Chapter Nine
Kindred of Nature
As Luna left Twilight beside the creature's room, the lavender unicorn continued to stare at the magic before her. It was unfamiliar and quite impressive for all that it was. While she did not specialize in creating illusions or reproduction of things she knew, she had studied it like many other things and could recognize the amount of effort something might take. She pushed magic into the slate once again and watched closely for several moment. She finally, after watching the scene many more times, noticed something.
Dawn, as it is in Equestria, is all but simple. The setting of the moon to make way for the sun is something that Equestrians have been doing for as long as the creatures of this world knew. History told of no times before and nothing could say what would happen were the sun and moon to remain untouched. Despite this, and despite the sudden rising of the sun to it's xenith with every day, nature itself takes a strange amount of time to awaken.
Nocturnal creatures remain active for a part of the morning while many diurnal creatures take a few hours to rise. The oddness of this was, for the most part, not noted by any ponies or creatures in particular. It was however, a question that scholars had examined for years. This was the most curious part of the drawing Twilight had received. After having messed with it several times, she noted that the sun seemed to crest in the background and rise slowly into the sky.
The only reason she had been certain that it had meant a full day was the moon slowly replacing it in the background. It was, for the most part, similar to what happened on Equestria, if not for the lack of the stationary stellar bodies. Now of course, this could have been simply an artistic choice but considering the effort and magic put into it, she did not think that was the case. The creature looked, for the most part, terrified when ponies were in the room. Well, terrified might not have been the proper word to use, as it wasn't screaming.
Cautious. It was particularly cautious, she decided. It wasn't such a strange thing considering the forest had been devoid of anything alive, especially with how far in they had gone. Furthermore, griffons did look particularly dangerous and they as a general rule had a tendency to be a bit more avid in their anger. Nonetheless, this piece simply had to be the creatures attempt at communicating, Twilight decided. Most ponies likely wouldn't have gathered much from a simple creation on a chalk slate but she wasn't most ponies.
The first step was to try and recreate the magic it had used. If she could do that, chances were it might see her as a friend or at least not a threat. To many creatures in Equestria, unicorns were actually quite threatening. It was, she couldn't remember who had brought up the motion, illegal for a unicorn to participate in any battles with the other races. This wasn't an Equestrian rule either, it had been decided by a congregation of world leaders. This meant that, if the creature's original home had been anything like hers, magic would be considered a huge threat to safety.
Twilight, in particular, only knew a few self-defense spells. Celestia had actually locked many of the offensive spells away and nearly expelled her for looking at one particularly nasty one. Despite that, she had been forbidden from participating in any diplomacy talks. This wasn't a rule that had always been in place, rather, it was only recently established after an incident with some deer.
The magic in the slate was in it's most basic form, similar at best to some of the more ancient and outdated forms of nature magic she knew of. All of the most effective or impressive modern magic failed to use that particularly complex helix base structure. Some of the more outlandish and distant caribou still practiced it, though they had many issues keeping their farms running. This structure was exceeding more complex than that, however, because she could sense some more intricate details woven into it.
The problem was that she didn't have the proper equipment to help her check the smaller details. Magic worked well enough as she was using it now, to replicate an image of the magic used, but trying to magnify the image even further distorted it. At home she could replicate it in a solid fashion and then use her tools to further analyze it, but none of that was in the castle. The best she could do was imitate the basic form and try casting with it.
Taking a deep breath, the lavender unicorn closed her eyes. As her horn began to glow, sparkling light shimmered in the air and flashes of green and the soft scents of grass and dirt filled her nose. The air crackled for a few moments and the light exploded. The unicorn yelped and blinked painfully several times. It had been quite awhile since she had felt some sort of backlash like this. The magic she had used was strong and had felt incredibly pure, like grasping onto flowing water from a stream.
Despite that she was certain the spell had failed, when she finally recovered her sight and the roaring headache had faded, before her was one of the last things she had expected to see. In the center of the hallway, lit by sunlight through glass windows, in a small crack in the stone floor was a small tree. A sapling of some sort, as for the species she was clueless. However, clear as day, it was most definitely a small sapling. Small branches and bright green leaves were still for the lack of wind. As she approached the smell that had essentially seared itself into her nostrils faded and the stale scent of castle air returned.
Her horn lit up once more and pink light grasped the sapling. With a yank, the small tree came free of the ground and she placed it on the ground. Studying it closely she noticed nothing off about it, just a normal plant. That being said, nature magic wasn't capable of doing this. It could accelerate growth to a point and could help recovery but not produce a living thing from nothingness. The strangest part was that, typically, teleporting an object into something resulted in it fusing with the other object. However, this tree had displaced it.
That was the part she didn't understand, the sapling had to have come from somewhere, yet she knew there wasn't a seed for it have come from. The other explanation was impossible as well, it simply didn't fit with the natural order of magic. In a nutshell, Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic, Protégé of Celestia herself, was completely and utterly stumped. After a few more moments of staring at it in confusion, she finally picked it up and stowed it in the bag on her back. The other issue was that, as opposed to practicing in her room, she had done so in the hall.
Her hoof collided with her face before she let out and exasperated sigh and lit her horn once more. The floor fixed and the experiment complete, she made to report to her teacher. Perhaps Celestia would know something about this, she thought to herself as she left the empty hall. Where the unicorn had stood, in the place of her hooves, sat four small flowers. Sprinkled throughout the rest of the hall were various smaller plants.
Shortly after Twilight had departed, another mare, with a broom floating beside made way into the hall absent mindedly and began sweeping. After a few moments, she looked down at the floor and gasped in shock at the sight before her. Blinking in shock, she finally closed her mouth and turned back the way she came. She was not losing pay just for this.
Outside of the castle in the courtyard gardens, a group of foals and their teacher were viewing several of the stone statues. At the back of the group, three small fillies were arguing furiously as cracks appeared on the surface of one of the statues. The creature it held was exceeding strange to say the least and, quite possibly, one of a kind. At least as far as is known, and asking it is not an option either as the creature is solid stone.
The wear of many many years had built up on the statue and several smaller cracks already adorned its surface. Several spots that had likely been corners or far more defined were now rounded and the creatures fang now looked no more deadly than a broom handle might be. Upon it's back were two wings, both quite different from one another and the creature followed that for every part of it's body. Beneath the two legs, a claw and a hood at the end of them, and in front of the pedestal stood a plaque. Despite it's majestic pose, the creature did not give a dignified air.
Discord
Tyrant of the Old Age
Spirit of Chaos
The arguing of the three fillies seemed to grow in volume and several of the cracks grew wider before a large piece of stone seemed to shatter, yet nothing fell to the ground. In the place where the statue had been, a lively creature stood up and stretched, the cracking noise of bones and joints popping was far quieter than the argument before it. Once it had finished stretching, it chuckled.
"To think, even after a thousand years she'd still have me on a pedestal! How she must admire me, why I'd almost swoon!" the creature put it's paw on it's head as it drifted upwards of the stone. Before the fillies could notice, or anyone else either, it snapped it's claw and a new statue appeared where it had been as it flew off quickly into the sky. Beneath the statue a glowing circle, with various shapes within, formed momentarily before vanishing.
Inside the castle as she listened to her student describe what happened when she attempted to cast the same magic that the creature had, Celestia suddenly froze. Her eyes widened and she turned towards her sister. The younger alicorn stared back and frowned as Twilight continued speaking. "What is it?"
With her voice nearly shaking, the alabaster alicorn spoke. "He's escaped." As soon as those words left her mouth, the smaller alicorn immediately retorted back as she stood.
"We said it was a bad idea to keep him in the open," she turned away and motioned for one of the guards to come to her as her sister's mind raced. Though Celestia was, most certainly, a fantastic ruler, she was not the best in regards to a crisis. In fact, it was well known to Luna that her sister actually outsourced or approached others most of the time when a crisis came up. Now that she was back, she could handle such things. It was her part and her job as a princess of Equestria. Just because he was the threat did not mean anything changed.
After she and the guard in her tow exited the room, Luna turned to the guard. "Bring Shining Armor to us," she commanded, "we will be in the War Room." The guard scampered off the moment she finished speaking and Luna began to move down the hall. She was quite certain, before her incident, she had told Celestia multiple times that a prisoner such as him should not be left open and visitable by the public. They knew how he was and certainly escaping wouldn't be a problem if the right incident occurred. In fact, if he had been out in the open, it was surprising that he had not escaped much sooner.
Luna entered the dark room, it was towards the center of the castle and windows did not adorn it. This was why it was her War Room now, it was far more difficult to enter it or overhear such things. Magic could be protected against quite easily, but that was never enough. After a long sigh, she began to wait for the captain to arrive.