Book one of "Who We Become".
Sunset always knew that she was destined for greatness, but she never dreamed of how great she could become. Not until she had seen it - the mirror had shown her as an alicorn. Ignoring Celestia's warnings, Sunset goes l...
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Something felt wrong. Sunset was lying on the ground with her eyes closed, and she had a dull ache all over her body. Could have been an effect of going through the mirror, could have been from falling face first as soon as she was through it. But there was more to it than just the pain. She couldn't exactly identify what it was, just that something felt wrong – Sunset felt wrong.
She pushed herself up to a sitting position, and the feeling persisted. The ground felt strange beneath her hooves; in fact, her hooves themselves felt like nothing she could explain. Slowly, she opened her eyes and winced at the light. She closed them again, and moved a hoof to wipe her eyes.
As soon as her hoof touched her face, she stopped. It was soft. Her hoof was soft. Her eyes immediately shot open, and she stared as the blurriness faded. Something was definitely wrong, her hoof looked more like a griffin's talons. It was split at the ends, with five protruding digits. That wasn't all that seemed strange either; her foreleg seemed smaller, both in length and width.
Terrified of what she might see, she took a deep breath and looked down at her body. She was... clothed? She hadn't been wearing clothes on the way through the mirror, but now she was. Everything seemed to be the wrong proportions, but it was hard to figure out what she was looking at.
Sunset tried to control her heart. Why was she freaking out so much? She needed to take control of the situation, but she couldn't make herself move. She closed her eyes and found her breathing was beyond her control. Still, she didn't have to look at that freakish thing attached to her foreleg.
Coming through the mirror had been a mistake. She was going to go back through, back to the Equestria she knew and understood. She would just have to tell Celestia –
All she could see were Celestia's eyes. 'You are no longer welcome in the castle.' The words echoed through Sunset's head, bouncing around until the only things she could focus on were the words and Celestia's gaze as she said them. It was worse than having her eyes open.
Steeling herself as best she could, Sunset once again opened her eyes. As she did, she became aware of more of the world around her. She was facing what seemed to be some sort of huge building, which wrapped around where she was sitting. She needed time to collect herself before she could even consider going into a building, so she decided to move away from it.
As she tried to rise, she found her forelegs seemed to be much shorter than her hindlegs. The discovery redoubled her panic, as she wondered what exactly had happened to her body. Without knowing where she was going, she found herself running away from the building – or trying to, although she was doing a poor job of coordinating her legs to move efficiently.
All the while as she ran, she tried to refocus her mind. She knew she wasn't acting rationally, that she needed to stop and think about what to do, not run blindly with no idea where she was going.
