“Night Rush, get down here!”

A dark blue-coated pegasus colt groaned and buried his face into his pillow, trying to shut out the sound of his mother’s voice. He sat there for a moment, not even breathing, as his mind and body struggled to wake up at the early hour; no matter how many days in a row they held school, his body never seemed to get used to being forced awake.

He slid out of bed, flanks-first, coming to a sitting position next to his bed. Absentmindedly, he rubbed his flank with a forehoof and looked back at it; Still blank, he thought to himself. He didn’t really know why he checked every morning anymore—after a solid ten years after everypony else typically got their cutie marks, he didn’t really expect one to show up overnight. Nonetheless, he checked anyway every morning; if one did happen to appear, he would naturally want to be the first to know about it.

He looked around at his room groggily, though there wasn’t really much to look at. His bed was nestled in the corner of his room, next to his window. At the foot of his bed was his dresser, with a few pieces of jewelry and a mirror sitting on top of it. A small flight of stairs led down to the door to his room. At the top of the stairs sat a short hat and coat rack, which held a brownish-black leather fedora with a red ribbon around it for decoration.

He groaned as he got to his hooves and walked over to his dresser—which was sort of a misnomer. There were no clothes of any kind in it; it was more like a tall nightstand with drawers. He grabbed two golden rings with his front hooves and deftly threaded them through the two holes in his right ear. His mother had had a fit when he came home with his ear pierced—in two places, no less—but had eventually gotten used to the idea, simply rolling her eyes whenever she saw him messing with them. He reached to his back left leg and shifted the golden ring that wrapped around it down a little bit so that it rested just above his hock; it had shifted upwards slightly during the night.

He reached behind his head and preened his feathers until they were straight, and grabbed a comb and ran it through his long (for a colt), brown mane and tail. He glanced into a mirror and, satisfied with his appearance, he walked down the small flight of stairs and out his door, grabbing his hat and putting it on his head with one deft motion, slamming his door behind him. Trotting into the kitchen, he grabbed an apple from the basket on the counter and trotted out the front door, yelling a “Goodbye!” at his mom.

His house was a fairly simple, two-story log cabin next to the library. The roof had shingles, unlike most of the other houses in Ponyville. There wasn’t very much to it, inside or out: his family was comprised mostly of accountants, and since there wasn’t much need of such things where money flowed freely and taxes were at the lowest they had been for a century, they didn’t have very many possessions. It never bothered Night Rush, of course; he was content to take things as they came.

He trotted down the road, yawning drearily, to Sugarcube Corner for his morning snack. His schedule at the school had him studying until nearly four in the afternoon with only a few bathroom breaks in between, so he wanted to have a little more than an apple for breakfast. Sweets weren’t exactly the breakfast of champions, but it was better than nothing.

Night Rush opened the door to the sweet shop; the familiar tinkle of the bell attached to the door was welcoming as the wonderful, cinnamon and flour leaden air that filled Sugarcube Corner. Nopony appeared to be at downstairs at the moment, so he went ahead and started browsing the shop’s wares, ogling at the delicious-looking, freshly baked pastries and confections that lined the shelves in the glass counter.

“Hey, Rushie! D’you want your usual?” A pink party pony’s voice greeted him suddenly.

Night Rush smiled, not turning away from the counter. Pinkie Pie got on every one of his last nerves, but she somehow managed to make him smile while she was doing it. “I think I’ll try something new this morning. How much are those rainbow cupcakes?” He asked, pointing through the glass counter to a few cupcakes with rainbow-colored icing. “I’ve heard that rainbows are really spicy, but—Pinkie Pie?” He looked around the shop floor; Pinkie was nowhere to be seen. He looked up in the rafters and under the tables, but Pinkie was still strangely missing.

“Uhm… Pinkie?” Perplexed, he turned back to the counter, only to be greeted by a certain eccentric pink pony.

“I'm right here, silly!” Pinkie Pie said from behind the counter. “And those cupcakes are for immortal ponies only. Apparently, our digestive systems can’t contain the sheer amount of capsaicin, and it disassemble a vast majority of the enzymes in our small intestines and the proteins in our cells, thus making it really, really hard to live.

Night Rush simply smiled and nodded. “Sure. Well, then, if the rainbow cupcakes will kill me, then I think I’ll have my usual.”

Pinkie Pie grinned and bounded away into the next room, making Night Rush wince as a few pots and pans crashed to the ground from Pinkie’s excitedness. She emerged within a few seconds carrying a small cardboard box with a bow on top of it on her head, balancing it with her ears. “Here ya go! I threw a surprise in there, just for you!” Her grin grew even wider in anticipation.

Night Rush eyed the box on top of Pinkie’s head. “That doesn’t look very much like my usual.”

Pinkie somehow nodded without the box falling off of her head. “Your usual is inside the box, silly. But I threw a surprise in there, too!”

“Why a surprise? Did I forget to mark my calendar for something?”

“Nope! It’s today, so you get a present along with your usual.”

Night Rush smiled warmly; it wasn’t exactly unheard of for Pinkie to randomly give out presents, but he had never been the subject of her spontaneous generosity before.

“So, what’s in here?” Night Rush asked.

“You’ll have to open it and see!” Pinkie said, balancing on one front hoof and extending her neck towards Night Rush.

Night Rush reached up and took the box off of her head, smiling. “So… you want me to open it now?”

Pinkie nodded vigorously and fell back on all four hooves, the wait obviously killing her.

“Right now?”

Pinkie squealed and prostrated herself at Night Rush’s hooves, her own hooves pushed together in a mock prayer. “Yes please!” She squealed.

“Well,” Night Rush said as slowly as possible, “If you’re sure that you’re sure…” He paused, taking a very slow breath. “Then, I guess I’ll open it now.”

Pinkie Pie seemed to teleport from the ground to a sitting position next to Night Rush, buzzing slightly with excitement.

Night Rush let out a snicker and, sitting back on his haunches, pulled at the bow; the knot came loose easily, and he stalled for a little more time by putting it into a neat little pile by his hooves. Pinkie squirmed at this; he wasn’t sure if she was aware that he was torturing her on purpose.

Night Rush opened the flaps on the cardboard box and cocked his head to the side. “What… is this?” He asked, pulling the object out and turning it over in his hoof.

It was a large golden ring—or, at least, it used to be. It was covered in tarnish and what looked to be moss, but it obviously used to be a piece of decorative jewelry.

“It’s your ring, silly! I found it the other day, and I knew that it was yours, so I gave it back! I hope you didn’t miss it too badly.” Pinkie seemed to hesitate slightly at this; she was obviously slightly worried that Night Rush might get mad at her for not giving him his ring as soon as she found it.

“Pinkie, I'm still wearing my ring,” Night Rush protested, looking back at his ring as if to assure himself that it was, indeed, still on his leg.

“But… it’s yours…” She assured him. “I know it is! Look, it even has the little writing on it!”

Night Rush looked closer at the ring; it took him a minute to find it, but sure enough, there was the inscription that all of his personal items always bore: The Sky is Forever; the Future is Eternity. A few of the letters had been scratched off here and there, but it was clearly the exact same style of writing as his ring.

“Well. It’s my ring, or a really good fake. But you’d be giggling like crazy if this was a prank, so…” Night Rush trailed off, lost in his own thoughts. He held the ring in one hoof and fumbled with the brim of his fedora with the other; it had somehow gotten slightly bent out of shape.

Pinkie put a hoof to her chin, appearing deep in thought. “Aliens,” She suggested, motioning with her forehooves.

Night Rush snorted. “I think we can check that off the list of things that isn’t behind this.” He tapped the floor with a back hoof. “Well! I can’t sit around here all day. I’ll eat my breakfast and be out of your hair.”

Pinkie smiled her classic, patented, Pinkie Pie smile. “Okie-dokie-loki! I gotta get back to the kitchens, ‘cause I don’t want one of my new cakes to burn. But I’ll talk to ya later!” With that, she bounced away into the kitchen, leaving Night Rush to ponder his present and munch on his breakfast of a fried apple pie.

Night Rush trotted through Ponyville’s streets on his way to the schoolhouse, humming a mellow tune to himself. He had temporarily forgotten about the curious ring, and was taking a quick shortcut in between ‘Sofas and Quills’ and ‘The Barn’, which was a cross between a restaurant and a nightclub. He turned the corner, heading towards the schoolhouse…

… And then slammed face-first into a wall of dark grey fur.

Night Rush shook the stars out of his eyes and sat on his haunches, rubbing his nose. Looking up, he said, “You, sir, have some kick-flank pecs, and… uh… what.”

The grey stallion had no face. Instead, he had a skull with a few pieces of rotting carrion stuck between his teeth; he exhaled, the rancid, rattling rush of air nearly choking Night Rush.

“Somepony needs a tic-tac,” Night Rush quipped, immediately cursing himself mentally; he had an awful habit of saying inappropriate things when he was too scared to think straight.

The grey pony’s face appeared to scowl. “Silence, mortal. You will come with me. You will ask no questions, and you will speak only when you are spoken to. Nopony else can see me besides you. Do you understand?” The grey pony’s voice was a mix between a whisper and a blood-curdling scream; Night Rush assumed that the pony was male, although he couldn’t tell.

“S-sure.” Night Rush stammered.

The grey pony did a quick about-face and started trotting away. Night Rush hesitated for a moment, still too freaked out to move, and then shakily started to canter behind the grey pony. Night Rush gulped and started looking around; nobody seemed to notice the grey pony without skin on his face, so he assumed that the grey pony was serious about everything he said. He also assumed that very bad things would happen to him if he asked a question or spoke without being spoken to.
The grey pony led Night Rush to the Everfree forest; Night Rush was panting slightly, since the only exercise that he got to do normally was weather control training, which was mind-numbingly easy work. The mile-long trot had winded him, but the grey pony didn’t seem to be breathing hard. Or breathing at all, for that matter.

The Everfree forest was as dank and depressing as ever, with its overhanging vines hanging from limbs and the moss choking out all of the trees and keeping grass from growing on the ground. The spongy carpet was slightly bouncy and squishy beneath Night Rush’s hooves, and he had to resist the urge to squirm; the feeling was alien and weird. Even in the daytime, the canopy of trees blocked out nearly all of Celestia’s sun, allowing the moss to grow freely.

“This is the Everfree forest,” the grey pony said.

“Really, now,” Night rush said, immediately regretting it. Dammit. Again with the inappropriate things.

The grey pony paused. “You… infuriate me.” He said it with the exact same tone that he had used earlier, and the grey pony’s body language hadn’t changed in the slightest, but Night Rush could simply feel the hate and anger coming off of the pony. “As I was saying, this is the Everfree forest. It is named ‘Everfree’ because it is free from the constraints of time. The forest you see before you has been the exact same since the dawn of creation.”

Something short-circuited inside Night Rush’s brain at that exact moment. “But why is that important? And why did you take me here? Why don’t you have a face? How do you talk without lips or a tongue? What’s your name? Were you always like that, or did something happen to you? How do you know all of this? How’d you get so tall?” The words tumbled out of Night Rush’s mouth before he could stop them—or even comprehend them, for that matter.

The grey pony snorted. “You are insolent and you are stupid. However, I was ordered to bring you to help stop the Schism.”

“The Schism?” Night Rush had recovered from his mental holiday, but he was still incredibly dazed.

The grey pony said nothing, and simply extended a hoof towards Night Rush’s face.

“Ohcelestiapleasedontkillme.”

“Silence. Take my hoof.”

“Huh?”

“Take. My. Hoof.”

“Oh, r-right. Sorry.” Night Rush extended a shaky hoof towards the grey pony’s. He hesitated slightly just before touching the grey pony’s hoof, and then made contact.

And then the world exploded right before Night Rush’s eyes.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 Estimated time remaining: 53 Minutes