Chapter Text
The bitter taste of hope washed fresh across his tongue as he sunk his sword into the foul, writhing flesh before him. It was so very close; the end of the suffering of his land, his people, his kind. The end of the struggle that bore him across the expanse of time and cost him everything he dared hold dear. All of it was nearly at hand, history rewriting in his mind with every strike of the blade against the massive beast.“NO!” Its voice roared in his ears and the theater of his mind. “THIS EFFORT IS FUTILE! I AM THE WHEEL OF FATE! NOSGOTH’S DESTINY IS MINE TO COMMAND!”
He bore aloft his greatsword, brimming with the energies of every slain soul he had ever stricken down. He would not dignify this creature with a response. These were but the pitiful pleas of a dying monstrosity, and he would eagerly put the wretch out of its misery. Fate would once again be within his own power. He would shape his own destiny.
Fate, once again, proved a cruel mistress.
Behind the form of the fetid false god, his ally Janos pulled at arcane mechanisms. The Chronoplast, the massive time-spanning device that allowed for their travel through the time stream, roared to life. Its unknowable powers tugged at the beast and pinned its diminished form to the ground. The effort to do so, even in its weakened state, was too much for the material realm. Where its body lie, the threads between realms grew weak, and he watched as the world rippled and tore under its unimaginable weight.
The moment’s hesitation was all that it needed. The beast reached out its great tentacles and struck not his body, but his wrist. His grip faltered, and his blessed weapon, the Soul Reaver, slipped from his grasp. He knew no terror like what he felt in that moment, as he watched the last hope for himself, for Nosgoth, for time and space itself, land in that monster’s unholy clutch.
“FOOL!” The beast cried. “ROT HERE IN THIS MISBEGOTTEN WORLD! TIMES UNKNOWN TO MORTAL MINDS SHALL BECOME MY NEW FEEDING GROUNDS WHILE YOU LANGUISH IN A DYING REALM! LIVE ETERNALLY, KNOWING YOU COULD NEVER DEFEAT ME!”
It plunged into the space between realms, and without another thought, he pursued. The unknowable energies gripped and plied at his material body, contorted his flesh, but could not affect his mind. He kept his focus on the horrid beast as it fled from him. He would be relentless in his search. He would not let his quarry slip from him. He-
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Everyone just sort of expected the Crystal Mirror at the heart of Princess Cadance’s castle to just… be strange sometimes. It was a portal to a parallel world full of two-legged walkers, sirens, demons, and high schools, after all. But today it was being strange off of its normal once-per-thirty moons schedule, and while Pinkie Pie suggested that meant a trip to the mirror-cologist for a check-up, Twilight had instead come up with a contingency plan. And then a few more, because what use was a plan if there was only one, and then a few more, and finally so many she had to compile them into a list (to no one’s surprise.)
And today was the day to put them to the test. Twilight had arrived in the Crystal Empire just that morning along with Spike. She had spent hours and hours setting up equipment, monitors, graphs, and fire extinguishers all around the Crystal Mirror. The mirror itself was glowing and sparking. The whole room smelled like burning caramel. Twilight hadn’t been this excited in months!
“Okay! Let’s get to the bottom of this! Spike, wake up!”
Spike had been happily napping in a pile of crystals at that point, but he grumpily groaned and rolled back onto his feet. “Mmkay… what have we got again?”
“According to the readings I’ve got from the seismograph, compared to the records from previous experiments-” Twilight quick-checked her papers against her other papers and declared with certainty. “We’ve got an U.M.O. coming through!”
“U.M.O.”, or “unidentified mirror object”, meant “I don’t really know” in Twilight-speak, but Spike didn’t bother to say that out loud. But it wasn’t one of the human two-leggy things, so that was something. He rubbed at his eyes. “Neat.”
“Begin safety procedures!” Twilight got on her protective gear. “Goggles!”
Spike slipped his goggles on. “Check.”
“Fire extinguishers!”
They sure existed. Spike made sure he could put his claws on the closest one. “Check.”
“Emergency letter to Celestia!”
Just in case everything went udders-up? Spike had a single scroll labeled “HELP QUICK” which he hastily filled in with “at the Crystal Palace, in the Mirror room” before rolling back up. “Check.”
Twilight could barely keep her hooves on the ground. Here it was! All her planning was about to pay off! The U.M.O. was coming through, and she would be the first pony to see it! Not to mention the telemetry data! Soon they’d be able to predict whatever came through the mirror before it ever set foot in Equestria! Oh, she could hardly wait!
“Welcom-”
What whizzed past her head and into the computer console behind her was a sword. A giant, wiggly, sharp sword with a skull hilt.
Spike, after a few seconds, grabbed a clipboard and made a note. “2:36 p.m., U.M.O. identified as ‘a sword’.”
“… well.” Twilight took a breath or two to get her heart rate down. All of her skin was cold with terror, but at the very least, the sword hadn’t so much as nicked her. But goodness it sure felt like it had flown right by her head. She was incredibly lucky. “Spike, make a note. ‘Possibility of weapons traveling through mirror portal at high speed. Request construction of a blast wall directly in front of Crystal Mirror.’ Got it?”
“Blast wall… mirror. Got it. We done?”
“I don’t-”
They weren’t done. The mirror flashed with bright green light, and before she could blink, tentacles burst from the mirror portal and smashed massive furrows into the crystal floor. One swept her aside, another lunged for the sword, and both of them retreated with a scream as the sword… just exploded into bright blue energy and burned the tentacles like marshmallows. The sword itself didn’t explode into pieces exactly, but in an ephemeral kind of magic way, Twilight “saw” pieces of it fly into the ether and vanish from her sight. Some of the energy flew back into the mirror, while others spun around in confused circles before darting into the castle. Two caught her notice more than the rest; one went behind the physical mirror and hid. The other whipped and crashed into the tentacles as if driving them back, and then poof, it was gone.
And then suddenly no more tentacles, but a lot of damage, a sword lying on the floor, ponies distantly speaking with shock and confusion, and the mirror still sparking.
Spike took a note. “… 2:37 pm. Tentacle monster.”
Twilight got back up on her feet and took a few, and a few more, breaths. “Okay… I will admit… the sword threw me. I did not enact the contingency plan for giant tentacle monster.”
“Rainbow Dash is gonna be super mad.”
“Well… tough!” Twilight got out. “The important part is that there’s no more tentacle monster-”
Spike took a look at the still-glowing mirror. “We’re not done are we?”
Twilight sighed and braced herself. “Things come in threes, things come in threes, things come in threes…”
What stepped out of the Crystal Mirror was a horse. Specifically a palomino, but also not. He was kind of a weird palomino. He was bulky like a draft horse, but shiny and smooth like a dragon, with yellow eyes like a wolf and cloven hooves and little horns like a goat. He wasn’t really a qirin because he didn’t have a single horn, and he wasn’t a changling because he didn’t have wings. All Twilight could really put together was that he was huge and golden with a long white mane and tail. So, in her mind, he was just kind of a weird palomino.
Plus, judging by how his forelegs buckled once his weight settled, he probably wasn’t normally this shape.
“OH! The script- I can do the script now!” She cleared her throat. “Welcome, friendly soul! Welcome to Equestria! Can you understand me?”
The massive stallion froze. She took note of the cape he wore over his right shoulder, and the harness on his back which (probably) normally held one big wiggly sword. After a few seconds, he nodded.
“Do you normally have two legs and two arms?”
She made a note to herself, mentally, to remove that question from the script. The weird palomino’s eyes show down to his forelegs. With a horrified shout, he reared back and kicked at the air.
Spike had the same idea. He scratched away at his clipboard. “Do not draw attention to hooves. Asterisk.”
“Where are my hands?!” The palomino roared. “What has happened to me?!”
“Nothing that can’t be reversed!” Twilight spoke as fast as she could. “It’s just a temporary change to your body composition! You can turn back at any time! Just take deep breaths!”
He landed with his forelegs splayed. Twilight kept a respectful distance and guided him through the deep breaths. Finally, she noted, the mirror returned to its resting state. She had been right, of course, about things happening in threes.
“Very good!” she encouraged. “Now, you’ll want to keep those forelegs under your center of gravity. Don’t look at your feet while you walk, or you’ll trip, trust me. Now, again: welcome to Equestria. I am Princess Twilight Sparkle.”
He shot her such a look. Several looks, actually, looking at her up-and-down and coming back to rest his gaze on her horn and wings. “What?”
“… Twilight. Sparkle.” This could be any number of things. Maybe he knew a parallel her, or a different parallel her than the one she already knew about. The look on his face didn’t read like he recognized her, though. He seemed more confused than anything. Testing out his new legs, he slowly wobbled his way over to the wiggly sword. “Of Equestria.”
He pawed gently at the handle of his sword. Clearly, he was used to having hands despite being an earth horse… sort of. “Not two minutes spent in an alternate reality, and I am met with royalty?”
Well, this was a good thing! That meant that she could scrap parts of the script, including explaining what royalty was and what parallel dimensions were. “Well, in a technical kind of way. Not by genetics. More of a practical kind of royalty.”
The palomino kicked his sword closer to him, but seemed to be confused as to how to pick it up. “Whose throne did you overthrow?”
“Oh, no overthrowing here!” she said with pride. “More like… they built a throne for me.”
His tone said he didn’t actually care. “Charming.”
Spike peeked out from behind his clipboard. “So what do I put him down as? Dragon?”
“He looks more like a horse to me,” Twilight assessed.
The weird palomino’s attention snapped back and forth between her and Spike while Spike tried to make his notes. “He’s kind of a little of both… is that even possible?”
“That… seems like more of a Fluttershy question than a me question.”
“2:39 pm, half-dragon-half-pony comes through the mirror-”
The palomino stomped. “Stop.”
That was fair; he was in a strange new place and they were ignoring him. “Stopping.”
He sighed, long and deep, and startled when he nickered. “… you cannot be serious. I cannot be in a world where the dominant race is brightly colored talking horses.”
“Ponies, actually,” Twilight corrected. “And not ‘dominant’ so much as…”
“Just kind of everywhere,” said Spike.
“… I can return whenever I wish?”
Twilight nodded. “Whenever you like.”
“Then I will do so with haste.” He kicked at the sword one more time. “… tell me. Did something happen before my arrival in this world?”
Spike rattled off. “Oh a BUNCH of stuff. That sword shot through here like a rocket, then a bunch of tentacles came out of the mirror and tried to take it, and then it kind of beat up the tentacles with magic and a bunch of ghosts came out of it-”
This was news to Twilight. “Ghosts?!”
“I mean, I saw them as ghosts,” said Spike. “Didn’t you?”
“No!”
“Not even the skinny blue one?”
The palomino vaulted over the computers and consoles to lord over Spike. “What did you say?!”
“SPIKE!” Twilight shouted. “CONTINGENCIES!”
Spike sprayed him with a fire extinguisher. It was the wrong contingency… but at least it got him to stop.