumping the large white horn that rested there.
Her eye began to twitch, and she started looking between the horn, the wings, the hair, and then back at the horn again because there was a giant freaking horn growing out of her head!
She paused, closing her eyes to think as she pinched the bridge of her nose. Sighing heavily, she began thinking back to what exactly she had been doing before ending up in a forest with all new limbs, hair, and a horn.
She had been at a convention with her little sister, she remembered. They had dressed up together as characters from a show that she liked, My Little Pony… and she had been wearing little plastic white wings… and a fake horn…
Suddenly, the pieces fell into place. Her eyes widened in realization, there was only one way to know for sure. Slowly she looked down at her hip, and there, stitched right into the fabric of her jeans, was the Cutie Mark of Princess Celestia.
She poked at her hip, not quite sure what she was seeing was real. Tracing the outline of the familiar mark with her finger, she sighed, “This… isn’t real. It’s not; it can’t be… can it?”
She turned her head to look at the large feathery appendages on her back, and then she crossed her eyes to look at the long pointy horn on her head. It all seemed very real, not dreamlike even a little.
“Okay…” she said slowly, glancing around the small clearing she found herself in.
“If this isn’t a dream then… what is it?” she left the question open-ended, expecting the forest around her to answer. It remained quiet, eerily so.
Frowning, she unconsciously shifted closer to the small beam of light in the center of the clearing. The new additions to her body aside, being stranded in the middle of a dark and foreboding forest didn’t sound particularly appealing to her.
“Where am I?” she whispered, her eyes flickering from one shadow between the trees to the next.
Without warning, a patch of briars began rustling. She took a step back, “Oh no…”
The rustling grew more intense; whatever was out there was just beyond her vision. She gulped, this was it. She imagined it was an angry bear, or maybe some kind of big cat that had been stalking her from the shadows…
And then it pounced. It surged forward with all its momentum, claws outstretched, sharp teeth bared and ready to tear her apart. Already sensing its triumph, the beast let a terrifying roar…
“Rawr!”
She blinked, confused that she was still breathing. Slowly, she cracked open one eye, and there, batting at her shoes with little paws, was some kind of baby lion-bat-scorpion thing.
She blinked again, “What?”
The little furry kitten monster flipped on its back in response to her confusion and let out a little mewl, still entranced by the ends of her shoelaces. It batted at them in what was an undoubtedly adorable way.
Whatever fear she had harbored seconds ago evaporated and now she was just annoyed. She lifted her foot and gently nudged the little fur ball away from her. It grabbed ahold of her shoe and started playfully cooing in little kitty sounds.
She frowned, shaking her leg, “No, stop. You’re not cute. Urgh, of course I get this and not a bear…”
It didn’t seem to get the message, and began happily snapping at her shoe.
“Let go of my shoe,” she said firmly, but the little creature just mewled in the way baby kittens did and looked at her with big expressive eyes that just screamed ‘cuddle me’.
She sighed loudly, only growing more frustrated, “I have a little sister, so the eye thing doesn’t work. Now let go! These shoes cost like seventy dollars!”
The kitten beast let out a defiant meow and gripped her shoes tighter, and as if to add insult to injury, it started chewing on her shoelace.
“No! Stop that! You’re going to ruin it!”
Perhaps it was the stress of being dropped in a random forest with no knowledge as to her location, or the strange new additions to her body that she didn’t ask for, or the fact that nothing was making any sense at all and this little abomination of nature was ruining her expensive shoes… but in that moment, she had had enough.
“I said… LET GO!”
She kicked her leg out faster than the blink of an eye, and with the force of semi-truck behind it. There was sickening crunch, and the sound of wood splintering as she was sprayed with a liquid that was most certainly not water. Suddenly the forest seemed especially quiet, and she couldn’t help but stare. She was as still as a statue, wondering for the life of her what had just happened.
“It… It exploded…” she said finally.
A smattering of crimson covered the entire side of a tree bent cleanly at a forty-five degree angle a few yards in front of her, and a dent the size of bowling all rested in its center.
Slowly, almost mechanically, she approached the tree. She was covered in red droplets and splotches from the force of the impact, but she didn’t even register her ruined appearance. She was too busy staring at the deep depression in the tree, and what had caused it.
Gulping, she reached forward and grabbed the only thing that had stayed solid from the impact. She then began the agonizingly slow process of extracting it from the dent. There was a disgusting sucking sound as she pulled it free from what remained of the creature that she accidently sandwiched against the tree.
She scrunched up her face in a mix of disgust and anguish as she lifted the item she had excavated… It was a shoe.
It was her shoe, specifically.
She shook it daintily and several bits of something she’d rather not think about fell away.
“First vomit and now this… I… I think I’m going to be sick.”
Frowning in disgust, she unceremoniously dropped the shoe to the ground and slipped it on. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any residue inside the shoe.
That thought alone almost made her vomit.
She took a deep breath, “Okay… whew… deep breaths… that was absolutely not my fault.”
She looked down at her leg, appraising the fact that the limb felt no worse for wear despite the fact that it had nearly cut a tree in half from the sheer force behind it.
“Huh, that’s… well that’s… I don’t even…” she floundered for a few more moments before deciding it was time to leave her little clearing. It had started to stink.
She’d only managed a single step forward when the tree in front of her was literally tossed aside, roots and all. She didn’t have time to ruminate on that though, because a giant lion-bat-scorpion was looking at her like she had just murdered its cub or something.
“Oh…”
The positively gigantic creature had a manic gleam in its eye, tinted with what she could only guess was uncontrollable rage. Its claws were as long as her forearm and digging into the ground, its mouth was open and filled with teeth like daggers, and its tail had stinger on it that looked like it could puncture through a solid brick wall.
She gulped, and started speaking in her best soothing, calm voice, “Now, this isn’t what it looks like…”
She took a very slow step backwards, the beast bristled.
“And I know you’re probably angry right now…”
It sunk its claws even deeper into the ground.
“But there’s absolutely no way I’m outrunning you so I might as well say that your brat ruined my shoe,” she’d barely finished when the beast let out a terrible roar that made the ground shake and cut off any further discussion.
She took her chances and ran as fast she could into the densely crowded trees of the forest. That the beast didn’t slow down in the slightest as it careened after her through tree trunk after tree trunk didn’t help her desperate mood.
Swerving right, she jumped over a fallen log and ducked behind another tree just in time to avoid a swipe by the beast’s claws.
She started screaming. Maybe it was a waste of lung capacity to scream at the top of one’s lungs as they performed an adrenaline fueled sprint for their life, but at that particular moment she could not have cared any less.
Still screaming bloody murder, she ducked left and narrowly avoided the scorpion tail by sheer luck alone. Involuntarily, she began smiling like a maniac completely unsure as to why she was doing it. She certainly wasn’t happy at the moment. Nevertheless, she just kept on smiling and screaming as she ran, aiming ever so slightly for what looked like a break in the trees.
As she neared the break, she realized what she was seeing was sunlight! She might actually make it! Quickly discarding the thought that the beast behind her would actually have an easier time chasing her in an open area, she instead focused on the light. It was so close… she was nearly there!
Suddenly, her foot caught. Her momentum stalled, and all at once she tripped forward. She fell in what felt like slow motion, her adrenaline making every second seem far too long. She brought up her hands to break her fall, not that it would do her any good, and wondered in the span of seconds if this was where she was going to die.
“No…”
She hit the ground and pushed herself up, hoping against hope that she could still make it. It was in that moment that the beast’s mouth closed around her, and the next thing she knew she was staring at the top of the inside of its mouth.
She didn’t try to move, she didn’t even try to fight. It had closed its mouth around her entire top half and down to her stomach in a single bite… but she wasn’t dead.
There was the feeling of shaking, as the beast no doubt shook its head trying to separate her top and bottom halves… but it wasn’t working.
Where there should’ve been teeth like knives shearing her in two, there was only a feeling of gentle pressure in small points, almost like acupuncture. And where there should’ve been pressure enough to crush her bones into dust, there was only a slight squeeze. She was… uncomfortable at best.
The shock of her situation began to fade, and a fire began to burn within her. All the frustration, all the questions, all the problems boiled down into an internal inferno that likes of which she had never experienced before.
“You dare? You dare!?” She yelled with white hot fury, and with strength she didn’t know she had, she punched the roof of the lion’s mouth. And then she punched it again. And again, and again, all the while screaming at the top of her lungs as she did so.
“Are you mad I killed your cub!? Well at least you’ll be with him again soon huh!? Do you hear me!? I’m going to punch everything!”
She punched and punched until she was blinded by saliva and blood and any number of other things.
Her anger at being eaten and chewed on building, she reared back and surged forward with her fist, delivering a punch so strong she felt her teeth quake. Nothing moved, the beast’s chewing had ceased, and it was no longer thrashing around.
She held her breath, her entire arm literally buried in the roof of lion-bat-scorpion’s mouth.
Then, it fell. The monster slumped to the ground and she retracted her arm. Ever so slowly, she squirmed downwards on its tongue until she could get her hands under its teeth, and pushed up, shimming her way out of its mouth and onto the forest floor.
She gasped, taking in breath after breath of fresh air. Then, she promptly turned on her side and threw-up all over the ground.
Rolling back over, she screamed. She screamed long and hard just for the hell of it.
Finally, after minutes of screaming in release, she sat up and saw her handiwork. The lion-bat-scorpion was dead, with blood dribbling from its mouth in the gallons.
She looked at her arm, soaked stark crimson, and then looked down at the rest of herself. Her t-shirt was soaked in saliva and torn in multiple places while her pants weren’t faring much better. Her wings ached and the feathers themselves were matted with blood and spit. Her hair, miraculously, was entirely untouched. She chalked it up to its ethereal ‘constantly blowing in a non-existent breeze’ quality.
But despite all that, she was alive. Slowly getting to her feet, she stood over the fallen creature that she had killed with her bare hands.
“I enjoyed that. I really, really enjoyed that. Thank you, truly… no, that’s alright, you don’t have to get up. I’ll just show myself out.”
Turning towards the break in the trees, she walked confidently onward towards the bright sunlight. Never, ever had she been so sure of anything in her life before. For the first time in what felt like forever, she was taking control completely. Nothing could stop her now. She was going to walk out of this forest and take the world by storm.
She smiled and shielded her eyes as she walked out into the sunlight, laughing happily as she thought about how her little sister was going to react to her having wings and a horn, “Hah! All our troubles are over little sister! Oh I can’t wait to see the smile on her face when…”
Her voice petered out, and the smile she wore faded.
Standing directly in front of her was a sight that was too familiar. A castle in ruins, separated from the dark foreboding forest by a deep chasm. A small rickety wooden bridge served as the only way to cross the gap. A large monster with the body of a lion, the wings of a bat, and the tail of a scorpion; a manticore… even her appearance…
She looked down at her hip, and saw that familiar Cutie Mark once again. This time the sudden realization she had was not one of confusion, for she had finally realized where she was.
“I’m… in Equestria… as Celestia,” she whispered, the implications draining into her mind.
She sunk to her knees, a sudden fatigue overtaking her.
“I’m all alone…”
***
She sat still beneath a large tree, facing the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters in the distance. Her eyes were sunken, and deep dark circles formed just beneath them. It had been two days and she had yet to eat, sleep, or even breathe…
It had become something of a challenge really, stagnating beneath the tree as she was. Errant thoughts bubbled up and urged her to move, to break her silence, to do something, but she ignored them time and again.
She mused briefly that it was entirely possible that she had gone insane. Sitting beneath that tree as she was, staring at nothing all hours of the day, every day.
The monotony had been a refreshing reprieve from all the emotions she had experienced two days ago.
That’s why it came as such a surprise when a little white mouse scurried right into her field of vision. It seemed familiar somehow, but she couldn’t place it.
Her memories had been growing rather fuzzy in her stagnation and sleep deprivation. What need did she have for sleep though, truly? If she was really a human version of Princess Celestia, then it didn’t matter at all whether or not she slept.
Her eyes followed the little mouse with startling focus, narrowing and widening near imperceptibly as she followed his path along the ground.
She wondered idly how the little mouse could be so oblivious to her; she was by far the most dangerous thing in the forest. At least, she was fairly certain she was. And even still, he ignored her. She had killed a manticore with nothing but determination and her fists! So how then, could that little white mouse ignore her!?
She let out a long, slow hiss of breath. The air she exhaled was stale, having waited in her lungs for two days to be released. The little mouse rose onto his hind legs at the sound, and she leaned forward barely an inch, her magenta eyes boring into him.
He fell back to the ground, and continued his scavenging.
Her eye twitched, he was still ignoring her.
A spark, ever so small and unsightly, gently erupted from the tip of her horn and a tiny golden ember floated down to the ground. Where it landed, the earth liquefied beneath it, and it sunk out of sight instantly. Neither she, nor the mouse seemed to notice.
A scowl formed on her lips, and her mind oozed with contempt for the little mouse. It couldn’t ignore her like this, nothing could. The baby manticore had ignored her, the mother manticore had ignored her too… she hated being ignored.
“Look at me…” she whispered, so quiet that the words died just past her lips.
The mouse didn’t turn his head, but his ear flickered.
“Look at me…” she said again, louder this time.
The mouse stood on his hind legs again, and swiveled his head. His eyes passed right over her.
“Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea?” she said, her voice gaining strength.
The mouse dropped back down and began nibbling on some small morsel. She felt a fire ignite within her, the same one she had felt two days ago. It was warm, and she began to have another thought, this one not directed at the mouse.
“Do I know who I am?”
The question hung in the air, and she paused. Surely she knew who she was. How could she not? She searched her memories, and managed to find a picture of a young girl, no more than ten with a woman that looked to be about her age. The woman looked so familiar…
Suddenly the heat within her began to cool, and she was left with a gnawing frozen emptiness in its place. She panicked, and quickly threw the mental picture away. Slowly, the fire began to burn again. It was growing brighter this time.
She wanted the heat, the burning light within her that shooed away the cold. She began to discard other memories, meaningless things that she had no use for, and the fire steadily began to grow brighter.
As more memories faded into the flames she redirected her attention back on the mouse. It hadn’t even bothered to look up from its meal. It would ignore her no longer.
“Look at me!” she screamed, and the mouse finally did.
He stood up on his hind legs, his little black eyes focusing on the figure sitting beneath the gnarled tree, and just for a fleeting second, he had the overwhelming urge to flee as far away from the strange creature as possible.
This feeling lasted only a moment though, for the mouse burst into flames before he could act on his instinct. Fur fizzled away into nothing, flesh charred and burned away in an instant, blood was vaporized, and bone was turned to ash all in the course of a single moment.
All the while, the figure beneath the tree watched. She grinned; it was sick thing, a smile twisted and different than it had been in a time purposely forgotten by its wearer. Pride and power had taken over now, and the figure beneath the tree, which had just two days before been a loving big sister, became something else entirely.
“Celestia huh? Immortal, powerful, charming, absolutely in control… Nothing can ignore her. I can do that. I can be that. I am Celestia.”