Throughout his life, Isen had been through many an...interesting situation.
This very moment could be considered one of them.
Isen hunkered himself behind a tree with an awkward advance and a roll that felt more like a fall in his heavy armor. His mind was flooded with contradicting thoughts, uncoordinated and all unhelpful in the current situation. Several deep breaths punctuated this terrible uncertainty. He could do this, right? It was easy, surely.
Isen leaned over to get a quick look, then shrank back behind the tree.
No, he couldn't do this.
In a laymen's terms, it was rather simple question: how in Oblivion do you deal with six odd-looking women out in the middle of the forest?
Six odd-looking women out in the middle of the forest naked.
Isen couldn't answer that question. He elected to wait behind the tree and not get involved with whatever madness was going on. With a fair bit of courage, Isen was able to push out the mental image of Sheogorath dying of laughter and poke his eyes past the trees. The weird women were sitting in the dirt, lounging about or, in the case of one poor individual, locked within the fetal position. Two amongst them bore physical builds, though one more athletic and the other laborer's body.
Isen didn't dare move his eyes any lower. He still had some decency.
The laborer, a well-built blonde with moderately-tanned skin and freckles upon her face, was the most…'normal', Isen consented. Her eyes were a deep emerald, and moved around the forest critically, like a watchmen upon the battlements. She seemed the more attune with this environment, knowing where hiding spots may lie in the brush. A woodswomen of some sort, mayhaps a farmer?
The other...well, the Nord could not truly make distinctions. She was lithe, lacking the heavy worker's body her counterpart held to. Her hair...well, one might call horse shit, but Isen could swear he saw a rainbow. An entire rainbow of colors in her hair! Her eyes, magenta orbs that, while not terribly out of place when compared to her hair, seemed odd on the almost Nordic complexion. With those outlandish looks, an elf perhaps?
Then again, Isen had never seen any merfolk with those kinds of brea-
He stopped himself. He was not going there. For now.
'Divines damn you, perverted mind!'
The list continued in that fashion. There was a delicate figure of Imperial proportions and long, wavy...indigo hair. A girl with a huge puff of vibrant pink hair that seemed to speak as quick as her shaking body on the ground floor. Another woman of a tanned complexion, but with a wiry figure and violet hair with pink strands. She sat cross-legged, head resting in her hands in the contemplative position of the scholar.
Lastly, there lay a woman more akin to a stick in proportions than another human being. Her hair was a pale pink, long and straight down the back and around her elfin head. She was drawn up in the fetal position, shaking visibly, eyes screwed shut. Fear was etched upon her face as clear as the day. A pang hit the Nord's heart.
Isen couldn't place what exactly made him move. Maybe sympathy for the soul of this wretch, or perhaps stupidity (to be honest, the latter seemed more reasonable). He had become complacent in his hidey-hole, and now thought himself as if cloaked in a spell of invisibility (in truth, it was a wonder the odd women hadn't detected him prior). No matter what it was, Isen still found himself in movement before he even noticed, his legs inching their way towards this odd ragtag group as if autonomous. His armor clanked and clacked against itself and the dirt, but it was one fatal flaw that brought his presence to light.
Snap
His foot, so caught about in the advance, fell upon an idle twig.
Six pairs of eyes turned and froze on him.
'Well,' Isen thought, 'damn.'
Twilight Sparkle was many things. She was the personal apprentice of Princess Celestia of Equestria, for one thing. She also held titles as an accomplished unicorn mage of extraordinary power, a well-educated scholar and librarian, and more recently, the ringleader of the famed Elements of Harmony.
And as of now, she was infuriated.
The events of the past few hours had been a blur. The bustle of Ponyville had appeared for a moment in the unicorn's memory, and then followed by a miasma of unspeakable power. Headaches began simply by thinking about the incident, let alone experiencing it. A vortex apparated in the midst of the township, and just as suddenly as it had appeared, it swallowed Twilight and her friends and closed. The idea was mind-boggling.
Of course, it only came second to their current predicament. Sure, Twilight had the…'pleasure' of being a veteran of the Chaos spirit Discord's wild and nonsensical mischief. However, even debacles on scales such as that simply paled in comparison to the matter at hoof.
Namely that Twilight and her friends had appeared in the middle of nowhere and had taken the form of large, hairless apes.
When Twilight had first awoken from the teleport-induced coma, she had taken the most obvious action when finding out about her new body: she screamed like a schoolfilly. As did everypony else in the party. Even Rainbow Dash, though she would never admit as such. Twilight could feel a grin try to force itself on her alien features, but bat it down.
There wasn't any time for jokes or laughs at this moment. The situation was dire. The girls looked to Twilight for leadership, even if the mage knew nothing of 'how' or 'why' or 'where'. Somewhat nerve-wracking, yes, but necessary. Division would the last thing they needed.
Which made it irksome that this was exactly what was happening right now.
"Rares, would ya kindly stop pokin' me so much? Twi' 's supposed ta be tha sciency gal."
"Oh, but I just can't help myself, dear! This new body is giving me all sorts of new ideas~~!"
"Oh Rarity, shut your trap! We all know the only reason you're not freakin' out like the rest of us is because now you have even more hair than before!"
"Why, I say, Rainbow Dash, that's…actually a little bit true…"
"I can FINALLY hold that 'Congratulations-for-Getting-Splendiferous-New-Hair' party you've always wanted, Rarity!"
"...What?"
"Girls!" Twilight cried out, a sudden rush of anger shooting through her voice and face. The others ceased almost immediately, and Fluttershy seemed to curl tighter into the ball she had formed. The girls stared at Twilight, wide-eyed and waiting. The mage blushed at the attention, but set herself right soon enough.
"Look, girls, the last thing we need is to get at each others' throats. First, we need to recognize our current location."
"Then Ah c'n say that this ain't any forest 'round Ponyville that I remember," Applejack threw back without pause. "Whitetail Woods was 'n the middle 'a summer last I remember, 'n these birch 're close to barren."
Rainbow Dash, though seemingly bored prior, interjected. "And unless the weather teams screwed up, the weather's off too. Waaay too chilly for even a summer night."
Twilight noticed these observations, too. The temperature, though mildly warm in Ponyville, was now a brisk chill that set an ache in the joints, especially without any fur. The trees too exhibited a winter makeup, their yellowed leaves shriveling up and falling to forest floor. A growing overcast was in the sky, even though the Equestrian summer was in high gear and the sun shining down brightly.
"Is it possible that we could have moved forward in time?" Rarity put in her two bits. "I don't know much of magic, granted, but might you have activated some mysterious spell again, Twilight?"
Twilight felt a small part of herself bristle, but it was a fair assumption. "Not that I can remember. Most of my more recent incantations have been on conjuring and summons." She paused, then put one of her odd appendages to her squashed muzzle. "It's...possible that I may have created a reverse summon, but I don't believe I had enough knowledge on the subject to be sure."
By 'possible', Twilight meant more along the lines of 'inconceivable'. The act of summon was, itself, belonging to a class of spells requiring an intense knowledge of the subject. For conjuring, one needed to understand the item being conjured, its base materials and function for example. Even for a small trinket, it required immense power to recreate the object on a material plane. For a living conjuration? It was nigh insane to attempt.
"Well whate'er tha reason is, we all gotta stick tagether 'n-"
Before Applejack could finish, an audible 'snap' sounded in the brush. The group went rigid at the sound, and collectively, they turned their heads towards the woodland.
And were promptly greeted with a metal-clad golem with a sword at its hip.
"Well," it rumbled in a surprisingly midtone voice, "Damn."