Mystery Box
A dull, room-filling hum filled the makeshift laboratory as three girls sat around, all warily eyeing a respectably-sized glowing box squarely between them. Twilight Sparkle stared at it, once again trying to find some words to describe the colour emanating from the box. Once it started making her head hurt a little more than she’d grown used to since starting her latest project, she shook her head and looked away. This had the unintended effect catching the attention of Sunset Shimmer, previously deep in a distracted conversation with Princess Twilight Sparkle. No relation.
“What’s up, Twi?” her low, amused voice asked as Sunset nodded at the lab-coat-clad girl.
Twilight swallowed and cleared her throat to catch the princess’ attention as well. She’d been toying with the hem of her skirt as she daydreamed about unqualifiable displays of energy, displaying a weary cynicism to the whole ordeal. When the girl’s strikingly purple eyes were fixed on the only born-and-raised human in the room, Twilight stood up. “I believe,” she declared, “that the dimensional translation matrix is ready to activate.”
Silence followed her observation. Everyone looked at the oddly glowing box, then very quickly away from it. Princess Twilight raised her hand. “How can you tell?” she asked.
“That’s easy! I’m literally incapable of even approximating the colours that it’s glowing in right now, so it isn’t working strictly within the confines of this plane of existence anymore!” As if understanding her, the glow started twisting in on itself, folding and turning and sometimes disappearing. Maybe whispering? “Besides, I’m preeeeeetty sure that it’s started translating into the complex space, so I kind of don’t want to let it build up until it hits the next level of surreality.”
Sunset and the princess processed that sentence. They looked at the box again—for just a second, of course. They all nodded. “Fair enough, I suppose,” Sunset murmured. She tugged on her jacket’s sleeves, drawing comfort from the familiar black leather. “So… how do you use it?”
The princess hummed. The box hummed. Everybody in the room wanted the same question answered. Twilight, ever the scientist, shook her head. “It’s really pretty simple,” she sighed. Walking closer to the box, she inspected its metallic contours, trying to find the control panel she’d installed. As she studiously ignored the gasps and whimpers from her audience, she managed to look past the unearthly glow—was it sucking light in, now?—and find what looked like a few buttons. “A-ha!” she exclaimed, “I just need to turn it on, and I should be able to open up a transdimensional transformation point! I put the business end of the machine over on the other side, so none of you should be in the effects at all.”
“Twilight, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to use that,” Sunset said, her voice shaking slightly. “You’re uhh… can we even call it glowing at this point?”
Adjusting her glasses, Twilight Sparkle peered down at her hand. Sure enough, it had taken on the same surrounding quality as her Dimensional Translation Matrix Interface Device. “That’s just a trick of the light,” she shrugged. “Anyways, I need you guys here more to observe and take notes. You mentioned you’d dealt with petrification recently, right? That’s just another application of this same principle, along with pretty much all transformation magic!”
Sunset drew herself up and huffed. “You said you wanted us here to help the princess celebrate the local equivalent to Hearth’s Warming!”
Princess Twilight nodded. “I was really curious about it, too! Do you have any idea how hard it was to tell Starlight and the girls that I wouldn’t be spending it with them playing board games this year?”
“Oh, girls. There’ll be time for that later!” Twilight waved her other hand, hovering a finger over the activation button. “For now, take notes! I’m starting up the D-T-M-I-D in three… two… one…”
And just like that, Twilight Sparkle, scientist, part-time magical heroine, high-schooler and dear friend to many, was turned to stone.
A pair of sensible sneakers impacted the hard ground with a splash. Twilight stood still in a vast expanse, staring. There were vague shapes all over, shapes that didn’t reflect or warp at the floor. But even so, they were distinct. Five minutes later, still rooted to her spot, Twilight realized that the shifted, strange images were actually her own garage. Superimposed, perhaps, on some odd palace with strange proportions in their doors and paintings. All of it was logically incompatible, but it felt… perfectly natural to see these images blended as they were.
Twilight tried focusing on the world around her instead, and found that, outside of those… echoes… there were only a few vague shadowy blurs in the distance. “Hello?” she called out, taking a hesitant step and turning around on her heel.
No one answered.
When another several minutes of examination yielded no apparent doorway, crack in reality or ethereal mentor figure, Twilight straightened her lab coat, stuck her hands in her pockets and began to walk forward.
She walked. She walked for what seemed like hours, but when she looked around, she could still see the very same garage. It was shifted a few metres from her previous perspective, but even so. At this point, the blur that she assumed was Sunset Shimmer had crossed the sky and was standing by the box. From this realm of existence, Twilight could see the glow properly. It was lime green, with a smattering of white. It looked rather minty, actually. If mint made your eyes burn with a cold, stinging sensation when you looked at it, that is.
It was as Twilight Sparkle was pressing the sleeve of her refreshingly smooth lab coat to her face to restore sensation that she heard a distinct, measured pace being beat against the floor. It sounded like hooves, but somehow more hollow and artificial.
Twilight looked up, still blinking the burning sensation away. Not five steps in front of her, she saw a jet black silhouette, distinguishable as alive only by its hateful, smoldering green eyes. She backed up, inhaling sharply.
Whatever this thing was, it was almost as tall as her. As it moved closer—was it chuckling?—she heard a faint rustling from somewhere behind those eyes. The amused chuckles were also accentuated by a chittering that echoed emptily across the vast space that trapped the two beings together.
It spoke. “Hello, Twilight Sparkle. I’ve been wondering when you would show up again. You always do, somehow.” It stopped, and hissed. It was a hungry hiss. Ravenous, with rage and regret and conviction behind it.
“Wait, what?” Twilight was still stepping backwards and wincing with every soft sound her shoes made against the ground. “Who are you? Why do you know my name? Where am I?”
The figure continued its advance. As it stepped into a ray of light coming from a window in the palace superimposed onto her garage door, Twilight managed to make out four legs and a horn. All riddled with holes. She made out flared, tattered wings, more like those of an insect than a bird. Most importantly, she made out fangs. Bared, both laughing and threatening in their position. The eyes burned even brighter. It matched what the Princess had described as…
“A changeling!” Twilight gasped out. “You’re a changeling!”
The changeling paused and cocked its head. It cocked its head some more. And more. Once the creature had to be looking at Twilight upside down, it stopped. Then it twisted its head back around to normal. From the other direction. Twilight retched.
“Do you really not recognize me?” it asked imperiously. “Do you not recall one of the few beings to bring your kingdom to its knees?”
“Kingdom?”
The changeling sighed in exasperation. It seemed oddly personable to Twilight, given the apparent rage and seething hatred this creature had for her. “Are you not High Princess Twilight Sparkle? Are you not the monarch of Equestria? The mentor of Starlight Glimmer, my sworn nemesis?”
“Uhhh… no, actually.” Twilight was starting to calm down, the familiarity of mistaken identity removing much of the threat of her situation. There was a tense pause as both parties considered this information. Then Twilight stood up straight and pointed hesitantly at the imposing black figure. “Wait a minute, doesn’t that make you Queen Chrysalis?”
“So you do know me!” Chrysalis crowed. “You can’t even keep your own feeble attempts ad deception straight!”
Twilight cocked her head. “Actually,” she said, “Princess Twilight told us all about you in case you ever tried something shady in our world.” She sized up the changeling, stepping back and nodding. “The only reason I didn’t recognize you earlier was because I wasn’t sure what was even possible in this world! Oh, that actually reminds me…” She stopped and took a breath. “Where are we?”
The changeling queen was speechless. Not only had this frail impostor stopped exhibiting any and all signs of fear, but she had also just delivered the small barrage of statements and questions without taking a single breath. After just a moment, however, her brain caught up. “I have no idea where we are, Twilight Sparkle.” A pause. “Are you sure you’re not the princess?”
“Well I hear it’s High Princess now, actually, and no. I’m her counterpart from this mirror dimension you can kind of see spread out around us.” The thin girl waved her arm limply with a dry chuckle. “It’s… really complicated. Trust me.”
“I have no idea what this place is,” the queen began, “but the only creatures I’ve encountered before you would be Tirek and Cozy Glow. Your beloved princess told you about them too, right?”
Twilight nodded. “I was actually about to ask where they were.”
“About a week back that way,” Chrysalis grunted. She flicked her tail in a direction that was nearly indiscernible from any other.
“Fascinating. And, uhh, not to be rude, but why haven’t you tried to kill me yet?”
“Do you have any idea what total isolation does to a species that was a hivemind until recently?”
“So… you’re bored?”
Chrysalis sighed. “I suppose I am. This… place… isn’t helping matters. It feels wrong.”
Silence settled in for a short while. Twilight fiddled with her sleeves, working at an unravelled thread. “If you’re here, and Tirek and Cozy are here…” She blanched. “I think I petrified myself.”
“You… you…” Queen Chrysalis burst out laughing. “You mean to tell me that the great Twilight Sparkle accidentally petrified herself?” She bent over, and her wings started making an odd chirping noise.
Twilight snorted. “Great way to spend the holidays, I know.” She dragged her foot across the ground that wasn’t ground, watching the solid surface form ripples, bubbles and scratches.
Chrysalis hummed idly. “You’re a far better conversation partner than my idiotic acquaintances. They were so dreadfully boring I, well, picked a direction and never looked back.”
“Then I guess it wouldn’t help to tell you that you more or less made it to my garage, thirty feet from the garden?”
“Please, I’m a changeling. I can feel just how stretched and twisted everything is. Everything about this place? It’s wrong. Tangled, even,” Chrysalis said. She started pacing around Twilight, clicking her mouth every so often.
The girl, however, had already started musing on the nature of this new dimension again. “It doesn’t move so fast, but it does move between dimensions. I don’t suppose we could build a highway here?” She dug through her pockets and pulled out a ragged little spiral notebook with a pen unceremoniously jammed into its binding. “Of course we’d have to give any natives advance notice, if they can even understand us--” She was interrupted by a hiss.
“Did I not just watch you arrive to the conclusion that you turned yourself to stone?” The queen snorted. “And here you are, oblivious to the problems. Trying to capitalize on misfortune to bring yourself greater success yet again. All Twilight Sparkles are the same, it seems.”
“You sound kind of bitter about that. Is… everything alright?” Twilight slowly put down her notebook.
“What?”
“I’m sorry! It’s just… I’m actually still pretty new to the whole friendship thing and you haven’t killed me yet, and I can kinda relate to that mindset, so I… wanted to help you?”
“What.”
Twilight started backing away as she saw Queen Chrysalis draw in breath and spread her wings indignantly.
“I have had it entirely with you Twilight Sparkles, making yourself off as a saint, helping other creatures when they’re sad, or lost, or righteously indignant that some upstart false alicorn destroyed their lives and taught others to do the exact. Same. Thing!” She was hunched over now, panting, but still transfixing Twilight with those baleful green eyes. “I will never accept help. Not from one of her pupils. You dare to offer me help, Twilight Sparkle? I will never bow to you.”
Twilight was wide-eyed and trembling from the outburst of emotion. Concentrating her will not on maintaining the conversation, but on the desire to be anywhere else, she pushed out blindly with her magic.
For a second, nothing happened, but all of a sudden the ground trembled and became… snow? A gingerbread skyscraper rose in the distance. Its colors were wrong. Arguably, they weren’t even colors. Subtle jingling filled the air and an evidently insectoid Chrysalis started shivering. “What did you just do?” she asked, “I felt that.”
The scientist was just as confused, looking around before hesitantly prodding the ground with her foot. As she felt some snow soak through the top of her sneaker, she gasped. “I have no idea! I just wanted to get away, but…” It dawned on her. “I wanted to be back celebrating Hearth’s Warming with my friends!”
The groan that came out between the changeling’s fangs echoed through the decidedly more festive dimension for petrified beings. “Your asinine Magic of Friendship, I presume?”
“Not quite, actually! I’ve found that the formation of any kind of harmonic bond generates the amplification effect on surrounding magic, which means that friendship is just one--aaaaaand that was you being all villainy again, wasn’t it?” Twilight trailed off her explanation with a sigh.
The two stayed silent again, and wordlessly started walking. If Twilight squinted at the sky, she could just make out her tool cabinet as it crossed over with some sort of crystalline bookshelf.
Twilight was the first to break the silence. “So, uhh… why are you following me?”
“I told you already. You’re far more tolerable than my idiotic accomplices. Even if you don’t respect me, it comes from ignorance, not foolish pride.” Chrysalis looked around again. “Besides, you might be of use in this place. Echoes of Discord’s magic still linger, and your force of will might serve to protect me.”
“Why would I want to help you? All you’ve done is scream and threaten me,” Twilight pointed out.
“Isn’t that what you silly little ponies do?”
A purple hand raised a finger in objection. “Uhh… You know I’m not a pony, right? I mentioned the alternate dimension thing, didn’t I?”
“Nonsense. You know the princess, and she hasn’t banished you or destroyed your home. You’re as good as a pony, then,” Chrysalis growled again. It was both familiar and unsettling to Twilight, at this point. “She’s bested me far too many times. Her, along with Starlight. They both flaunt their powers and superiority against me while pretending that they’re generous emissaries of friendship.”
Twilight stopped walking and reached into another pocket. An even older-looking notebook came out, and she quickly flipped through it. “According to the notes I took when the other Twilight talked to us about her enemies…” she looked up, clicking her tongue at Chrysalis’ puzzled and indignant look. “There’s a scary precedent for dumping ancient evils into our world. Doesn’t hurt to be prepared. All my friends took notes, too.
“Anyways, it says here that you mostly lost due to coincidental timing or unforeseen attacks you couldn’t have planned against. If anything, Princess Twilight got lucky. You’re mad at her for… being lucky?”
Chrysalis opened her mouth to retort, then stopped. She made some sputtering noises before stomping her hoof several times. The impact was lessened by the ever-present snow. “She can’t just be lucky, she’s arrogant, and scheming, and…” Her eyes narrowed. “She did just get lucky, didn’t she? Her precious brother saved her once, and then again, I was up against Discord, not to mention that tacky little stage magician. How could I possibly have prepared for such inane and hopeless little teams of ponies?”
She paced now, carving an oval furrow in the snow. She started muttering, and continued in that vein for about five minutes, with Twilight taking the time to gather her thoughts and update some notes.
“Why did you tell me that?” Chrysalis’ voice rang hollow in the frosty air.
“I don’t get it,” Twilight said, “tell you what?”
“That it was all luck,” Chrysalis spat.
Twilight nodded in understanding. “Well, you were spinning yourself up on an assumption, and honestly I miiiiiight have been a little terrified you’d take it out on me.” She stepped away a little farther, frowning as her feet responded slower than she expected.
“Very well then. I’m afraid that even so, I cannot forgive any of those ponies for what they’ve done to me. If I must stay here forever, I shall spend forever preparing for my next encounter with the nightmare of random chance that is the pony species.” Chrysalis drew herself back up and turned away. “Regardless, it seems our time is up.”
Twilight blanched. “What?”
The changeling merely pointed at Twilight’s lower body, which was fading and letting off flakes of grey material that mixed with the snow to create a gradient ring around the young woman. “You seem to be disappearing,” Chrysalis said, “how… lucky.”
“Wait, what? I’m not doing this, I swear!” Twilight was scared to move her legs, but she did manage to draw her arms around herself before the flaking spread upwards, taking over her torso.
“It’s perfectly alright, Twilight Sparkle. You’ve helped me accept my defeats at the hooves of your friends,” Chrysalis breezed. “ More importantly, thanks to you, I know how to do better next time.”
“You’re… welcome?”
“Indeed. It seems it was my turn to get lucky,” Queen Chrysalis purred, “it’s a Hearth’s Warming miracle.”
Before Twilight could utter a response, the flaking, now accompanied by a sensation not unlike someone rolling a thin, eraser-rubber rod up and down her spine and limbs with some force, covered her face, and she vanished. All that remained in the picturesque Hearth’s Warming landscape was a pile of granite flakes in a perfect circle, with a pair of sneaker-prints at the very middle.
“Twilight? Are you alright?” Sunset Shimmer’s concerned eyes were the first thing Twilight saw when she chanced looking at things again.
She took in the familiar humming of the loud, but not outdated, water heater that supplied her house, and the pacing that sounded a little more rhythmic and trot-like than her own--Princess Twilight.
“Of course I’m fine, Sunset. What, how long has it been?” Twilight’s mouth tasted like ash.
“Since you petrified yourself?” Sunset’s voice was at the high pitch that the Rainbooms had learned accompanied her research frenzies and study binges. “Just three hours and forty-six minutes. Nothing major,” she said in between deep, forced breaths.
A new voice spoke up from behind Twilight. “Yeah, it was enough time to get me over here to help!”
Twilight turned around (on perfectly functional legs, now) to see Starlight Glimmer, who was holding…
“A chisel?” Twilight exclaimed, “was that your idea of helping?”
Starlight shrugged. “Not really, but I asked your dad for it just in case.”
Princess Twilight’s pacing stopped. “Starlight…”
“I’m sorry, okay! I’m still a results-oriented mare!” The results-oriented mare-turned-girl threw up her hands briefly before stowing the chisel in her pocket. “We didn’t even need it, since we found your original petrification matrix and managed to invert it.”
Sunset nodded. “And thank Celestia we did. I don’t think Twi’s parents would’ve been too happy with the statue of their daughter in the garage,” she said.
The decidedly less stony Twilight hummed in agreement. “Well,” she said, dusting herself off, “I think that’s enough research for one night. Board games and hot cocoa, anyone?”
“Don’t you want to, I dunno, talk about what happened?” Starlight asked, waving at the box, which was now covered in paper and scribbles of matrices with number-like symbols Twilight couldn’t recognize.
Twilight walked over to the coat rack and hung up her lab coat. “The only thing worth saying is I talked to Queen Chrysalis and I’m pretty sure she’s actually plotting your death for next time she comes out. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just spent a while in an at least three-dimensional hyperplane. I need some air and time with my dog.”
“Three-dimensional?” Sunset cocked her head. “Doesn’t that mean that we’re currently in more than three dimensions?”
Twilight stared at her grumpily.
“Right. That… I see why you’d prefer games and cocoa.” Sunset exhaled sharply and walked to the door. “No existential crises tonight, ladies. It’s Hearth’s Warming Eve, after all!”
The visiting Equestrians looked at each other and shrugged. Starlight turned off the lights as she left the garage, leaving the door to close on the faint, indescribable not-glow of the Dimensional Translation Matrix Interface Device, which had adopted a faint, fluorescent green tinge.