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// Another Void Denizen 
// Story: The Void of Harmony 
// by Mordred 
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I stood up after maybe a couple of hours meditating, deciding to explore the castle after stretching. I wandered down a hall that was on the left side of the throne room if you were facing the inside, and found myself in a library. I grabbed the first book off of a shelf, and examined the title, which was “The Unification of the Pony Races’. I quickly skimmed through it, finding out that originally the unicorns moved the sun and moon, the pegasi managed the weather, and the earth ponies tended to the land, providing the other races with food, in return for their services of keeping the weather and diurnal cycle in check. Eventually, the three races were unified by the alicorns Celestia and Luna, who took the roles as princesses in a diarchy. They managed the sun and moon respectively, instead of leaving it in the hands of the unicorn families, who then became noble families.
I placed it back on the shelf,  and pulled another random book off of it, and was surprised to find that it was a compendium of all of the knowledge that the ponies had on the Void up until 30 a.u, which I took to mean after unification. I was more surprised that the author was Luna, the second princess who had been possessed by Nightmare Moon, if Celestia’s testimony was anything to go by. I looked through it, finding that most of the abilities given to the wielders of the Void in that time were very rough versions of my own, and the normal effects of the Void were all there, most having been observed on unicorns who had dabbled in the wrong magics.
One passage stood out, being that the tone of the book had been largely impartial up until that point, but this passage was written in an affectionate tone. It spoke of a unicorn named Starswirl the Bearded, the first unicorn to discover the Void, who had prior been Celestia and Luna’s magic teacher. He had gone insane after delving too deeply into the power, but was able to occasionally take back control, causing him to be banished somewhere called ‘The Great Library.’
I made note to ask about visiting that place, when I heard the clatter of hooves on stone, and a distinctly familiar voice muttering curses in Old English. I walked out of the library, with my Akbolto Prime at the ready, when I saw Nightmare Moon walking into the throne room. I walked toward her quietly, and said, “Remember me?,” as soon as I was right behind her.
She jumped up, and quickly recovering, snarling a response back at me, “For that, thou shall die by my hand,” Her horn glowed, and, expecting a spell, I prepared to shoot her. Instead, I was surprised to find her swinging a crescent moon shaped halberd down at me, causing me to block with my Akboltos crossed over my head.
I shoved her back a little, and switched to my Dakra in the brief amount of time that I had to breathe. Just as she was about to strike me, I made nearly a dozen clones of myself, and said, “There is a reason that I am known as Mirage, the one who is always just within sight, but never within reach.” Nightmare Moon simply started swing her halberd around, with me blocking the odd strike from it with one of the clones, so as to trick her into thinking it was the real one.
She quickly got frustrated playing a guessing game with the clones, and started charging a powerful spell with her horn. She yelled, “If I hit all of you, I don’t need to find the real one!” I quickly cast Eclipse, an ability that either grants the caster bonus damage in the light, or damage resistance in the dark, and stepped into the shadows. All of the clones, along with myself, turned a misty, shadowy gray, and Nightmare Moon, thinking I was trying to flee into the shadows, unleashed her spell.
I blocked with my Dakra as the spell hit, and was surprised to see that it was a void beam, and a reasonably powerful one at that. I had a distinct feeling that I wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t used Eclipse, or blocked with my Dakra. I smiled on the inside, using Transference to step out of my warframe. As I did this, Hall of Mirrors and Eclipse deactivated, allowing Nightmare Moon to see me clearly. She looked a bit surprised to see a child like me there, but I was grinning psychotically, and when she noticed the look on my face she seemed a bit frightened, but concealed it well.
She charged forward with her halberd at the ready, and swung it in a horizontal arc. I jumped up, simply landing on the blade as it went by, saying, “You really need to practice with this thing more, like, seriously.” She screamed in anger at not being able to kill a mere ‘child’, and flung me at the ceiling. I casually did a backflip as I reached the top of the arc, taking a showman’s bow as I landed. Nightmare Moon started to charge at me again, but this time I Void dashed right in front of her, punching her in the stomach with a Void strengthened fist. She went flying, before catching herself just before hitting a wall.
She looked past me as I saw six ponies, with half of them dressed in semi-formal attire, with the others dressed in what seemed to be everyday wear. The purple unicorn in the center went into a spiel about friendship and some other B.S., and I didn’t pay attention, instead keeping my eyes on Nightmare Moon, who was walking forward menacingly with her halberd clutched tightly in her hands, ready to kill these new people. I placed myself between them and her, shouting over my shoulder, “Cut the theatrics, if you’re going to do something, do it, otherwise, leave.”
The white unicorn looked taken aback, but then all six of them started glowing, with some sort of talismans floating to each one, with the purple unicorn taking center stage.
I looked at them, curious to what was happening, when Nightmare Moon swung the halberd to decapitate me. I blocked it unconsciously with the amp that was now on my arm, and shot her in the face with a powerful blast from the primary fire on it, which knocked her into the twin thrones in the back of the room. While she didn’t look too worse for wear, it placed her outside of my general vicinity, and in the sights of the six who were now floating. A beam fired from the purple unicorn, with all the energy from the others coalescing on her as the beam continued. When the beam stopped, Celestia, who I hadn’t realized was missing, due to being out all day, returned, and started talking to the purple unicorn and her friends.
I went over to where Nightmare Moon had been, only to find a woman that looked to be in maybe her mid-teens lying on the floor, crying. I turned to Celestia, and said, “So, she isn’t dead? I would’ve expected that to kill her.”
The other ponies gasped, and Celestia rushed over, giving her a hug. She turned to me, and asked, “Why would you think she was dead? Didn’t I explain what the elements would do?”
I shrugged, and said, “You didn’t really explain what they did, you just said to delay her for a bit until the new element bearers, led by your student, arrived.” I turned to the pink woman, who was dressed in a pink sweater with blue and yellow balloons stitched over the left breast, and blue jeans, who was positively bouncing up and down at seeing me.
I nodded for her to go ahead, and she said, 
“I’mhappytomeetyouI’mPinkiePieandIhopethatyou’llcometomypartyformeetingnewpeopleandIknowthatyou’refromadifferentworld,butIwon’ttellanyone.”
The only things that I got out of that long string of words was that her name was Pinkie Pie, and that she knew I was not native to this world. I shrugged, meaning to bring it up with her later, in private, and noticed the purple unicorn, no longer occupied by speaking with Celestia, was messing with my warframe. I stalked over to her, and said, “Do you mind leaving my Mirage Prime be? I’d prefer it to stay fine, as I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”
She turned to me quizzically, and said, “I thought you were Mirage? And I will leave it alone, I was just curious,” She finished with a bit of a pout. The orange woman with the Stetson on and farm clothes, and the cyan mare in athletic clothes were the next to approach.
They opened their mouths at the same time, both asking, “How did you fight Nightmare Moon like that?”
They glared at each other for interrupting them, and I responded by telling them, “I use Void abilities, though I also have physical augmentations from them, namely superhuman strength and infinite stamina.”
The two were nodding along until they realized something that I had said, and both, once again, asked, “What’s a human?”
I facepalmed, and then gestured to myself, and said, “To tell the truth, a Tenno would be a more fitting title than ‘human’, as I lost my humanity when I gained these powers,” The two, seemingly satisfied by that answer, wandered over to Twilight and Pinkie, and started talking to them.
The white unicorn, who had, up to this point, been staring at the two princesses embracing each other and crying on each other’s shoulders, took notice of me and started walking towards me purposefully. She stopped in front of me, and looked my Koppra operator outfit over, and began salivating over it. I pointedly said to her, “You’re drooling,”
She snapped out of it, and introduced herself, “I’m Rarity, the proprietor of the Carousel Boutique, and I apologize for my uncouth behavior. It’s simply that that is one of the most perfect outfits that I have seen in a while, with its color combinations matching you perfectly, and its worksponyship flawless,”
I nodded to her, and smiled, saying, “It’s great to find another who appreciates aesthetics as I do. However, I never caught the names of the purple unicorn, orange woman, and cyan pegasus,”
The butter yellow pegasus who I hadn’t noticed chose that moment to pipe up, saying, “The orange one was Applejack, the purple one was Twilight, and the cyan one was Rainbow Dash. Oh, and I-I’m Fluttershy, by the way,”
I smiled at her reassuringly, and was about to thank her for the names that she had given me, but was called over by Celestia. I went over, and she hugged me, pulling me into her rather large breasts in a tight hug. Sadly, as I was no longer a guy, I didn’t really get anything out of it, but it was a nice hug nonetheless. Luna, at least I think that was her name, said from behind me, “We thank you for stopping us from doing something we would regret. Also, if you are coming back to the castle, we hope you’ll teach us about your abilities.” I nodded, and was surprised to find us teleported to the castle, in an empty guest room.
Celestia left the room, and I noticed that my warframe was just standing in a corner of the room. I grinned at the idea it gave me, and turned to Luna, asking, “Do you still have your Void abilities?” She nodded meekly, and I grinned further, continuing, “You see that suit of armor over there, the one that looks female?” she nodded again, and I finished my train of thought, saying, “I want you to use your Void power, and reach out with your mind and take control of it.”
She focused, not saying anything, and I turned to the warframe. Suddenly, it moved, and Luna fell back on the bed, out cold. I appraised her aptitude for Void abilities to be at about the end of the Second Dream, just after you gain them, but cannot use Transference, just a high powered Void beam and partial control of the warframe. Luna was laying passed out on the bed where she had landed after the teleport.
I meditated on ways that I could teach her of the wonders of the void, and concluded that I would probably have to take her monster hunting in order to level up her Focus skills. I wanted to find out as soon as possible if she would have the schools all lumped together, or separate as I did. Thinking on that made me realize that, since I had all of the individual nodes of every focus tree unlocked, I may be able to merge them all into one school. I tried merging Vazarin, Madurai, and Zenurik together, as they seemed most compatible, and was surprised to find it worked, giving me a rush of energy.
I was restless, but I would have to wait until Luna was fully recovered to begin her Focus training in earnest. I looked over at Luna, finally taking note of her clothing. She was wearing a dark blue dress, made with some sort of light fabric, with a simplistic crescent moon design surrounded by an inky black that I supposed was the night sky. She looked to be about the same age as me, at least physically, that being maybe fifteen or sixteen. She looked a lot like Celestia, except dark blue fur, which I had recently noticed the ponies having, giving them their colors, with her hair being a light blue color. I took up my meditation pose again, and floated just over the floor, waiting for her to wake up to begin her training.