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// Chapter 7 
// Story: My little pony: Soul of gold 
// by Zanaffer 
//------------------------------//


In a remote location were time and space were not fixed concepts a dark figure made its way purposefully trough a dimly lit room, several other figures could be seen scattered across the room obscured by shadows, all eyes fixed on the black armored pegasus.

“So, the prideful one returns, and yet the sun and the moon remain on their throne high in the sky.” One shadowy figure spoke in a slow mocking voice.

Pride stopped his advance and shot the speaker a murderous glare. “Silence you!” He spat. “The fake goddesses will fall by my hoof, and so will the elements, make no mistake about that!” Pride declared making no effort to hide the hate in his voice.

“Why yes, you declared so before you parted, and yet now you return to us not victorious but beaten, and broken.” Those last words came out calm and deliberate as the figure shifted his attention at the rather large crack in the ‘unbreakable’ armor worn by Pride.

Pride tsk’ed in annoyance at the remark. “Some unforeseen pests have appeared that may present an obstacle to our plans, now out of my way! I must see Lord Cronos.” He said with finality and resumed his canter.

“Unforeseen pests eh, interesting!” The dark figure said as he brought his hands together in a pensive manner.

Back with our heroes, after the map in the castle had made itself known it had magically signaled a faraway location towards witch the element bearers were currently heading alongside Aioria who was acting as their personal guard and escort, already fully armored and with the addition of a flawless white cape over his shoulders courtesy of Rarity who had insisted that their personal guard absolutely must look 'dashing and heroic', witch had led to a veritable fashion montage featuring all kinds of capes, cloaks and cowls, an ordeal witch Aioria stoically endured.

There was an animated chatter going on, mostly about what they would possibly find once they arrived at their destination, Rainbow Dash suggested that they would find some kind of monster to beat up or maybe even Cronos himself and promptly started bragging about how she would totally beat him up. Pinkie Pie of course was sure that they would run into a super-duper awesome party and have loads of fun. Fluttershy hopefully that they would not find anything scary at all and they would all be fine. Aioria quietly hoped that they would find any of the others.

The train finally reached the end of the line and the ponies descended from the train only to be met with a barren landscape, being left with no choice the ponies walked the rest of the way until they could see a small town in the distance. 

“That’s it.” Said Twilight. “ That’s the place on the map.”

“Well, let’s go down there and find the spa” Rarity said as she made way towards the town but Twilight stopped her by teleporting in front of her.

“Wait.” Twilight said. “We don’t know why the map sent us here, we can’t just walk right in, it could be dangerous.” Her worried statement was received with a hoof pump and a “Yess “ from Rainbow Dash.

“I’ll go first, follow me.” Said Aioria taking that as his cue to take the lead, he made his way cautiously towards the town doing good his best to ignore Pinkie who was maneuvering under some rocks (and a Boulder at one point) in a not really stealthy way. When the had gotten  close enough they all took cover behind a large rock and took a look at the town.

“Is this really the place the map sent us? It looks like the most  orange town in all of Equestria!” Rainbow Dash complained.

The rest of the group began giving their opinions on the town but Aioria looked closer at the residents, there was something odd about them, or so his sixth sense told him, they felt odd as if there was something missing about them, Pinkie Pie seemed of the same opinion as demonstrated when she shot up answer said. “I don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit, I know smiles, and those smiles, they’re just not right.” Just like she pointed out every resident of the village had a large toothy smile on their faces, everywhere you looked the same smile could be seen in everypony.

“Forget about the smiles, look at their cutie marks.” Twilight interjected pointing out that as with the smiles, all the ponies had the same mark on their flanks, that would be naturally impossible, all information Aioria had on the utilities marks posted at the uniqueness of each and every one.

“An entire village with the same cutie mark, how can this be? Twilight asked to no one in particular.

“I think there’s some kind horrific monster behind this.” Rainbow said.

“What makes you say that.” Aioria asked seriously.

“Because fighting some horrific monster would be super awesome.” Rainbow said relishing the idea, Aioria couldn’t stop rolling his eyes at the carelessness of the comment.

“Ah’ reckon we oughtta just head I to town and talk to some locals, figure out what’s going on.” Applejack suggested and the ponies walked into town. 

“Those smiles are bad news.” Said Pinkie uncharacteristically grumpy as she followed suit.

As they entered town they were greeted by all the local ponies with a “Welcome” witch was delivered in the creepiest way possible as they all  came from ponies with an identical smile and barely any inflection on their voices, they continued forward until late they were intercepted by a stallion wearing a cloak. “Welcome, pardon my forwardness but are you an alicorn?” He asked Twilight who gave him an awkward smile

“That there’s the Princess of Friendship.” Applejack supplemented helpfully.

“Well you’ve certainly come to the right place every for friendship.” The stallion replied placing extra emphasis on that last word.

“What brings you to town?” Asked a white stallion approaching the group.

“We’re not entirely sure.” Twilight said.

“I see, well all are welcome in our little village, my name is Double Diamond and this is Party Favor.” He said signaling at the other stallion.

Applejack responded in kind introducing all of her friends and “Lightning Bolt”, immediately after Double Diamond craned his neck closer to the mares. “And you all have your own cutie marks.” He said creepily as he ogled at their flanks, Aioria found this action atrocious and quickly stepped in to make his presence known.

“Excuse me.” He said quite brashly. “Have you had any ‘trouble’ around here lately?” The heavily armored royal guard stand in inquired.

If Double Diamond felt intimidated he hid it well. “Trouble? Which I don’t think we’ve ever had trouble in our little village.” He said dismissively, Party Favor quickly agreed. “Perhaps you’d care to speak to our founder, Starlight Glimmer.” He turned and began walking towards the edge of town with Party Favor at his side, when they reached the last house in the street they both knocked at the door in unison and promptly entered followed closely by the group.

“Be ready to fight.”  Rainbow Dash said to Aioria. “We don’t know what’s gonna come trough that door.” The back door opened and trough the dark frame came, a rather ordinary are looking unicorn mare, she was a light shade of purple with a darker purple mane with a blue highlight on both her mane and tail.

“Welcome, I’m so pleased to have you here.” She said merrily while Rainbow Dash groaned loudly having her hopes for adventure dashed once more, Aioria however studied her closely, for a faint moment before she came out the door he felt as if there actually a horrific monster behind the door, but now he felt no threat whatsoever coming from her, he was focusing on this as the ponies exchanged pleasantries, Starlight Glimmer seemed rather interested in  having an alicorn princess as a guest while Pinkie Pie kept frowning at her just as she had frowned at everything in the town so far.

“Were happy to have any pony who want to experience ‘true’ friendship for the first time” Starlight said in a delightfully smug tone, this was not lost to Applejack who deadpanned a response. “Oh indeed, that’s what’s so unique about our village you see, around here we don’t flaunt our special talents, because we don’t have any special talents to flaunt.” She explained.

“Is that  why you all have the same cutie mark?” Twilight asked, Aioria paid close attention to what she had to say , ever since arriving he couldn’t shake off the feeling of wrongness that permitted the whole town, maybe now he would get some answers, except, instead of answering Twilight’s question, Starlight began, to , sing… yes, she was indeed singing, she exited her house and began gathering the town ponies to do an improvised musical number, there was even music, a few verses past before Aioria brain reset and remembered he was in magical ponyland in another world.

“What is going on?” He asked expecting a somewhat reasonable answer, he would be disappointed.

“Haven’t you ever seen a spontaneous outburst of harmonic magic?” Twilight said as if he had asked what was a cutie mark, witch he had, repeatedly. “The ambient magic in Equestria often builds up, especially in areas around ponies and from time to time is released in  the form of music and dance often affecting large numbers of ponies, the largest known example happened in Neigh Orleans during the festivities of Mare Di Gras witch lasted…” Twilight continued to explain but soon she realized it wasn’t going trough. “It’s one of the most common known magic phenomenon known to pony kind, how could you don’t know about it?” Twilight asked slightly flustered, Aioria merely gave her a deadpan look ‘till it seemed to click on her.

With the half attention Aioria was giving the song he could tell that some of the lyrics seemed to have troublesome connotations, Fluttershy didn’t seem to catch on to this for she was bobbing her head to and from to the beat, that is until Pinkie Pie shot her a glare with her now ever present frown. The whole scene was so bizarre that by the time Aioria cane out of his ‘private little world of denial’ they were all sitting at a table around a plate of muffins, the waitress looked a little jumpy and discretely asked them to meet her inside before disappearing into the store building.

They were discussing how to follow their new lead without arousing suspicion when Applejack came up with something.” Ah’ve got an idea, but ya gotta eat all of them muffins Lightning.” She said.

“What!? Why me?” Aioria responded somewhat alarmed, those cupcakes were rejected by Pinkie Pie and in his short time knowing her he had seen her devour some questionable food choices.

“Darling it is a gentlestallion’s duty to come at the rescue of a maiden  in distress and bear their burden, now go along and tackle that burden.” Aioria was suddenly besieged by six smiling mares that looked right at home in this town,  begrudgingly he picked up a cupcake and took a bite. Several minutes later he bit down the last piece of “cupcake” while looking at little green in the face.

“Ah can’t belive you ate all our muffins Lightning!” Applejack exclaimed rather loudly, Aioria was not amused. “We’d best go inside and get some more!” 

They found themselves going down to the basement in search of anypony. “Hello! Sugarbell, are you there.” Twilight called.

Their  mysterious waitress emerged from the shadows with the now familiar town smile. “Thanks for coming.” She said.

“Why did you want us to come early down here?” Twilight asked as she studied the basement.

“So nopony could see what’s about to happen.” Sugarbell said eerily and at one two other ponies materialized from the shadows and approached the group. Aioria dropped into a battle stance but instead of a barrage of attacks they were assaulted by a barrage of questions.

“Are you really the Princess of Friendship?”

“Do you know Princess Celestia?”

“I looove your cutie mark!” so on and so forth, turns out a group of ponies who were not completely sold into the “equality motto of Starlight Glimmer called them down to be a leader to have a chat away from prying eyes witch was exactly what they needed to get some information. From them they learned that Starlight used a magical tool to remove the cutie marks and stored them in a vault hidden in a cave witch they signalled as their next destination.

Shortly after they were being escorted by Starlight to a nearby cave where the vault was presumably located, upon entering they were met with breathtaking scenery, carved from the very wall of the cave was an enormous frame and within it were dozens if not hundreds of cutie marks contained behind a glowing crystal wall. “Behold our cutie mark vault.” Starlight said proudly and then she walked up to a pedestal witch held a wooden staff that split in two at the top much like a turning fork. “And this is the ‘staff of sameness’, this is the tool that allows us to free ourselves from our marks.” Starlight said with reverence grabbing the staff in her magic. “Immanuel curious, how did the subject of the vault come up?”

“Oh some ponies were telling us how much they missed their cutie marks…” Pinkie began saying u till she was shushed  by Twilight. “Oops.” She said realizing her error.

“Were they?” Starlight stretched her words in a singsong way. “Well, you seem to inspire all sorts of free thinking, don’t you!?” Her last words were more an accusation than a question as ponies began to close in on them from all sides.

“It’s a trap!” Twilight cried as she teleported a over and began charging up her horn when suddenly Starlight pointed the staff at her enveloping her in a magic field. Aioria moved to help her, but something (or rather a dozen somethings) prevented him from moving quick enough, as the staff did it’s job and Twilight’s cutie mark separated from her flames all seemed lost when Twilight burst into a ball of light blinding email everypony in the cave including Starlight who used the staff to shield her eyes, when the light died down they all looked back at Twilight and balked at what the were seeing, Twilight’s mane and tail had grown considerably larger and now had two extra highlights, her wings had likewise grown larger with a deeper purple shade marking the extra length she had gained, and more notorious of all her cutie mark seemed to have exploded all around her body leaving glowing and pulsing stars scattered all across her body.

Suddenly Aioria was once again in Canterlot Castle as the doors to the throne room opened revealing a goddess in all her terrible let glory. 
Starlight in the meanwhile was shocked silent her jaw hanging slack in he air at this deal delopment. “Wha- what is that?” She demanded.

“That’s the Rainbow Force!!” Rainbow cheered. “Kick her flank Twilight!!”

But as soon as it came it disappeared,  Twilight glowed faintly and suddenly reverted back to her normal form and promptly fainted dropping to the ground where Aioria was ready to catch her, all her friends closed in to check on Twilight who had passed out probably from exertion.

Starlight looked confused for a moment and then laughed maniacally. “Ha, so much for your “Rainbow Force”, now immediately going to collect all your cutie marks so you cannot all jo8n us in equality!” Starlight declared looming over the defeated ponies.

“Equality means that even everyone is the same and no one is above any other, surely you don’t mean this little cult you have going here.” Said a voice that seemed to come from the cave itself, a mystifying voice like that of a spirit or a sage, a voice that Aioria knew very well.

“Who’s there?” Starlight asked looking frantically around trying in vain to find the source of the unnerving voice. “Show yourself.” As Starlight continued her search for the intruder she kept backtracking looking left to right waving the staff in a threatening manner around her, as she kept doing this she saw movement in the corner of her eye and immediately  turned to confront the source, only to see herself in front if her, confused she approached her reflection to see what is wax or where it came from, as she gazed into her own eyes the surface email that was reflecting her image shimmered revealing anther form previously concealed.

“Crystal Wall!”

The reflective surface shimmered for an instant and suddenly exploded outward, Starlight jumped back using the staff to shield herself, once she recovered she looked at where she was before, there, we’re previously there was nothing now stood a stallion in golden armor of witch the most eye catching feature were the large horns protruding from his shoulders, he was a white unicorn with a purple mane and tail, his mane as well as his tail were tied at the end much like Applejack and finally in between his eyes and horn there were two violet dots giving him an air of mysticism. Aioria smiled broadly at the arrival of a new ally, Mu of Aries had arrived.