The creature which had spoken came out of the dark alley it was in, revealing itself to the group. The mares gasped.
It looked like a common man in an entirely white straitjacket. The creature wore a hood and a short cape of the same snow-white than his straitjacket. The creature's arms weren't restrained by the straitjacket, as it wasn't tied. However, the most disturbing thing in his body were his hands. These looked normal at first, but then the mares noticed he had no fingers. In place of those, he only had piano string-like cables. They constantly twitched and swirled, as if they were worms crawling towards a rotting body. Even though they couldn't see its face, the creature was clearly male.
"I expected thou to receive me in such a fashion" the strange character said, tilting his hooded head.
"You sound just like..." Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes.
"Silence, maggot" interrupted the creature, suddenly straightening his head.
"Well, that's new" the daring pegasus admitted.
"For thousands of years thou have kept us locked in a cold purgatory. For thousands of years, thou have tried to keep a god chained by thine feeble webbing. Those days are long gone and we shall rise yet again. Chaos was the beginning, and now he shall be the end" continued the white figure "Revenge will be attained, no matter the cost"
"That explains why you are here" J´zar said, still pointing his sword at the creature "But I am still intrigued as how you got in this dimension"
"It was easy. The Maw has a very blurry border with other realms. Using our godly skills, we simply tore open space and time, trying to get in thine dimension. But we couldn't as thine pathethic Order's spell burned like molten bronze in our consciousnesses. So I had to create a second plan. We ripped asunder the fabric of reality yet again, this time into this particular dimension,as we knew it was the weakest one" the creature mockingly explained.
"¡Hey!" Rainbow Dash yelled, but she was silenced by J´zar's wary stare.
"But of course, there were flaws in that plan as well. It seemed some other inhabitants of the Maw had came here, and we couldn't afford them to destroy this dimension, we needed it to latch into thine" the creature started to slowly walking up and down the small portion of land that separated them "So when Ix appeared, I summoned thou to kill him. I knew thou would return to thine dimension in due time. Duty is rather predictable, as thou can see"
"I do see. But you didn't expect me to return here, ¿now did you?" J´zar said, slightly lowering his blade.
"No. I didn't. But of course, such a thing can be fixed easily" the creature said.
"Wait, wait, wait ¿Who the hay are you?" Twilight asked quite hurriedly.
The creature turned towards her.
"My name, is that of the one who moves the threads, who cleaves security asunder leaving but a sea of doubt on its wake. My name is the one who means deceit, the one which calls for lie and summons conspiracy. I am the Trickster" the aforesaid seemed to vibrate with pride.
Taking advantage of Trickster's momentarily distraction, J´zar leaped forward, sinking his blade into Trickster's chest. The sword quickly seared flesh and bone piercing his body cleanly from side to side. Trickster looked down at the blade plunged into his heart (a crimson flower was starting to paint itself around the bloody blade) and started laughing. J´zar tried to jerk the blade off from Trickster's chest, but it was firmly locked in place. Suddenly, Trickster's wire-like fingers started to extend beyond any human's reach, quickly coiling around the blade, even though his hand didn't move.
"Fool" he said, effortlessly extracting the sword from his chest using only his fingers. The wound started to mend extremely quickly. Muscle welded again and blood returned to Trickster's veins. In seconds, there was no sign of there being a wound "No mere blade can kill a god"
J´zar attempted to drop the sword, but the seemingly sentient wires crawled over the blade, into the hilt and then wrapped themselves around J´zar's hand. Trickster moved raised his arm over his shoulder and the wires obeyed, hurling J´zar five meters behind him. The warrior landed in the ground and didn't move. Trickster advanced towards him. J´zar waited until he was very close and then stabbed Trickster's foor with one of his many knives, even though it had no visible effect.
"¿Don't thou realize I am unkillable by a simple sword?" Trickster mocked. This time, the wires surrounded J´zar's chest, spreading like a web. They raised him up to Trickster's face.
"How lucky I have something better then" J´zar said, pulling from his pant pocket something which looked round. A loud "click" was heard and a blinding flash of light ensued. When the mares regained their sight, J´zar was the only one standing in the middle of the street. On his right hand there was a bloody knife, and on his left, a strange orb which seemed to be made entirely out of silver.
"Paper" he said "Paper and ink"
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J´zar hurriedly wrote a few words in the vellum scroll Twilight had given him. He had lost some practice using a feather to write, but he was faring better than what he had hoped:
"Danger. Chaos is awake. Come through the portal -J´zar" he wrote.
"Done" J´zar said, folding the scroll into a square "This must reach my dimension"
"¿Who whas that "Trickster"?" Twilight asked.
"Yeah, he spoke very freaky" Rainbow Dash said.
"He was a piece of Chaos" J´zar said, quickly walking towards the town's end "And he is the greatest threat this dimension will ever see"
"¿Chaos?" Twilight Sparkle pondered, and then affirmed "We have faced chaos once"
"¿Oh, really?" rebutted J´zar "¿Did you faced Chaos, the cosmic deity which inhabits every universe even before it exists, or did you face chaos, raw disorder?"
"I...I..." Twilight Sparkle was speechless "I couldn't say"
"Exactly. "This" Chaos I have to deal with now is of the former kind. He was here when this universe didn't exist, and he is the one who created this dimension" J´zar explained.
"¿Created it? ¿Why would he do that?" Rainbow Dash inquired.
"Chaos creates realms to feed in them" J´zar said "He created my realm to "eat" it. But the Order casted great spells to prevent him from doing so. He swore to destroy my dimension, and it seems he is willing to consume this in order to comply his oath"
"¿Magic? ¿Is there magic in your dimension, J´zar?" Twilight asked.
J´zar stopped and looked into her eyes.
"¿Magic? Yes, Twilight, there was once magic in my world, around the days of my birth. But with time, the ones who practiced it died, the sounds of its words were forgotten, and the runes emblazoned in stone were erased by weather. Magic, in my world, is now nothing but a dusty bone" J´zar admitted "However, the spells I am speaking about were made hundreds of years before my birth"
They had reached the white portal which J´zar had crossed to reach Equestria. The warrior threw the piece of paper at it, praying for the portal not to disappear. The white square met the much whiter circle and disappeared without sound.
"Last question" Twilight said "¿What is that orb you used to defeat Trickster?"
"Oh. That" J´zar said. It was a great secret of the Order, the existance of the silver orb, but since he had told so much to the mares already... "It's a relic of the Order, found in the year 1734. We didn't knew what it was at first, but the crypt we found it in said it could be used to trap evil spirits in it. Sp´hre, my Commander, gave it to me with the mission of protecting it until we could find an use to it. It seems it is good at trapping evil spirits after all"
J´zar rolled the orb in his hand and showed the mares a single small button it had.
"Once you press it" J´zar explained "You cannot turn back"
"¿What now?" Rainbow Dash asked. It was becoming a bad habit of her to ask that question.
"Chaos was split in several pieces. I have imprisoned one. I presume the others don't have Trickster's accuracy when travelling through dimensions, or they would be here as well" J´zar grinned maliciously "Let the hunt begin"