Madness of Equestria
Chapter 1: Landfall
A/N: YEAH YOU HEARD ME. CROSSOVER CRACK TIME.
Out of curiosity I went to see what there is as far as Warcraft/Pony fics, and golly I wanted to make my own. I NEEDED TO MAKE MY OWN. This is entirely ridiculous, just a forewarning. Although I'm not going pure ridiculous comedy, just...ridiculous. It's a legitimate story, honest. Do you really expect me to write something without a plot?
Also I suck at limericks. I'm sorry. But I love them. So much.
The trek up the mountain had been an arduous one, but the summit was in sight, and the realization of Chamomile Tea's dream was within reach. They had all laughed at her when she said she had discovered a way to achieve ultimate power. They had laughed even harder when she had revealed that the method was shown to her via hallucination after imbibing an experimental batch of tea. Their laughter had ceased to matter as her vision-fueled research continued, pushing her into a frenzy of note-scrawling and causing her to mutter in tongues even while she was not under the influence of her psychedelic teas.
Her tea business eventually went under as more and more ponies shied away from her eccentricities, not that it mattered. She spent every last cent she had, but she had finished her design, and with a cackle of insanity, proclaimed to the whole town that they would soon be bowing to her, but she would never accept their apologies and would dine upon their hearts as she built a throne from their bones. She had then set off to the highest mountain top in Equestria, where she now stood, chest heaving in triumph.
She scrawled runes and scripts into the ground with charcoal and chalk, set up a few gems that she had cut into very precise specifications, and unrolled a scroll filled with scribbles that could not be deciphered by anyone on this planet except herself. She then set to reciting the spell. Chamomile Tea sat up on that mountaintop for three days in the throes of insane ecstasy, screaming the spell over and over until her throat started to bleed, and still she continued. Her lips grew chapped and began cracking and bleeding, her eyes gummed themselves shut to the wind, and still she continued chanting. Blood stained her pale golden fur and the wind snarled her platinum blond mane. Until midnight of the third day.
There was a sharp detonation from the space above the runes on the ground, and for an instant, a glowing violet ball hung suspended in the air. Then the ball exploded, engulfing the top twenty feet on the mountain-and Chamomile Tea-with it. From the center of that explosion an unimaginable mass was ejected, and it sailed far, far over the black landscape of Equestria before settling with a gentle landing in the far reaches of the Everfree forest, invisible to pony eyes against the backdrop of a night with no moon.
The portal that had ejected the creature shrank back down to its ball form, hovering. It would be studied by a few ponies, but eventually abandoned as this end of it was completely inert. They figured it was a one-way wormhole of sorts, but where the entrance was, no one knew. Celestia placed a detachment of elite guards around it just in case others came through, but she knew it was merely a placating gesture for the ponies of Equestria; she knew that if something decided to come through, there would probably be no stopping it. Although lately, the only thing to come out of it were a handful of ordinary stones.
"This is the hole," the tauren said, stopping suddenly. Sure enough, there was a hole in the top of Stonetalon peak. The group of five assorted races looked down the hole. It was a scant four feet across, and incredibly deep. "We've tried dropping stones down it, but they never seem to reach the bottom."
"So we're supposed to investigate a mystery hole?" the blood elf of the group muttered. "What are we supposed to do, jump down it?"
"I don't think I can even fit down it," the orc said. He kicked a nearby rock into it. There were a few clacks as it bounced off the walls of the hole, but after several seconds, the sound just stopped. "Weird," he muttered.
"I don't think we're going to get anywhere with more rocks, Kalgar," the elf said cooly. He then turned his attention at the slight undead, who was pacing around the hole agitatedly. "Alvareth, would you stop? You're making me nervous."
"Good," the undead scrawled into the air with a stream of magic. "There is a lot of latent magic here, I'm surprised you can't feel it."
"I'm a priest, Alvareth, not a mage," the elf said with no small amount of exasperation. "It's your job to feel all of the latent energies." His voice dropped into kind of a mocking tone for the latter half of that sentence, and he waved his hands around a little for dramatic effect.
"Ya be a thick-skinned idiot, Kaleth," the dark-skinned troll muttered. "Even I can feel it."
"Yeah, well," the priest struggled to find a reasoning. "You're a death knight. Your existence is thanks to magic."
"But ordinarily, he shouldn't feel any arcane energies," Alvareth scrawled, one hand resting thoughtfully on the bandanna that covered his face. The undead mage unfortunately lacked the lower half of his face, so was completely unable to speak. He was more thoughtful than most in his position, and covered the bottom half his face out of courtesy. "Death knights are born from dark and evil energies. The fact that he can feel this means that perhaps there is something sinister at work here."
"Perhaps we should see what's down there?" the goblin girl said excitedly. "I've been holding on to this stone forever, perhaps it could be of use here!" She held out a small green stone. "I picked it up a while back when I happened to be poking around Stratholme. It can summon up one of those demon eyes that warlocks use."
"Whirligig," the troll said, sounding about as amused as a death knight can, "how is it that you always have just the device we need every time we run into a situation like this?"
The goblin winked at him coyly and grasped the stone in her hands. It glowed, and her face went blank. Her eyes glowed to match the stone and a glowing green Eye of Kilrogg popped into existence in front of her. It turned on the spot and wavered a bit this way and that as Whirligig got used to having her consciousness inside of it, and it promptly fell down the hole. Its glow quickly receded into the deep dark of the hole, and there was a minute of silence. Suddenly the goblin gasped and shook her head as her mind returned to her own body.
"Well, what's down there?" Kaleth asked impatiently.
"Give her some time for her mind to straighten itself out," Alvareth wrote, irritation obvious on his face.
"Whatever used to be down there was huge," the goblin said after a few seconds. "There's a giant cavern down there, with all of these tunnels and everything that go nowhere. It's all organic-looking, and there aren't any tool marks or chips or anything that would signal any mortal work. More like, whatever used to be down there was there so long that the mountain built itself up around...whatever it was."
"That's all there was? A giant cave?" Kalgar sounded rather disappointed. "So we trekked halfway across Kalimdor for nothing?"
"At least it wasn't longways," the death knight muttered.
"You're funny, Felzakkar," Whirligig said with a giggle. "If you weren't undead, I'd like you a lot. Anyway, that's not all that's down there. Directly below the hole and right beneath the natural cavern-slash-mold, there's a portal. It's not like any portal I've ever seen though. It's this bright purple color, and there's this massive indent around it, like it swallowed up all of the rock around it in a twenty foot radius. The rock that remains has a smooth, almost shiny finish. It's really weird, because the portal is probably only the size of my fist."
"Perhaps the portal expands to accommodate whatever falls into it?" Alvareth mused.
"Maybe. There weren't any rocks or anything at the bottom of the sphere caused by the portal's expansion, so perhaps it draws things towards it as well?"
"Do we even know where this purple portal leads?" Kaleth asked. "I'm not going anywhere until I know for a fact that we're not going to wind up in a vacuum or under miles of water."
"I'm not even sure it would be a good idea for anyone to go down," Alvareth wrote, shaking his head. "Even if we wind up somewhere hospitable, there is no guarantee that we would ever be able to make it back."
"I don' fancy bein' stuck somewhere for de rest of my unlife," Felzakkar muttered. "I don' wanna be stuck in rainbow land fer eternity."
Whirligig chuckled at that thought. "Oh but come on, Felzy," she said, leaning up against the troll's knee. "I can just see you frolicking among the brightly colored flowers and splashing in the multicolored streams."
"Frolicking?" he asked, a small smile playing with the corner of his mouth.
"Whirligig," Kaleth said, his voice pained, "please stop flirting with him. It's making me uncomfortable."
"It's not like anything is going to come of it," the goblin said loftily. "Besides, he's got more humor than five of you put together, elf. And that's saying something. He's dead. Do you know how sad it is when I prefer the company of someone who is dead over you?"
"Can we focus, please?"
"Focus on what?" Kalgar said, suddenly irritated. "What are we supposed to focus on? We were sent here to investigate this hole, and we did. It would be reckless beyond recklessness to go in ourselves, so can we just go back to Orgrimmar and report our findings to the Warchief already?"
"I haveta agree with Kalgar," Felzakkar said with a nod. "We should let those with far more expertise come ta see what this be all about."
"Yeah, same," the goblin agreed. "If Kalgar is talking sense, it's worth listening."
With obvious disappointment, Alvareth agreed as well.
"Fabulous," Kaleth said, clapping his hands together. He turned to the tauren guide, who had stepped back a few paces to the let the group of adventurers discuss. "We can head back whenever it is convenient for you."
Suddenly, there was a sharp crack, and the ground shuddered slightly. The five stumbled a bit as the ground they were standing on sunk a good three inches.
"Son of a-" Felzakkar started to swear, but he was cut off by a screech of shearing rock as the ground gave way in a perfect circle around them and they plummeted down into the pit. They fell, bouncing off of each other and falling stone, swearing and screaming barely audible above the crashing and grinding of stone against stone. The last thing they remembered would be a blindingly bright violet flash, and the feeling of soaring through the air before they all blacked out.
The sun dawned quickly, and rose into the sky bright and cheery, as if in mockery of the disaster that had happened. Whirligig groaned as rays hit her eyelids, easily piercing through them to stab at her retinas. She groaned and rolled over a bit, kicking her legs. She then froze. Something wasn't right. Her body felt strange, and it wasn't just from having laid on top of broken rock all night. She slowly opened her eyes and looked down at her body.
She had hooves.
She rolled over on her front and attempted to scramble up in panic, but her four legs refused to work in sync and she flopped onto her face instead with a whimper. "This isn't happening," she muttered. "This has to be a dream."
"Don't you know that saying it's a dream means it's never a dream?" a muffled voice said from off to her left.
"Kaleth? Is that you?" she asked, and gave another attempt to stand up.
"Yes, it is," the elf reponded, "and please tell me that I am not a horse."
Whirligig laughed nervously and managed to get her hooves under her to stand. "If you're in any similar position as myself, then yes. You are a horse."
"Fuck," he muttered. There was a clattering as he struggled to his feet, and then more clattering as he attempted to climb up the boulder between the two of them. The former-goblin blinked in surprise as the former-elf stuck his head over the top.
"Huh, I guess I was wrong," Whirligig said, trying not to laugh. "You're not a horse, you're a unicorn. A white and gold one at that. Although your ears make you look like a unimule."
Sure enough, the elf's long ears had made his pony form's ears longer than normal, and they stuck straight up on either side of his rather luxurious-albeit dirty-golden mane. Even his green eyes glowed.
"Great," he said, his voice dripping in sarcasm. "I'm a magical beast of burden. I-whoa!" He had climbed on top of the boulder, only for his footing to fail and he slid down the boulder and crashed into Whirligig. "Oof," he muttered, and attempted to disentangle himself from her. "At least I'm not green."
"I like being green," Whirligig said loftily. Her fur was indeed a forest-y green color much like her skin was, and her mane matched the minty teal of her hair. She was sure her eyes were still that awesome purple color, too. "I wonder how everyone else is doing." She struggled against the priest, but quickly got irritated with it. Calling upon her monk training, she pushed herself into a spin and used her momentum to right herself, accidently-but-not-really kicking Kaleth off into the boulder. "Sorry," she said absently, and rather carefully started to walk.
"Yeah right," the elf-unicorn responded, rubbing his head.
The goblin-pony stumbled across Alvareth first, or at least figured it was him. The unicorn was pale and sickly thin, and was wearing the hood-mask combo that the mage always wore. She poked him tentatively with one hoof, and he twitched and opened his pale, glowing eyes. He looked up at her and jumped, shocked.
"Easy, Alvareth," she said slowly. "It's me, Gig. We got turned into horses. I don't know how. We just are."
The undead blinked in confusion and went to write something in the air, only to get distracted by his hooves, which looked far too big at the ends of his spindly legs. He sat back and looked at his other hoof, and waved them in front of him a bit. He was visibly frustrated by the fact that nothing happened.
"Ah, what about that horn?" Whirlygig said, pointing to the protrusion on his head. "Perhaps instead of focusing the magic through your hands, it comes out there?"
Alvareth felt up his head and the horn on it and shrugged, then concentrated. The goblin took a step back, which proved to be a good idea as a jet of ice launched into the sky, straight through where her head had been a second before. The mage panicked a bit and quickly got the magic under control.
"I'm sorry, Gig," he wrote, struggling with the letters a bit, and they showed up a little bit crooked. "It's going to take a while to get used to focusing on my head instead of my hands."
"No problem, Al," she laughed, a little bit nervously. She helped the mage up and they staggered a bit to find others. Kalgar was easy enough to find as he started raging as soon as he woke up, attempting to smash rocks around him but failing utterly. He too had a pelt the same green color as his skin before, and his purple-black sparse mane matched his hair. Whirligig would have gone down to try to pacify the orc, but that would have been impossible. Kaleth joined the pair after a few minutes to watch Kalgar's impotent raging.
"Where's Felzakkar?" Alvareth asked. He was apparently a lot more confident in the writing already, and was doing so without a lot of tedious head movements by simply making the letters appear.
As if in answer to his question, a flood of foul magic flowed over the rocks behind them, reeking of dark rage.
"Nevermind. Found him."
Sure enough, pony-Felzakkar clambered over the rocks, seething with rage.
"Felzakkar," Kaleth said with some admiration, "I didn't know you looked so good in stripes."
To the surprise of the three others, the troll had turned into a grey and black zebra, his glowing blue eyes bright with icy rage.
"Oh my," Whirligig said, a hoof going to her mouth to hide a smile. "How dashing."
"Ya be walkin' down a dangerous path,
And if ya keep goin' you'll get my wrath.
So if ya don't stop,
I'm gonna blow my top,
And I'll use all your blood fer a bath."
There was a bit of a silence at his recital, which maintained itself for several heartbeats before all three of them collapsed helplessly into laughter. The zebra puffed up his chest to yell at them, but grit his teeth to keep from falling into prose again. He flicked his tail irritably and recollected himself a little bit, and the dark shadow of magic retreated back into him. He confidently strode down the rocky slope towards them.
"I love limericks, Felzakkar," Kaleth said, having recovered slightly but still tearing up from laughter. "Tell us another."
The death knight gave him one of his flat, undecipherable looks.
"There once was a troll from Dun Morogh
From whom others would frequently borrow.
But they never gave any back,
So he put them on the rack,
And the items they purchased with sorrow."
Kaleth pouted a bit. "That wasn't a very funny limerick."
"To a troll it would be quite hilarious,
But to others it be just barbarious.
Yet I'll cut ya some slack,
Because our minds you lack,
And say dat humor be a bit arbitrarious," he responded with a shrug.
"That's going to get old very quickly," Alvareth scribbled. The zebra gave him a deprecating look. Obviously he was already quite sick of it, and he had only spouted three verses.
"What the fuck is going on here?!" Kalgar screamed, suddenly finding his tongue. "Why am I a goddamned horse? Where the fuck am I? What are you all doing?" He pointed up on the rocks the other four had gathered on, obviously ready to charge them and tear them apart.
"Kalgar, calm down," Whirligig said with no small amount of exasperation. "We're your friends. We don't know why we're horses, or where we are, or what happened, or even what we're doing. Chill out."
Felzakkar grunted and pointed upwards. The others looked up just in time to see a blue spot zoom off.
"We've been seen," Kaleth said. "We should get out of here."
"Agreed. I don't fancy having to explain anything."
The five scrambled a bit and tried to get their legs in working order to traverse the rocks around them. Here and there were destroyed buildings, shattered timbers and chunks of thatch littered all around.
"I hope no one was in these buildings," Whirligig said quietly.
There was a muttering of agreement as they picked their way through more wreckage, gaining some confidence in their movements and stumbling far less often. The rocks began to thin and they picked up speed, hoping to leave the wreckage behind them and have some time to collect themselves.
"HALT!" an authoritative voice said above them. The five skidded to a stop and looked up. A group of ten or so pegasi hovered twenty feet above them, flanking a group of three regal-looking alicorns.
"You will remain where you are, invaders," the larger white alicorn declared.
"Do not move or we shall destroy you," the dark one added.
"You have crimes to answer for," the small purple one concluded.
Felzakkar grumbled a bit.
"I think we can all here agree,
We be screwed to no small degree.
Although it wasn't meant,
We gonna haveta repent,
So forgive when I say 'fuck me.'"