Chapter 1
A Late Night Robbery
In a darkened room, during a moonlit night, in the magical kingdom of Alkarzar, sat a figure in a Canary-yellow robe and hood. The figure stared down at a sketch pad, in one hand a pencil. The figure would periodically glance up at it's subject, a staff made of polished wood with a fiery red ruby adorned at it's point. The staff sat upon a pedestal, a cushion of red velvet underneath it. The person in the yellow robes would then look back down at the pad, the next part of the drawing memorized. A bit of moon light filtered into the room through one of the many giant windows, allowing enough light for the figure to draw. The figure was so intent on it's task it didn't notice the great doors slowly creaking open, allowing another figure, this one in gray robes, and the creak of them as the gray robbed figure pushed them back closed. The gray robes took a couple steps toward the hunched over yellow robes, before they seemingly noticed something amiss. The person in the gray robes then spoke up, a young, gruff voice emitting from within the hood.
"Pastel? What are you doing here?"
Pastel, who would be the figure in the yellow robes, jumped and turned toward the source of the voice, before letting out a little laugh when she saw who it was.
"Oh, it's just you Shade. Man you scared me."
Shade pulled down his hood to revel a boy who could barely be 17, unruly black hair left unchecked and the dark circles under his light brown eyes giving him a decidedly tired look.
"You haven't answered my question Pastel, what are you doing here? You know it's Cinder's shift." Shade crossed his arms, while his voice took on a disapproving tone.
Pastel pulled down her own hood, her long blonde hair finally free from it's confines. Her face held her trademark easy smile, and her golden eyes twinkled a bit, the many multicolored flecks in her eyes changing colors simultaneously.
"Oh, lighten up Shade. Yeah, I know it's Cinder's shift, in fact he came down here 'bout an hour ago to relieve me, but I just had to finish my drawing. I mean when do you ever get the chance to draw The Solar Staff, the very staff King Solar himself used to win us our independence. Plus, Cinder didn't seem to mind me taking an extra turn." With this said Pastel turned back to her drawing, continuing to scratch at the page.
Shade sighed and walked to join his friend, who was paying more attention to her pad. Shade glanced down at an admittedly detailed sketching of The Solar Staff, before glancing up at the genuine article.
"I guess I shouldn't be mad at you, Pastel. I mean you are still guarding the Staff. But, Cinder, however, should know how important this is, and how big of a honor it is. I mean, the Staff that gained our independence, the staff that will surely strengthen our already good standing with Equestria. Only one of the most powerful artifacts known to human kind. But does Cinder care? Noooo, he ditches it as soon as he can, delegating his duty to someone who should have been in bed an hour ago! Argh! That man could drive King Asher himself to murder!" Shade had slowly worked himself up, until it got to a point where Pastel wouldn't have been surprised to see smoke rolling out of his ears.
"Calm down before you blow a gasket, Shade." She muttered barely looking up from her drawing. "You and I both know Cinder isn't made for sitting in one spot for hours on end. Really it's for the best that he let me take his place, I mean the room would probably been set on fire by now if he had taken his turn."
Shade was about to shout that wasn't a good enough reason to shirk one's duty when he noticed something out of one of the big windows. There was a person, shrouded in a black set of robes. While this normally wouldn't have been any cause for alarm, the fact that the room in which The Solar Staff rested in was situated in a tower 20 stories tall did give the piece of information a bit of suspicion. The person appeared to have reached the zenith of the arc that had launched him/her up that high, and in his/her right hand they held a wand, from which a faint light glowed at it's point. The figure was the process of swinging the wand in an arc, which, when finished, would point at...
Not thinking twice, Shade suddenly leapt, tackling Pastel in the process. Pastel was going to ask what the hell his problem was when a giant boulder smashed through the window and landed right where Pastel had previously sat. The boulder shattered into a thousand different pieces, each having a different color and shape. Shade quickly drug Pastel behind the only piece of cover in the room, the pedestal on which The Solar Staff rested, and peeked around it as the black figure landed. The interloper glared at where the two mages had taken cover, and slowly approached it, holding up his/her wand, the faint light still lingering at it's tip, and the pieces of the broken boulder zipped over, gathering into a roughly spherical shape over the wand.
"Well that's just great." Shade grunted to himself before pulling his own wand, a jet-black piece of hickory with a black tassel hanging from one end. He glanced over at Pastel, who had just recovered from the shock of the giant boulder, and was sizing up their situation herself. "I'll keep him distracted, you get an emergency letter to Sentinel and the rest of the guards." Shade whispered to her. Pastel nodded before tearing a stray page out of her sketch pad, and started hurriedly writing. "By the way," Pastel glanced up to see what else he had to say, "you owe me." Pastel rolled her eyes before returning to the task at hand. Shade, meanwhile took a breath, steeling himself, before rolling out of cover, diverting the figures attention from the pedestal.
Shade came up in a crouch, muttering what would have sounded like gibberish to anyone else. Shade then touched the tip of his wand to one of the many shadows that littered around the room, and then swung his wand horizontally, the shadow following in a 20 foot, razor sharp arc. The shadow was just long enough to reach the intruder, and probably would have taken his/her head off if he/she hadn't leapt back at the last moment, breaking any sort of concentration they had, the small stones clattering back to the floor. Shade jerked his wand arm back, the shadow following it, and then swung it in a big overhead smash, taking a step forward to accentuate the action. The figure sidestepped just as the shadow came down hard enough to leave a chip in the floor where the figure had just been standing. The figure glared back at Shade, and then started muttering himself, three small shards floating up. Then, with a quick grunt, one of the small shards rocketed off like it had just been fired from a cannon right at Shade. Shade took a step to his right, narrowly dodging the projectile, and then quickly ducked to avoid the second stone. Expecting the last stone, Shade let most the shadow drop, it landing on the floor with a bloop, leaving it about the size of a small knife, and then swung at the last rock just in time to deflect it.
Meanwhile Pastel had finished her letter, explaining the situation in as few words as possible. She reached into her robe arm, and pulled out her wand, a repurposed stylus. She then touched the wand to the now rolled up letter, and muttered a couple words. The letter disappeared in a flash of light, and Pastel turned to see how Shade was fairing. She saw Shade dodging rock after rock, not one touching a hair on his head. However, Pastel could tell his was tiring, and would eventually be hit by one of them. She held her wand out in front of her and, with a quick muttering, the end of it started glowing red. With a few quick strokes a red rectangle about six feet tall floated in the air. She rotated the rectangle so it's face faced the intruder. With one final grunt, a solid red wall extended from the rectangle's side, intercepting a rock that would have surely hit Shade in the chest. She then ran toward Shade, hugging the wall. She quickly drew three circles in the air one blue, one green, and one yellow. As Shade glanced at her she shouted.
"Hit the dirt!" She then dived, allowed the wall to drop to about chest height, and fired a beam of solid color from each of the floating circles. The intruder was able to dodge the blue and green beam, but the yellow one caught him in the chest, knocking him to the ground.
"Nice!" Shade shouted, standing up, only to be tackled by Pastel right before a silvery-white beam shot through the air where Shade's head had been a second before.
"Now, we're even." Pastel murmured, the easy smile back on her face. The two then disentangled themselves from each other and peeked over the wall to see another black cloaked figure standing by the shattered window. In one gnarled hand the new arrival clutched a platinum colored wand, it's end smoking slightly, and the other held...
"The Solar Staff!" Shade stood up, only to be pulled down again by Pastel as another beam tore through the air. The second intruder stalked over to the prone form of the first and growled at it. The first quickly jumped up, and seemed to apologize to the second, before being silenced with a wave of the second's hand. The two black cloaked figures calmly walked over to the shattered window and, with out a seconds hesitation, stepped out of it.
The two mages let out two similar cries of surprise, before vaulting the red wall, and ran over to the broken window. Staring down, they could see that, somehow, their two attackers had made it to the ground unscathed, and were piling themselves into a wagon beings pulled by two being they hadn't expected to see.
"Equestrians?" Pastel voiced the question that was on both on their minds. The wagon pulled away from the tower, it's passengers trying to make themselves discreet, and was quickly swallowed up by the night. The two mages sat there for a couple minutes, wondering what in the name of King Solar had just happened, when the great doors suddenly burst open. Guard-mages filed in, wands drawn, expecting a showdown, only to find Shade and Pastel staring out the shattered window. One of the mages, decked in purple robes, marched up to the pair, question already on his lips.
"What happened here, Shade, Pastel? Where's the intruders?"
"They escaped, Sentinel," Shade answered, not looking at Sentinel, "and they took The Solar Staff with them."
"What!?" Sentinel whipped his head around to confirm that The Solar Staff was, indeed, not there. "Oh, that not good, not good at all! King Asher must be told at once!"
"He certainly does, he certainly does." Shade muttered to himself, still staring down at where the wagon had disappeared.
---The Day After---
If Princess Celestia was forced to choose a favorite part of the day, she would say that it was just before noon, 11:00 - 11:45, to be exact. Why? Because this was the part of the day where she would listen to any grievances her subjects had, any petition with an adequate number of signatures, or just any problem that needed a royal touch to fix. While many monarchs would probably find this to be the most annoying or stress filled part of their daily routine, Celestia enjoyed it immensely. Mostly because this allowed her to become closer to each those she ruled over, something she didn't get to do often through the rest of her day, which was usually filled with the ever shifting chess game that was diplomacy with the neighboring countries. Plus, she just loved making the life's of her subjects better, always feeling a pang in her heart when she saw anyone suffering, no matter how small that suffering might be.
This particular day found the princess of the sun nearing the end of the session, listening to one Pony with concerns over the price of grains. She argued that, with the abundance of grains in all of the major farms all over Equestria, that 10 bits for a one pound bag of the stuff was much to high and should be lowered.
Celestia nodded and listened, thinking over all the points the Pony set before her, before thanking the mare and sending her along her way. She sat contemplating whether the price should be lowered when, with a flash of light, a rolled up letter materialized in front of her. Using her magic to casually catch the letter, she brought it close so she could see who it was from.
King Asher, ruler of Alkarzar. When she read the name, she felt a surge of joy. While she didn't usually enjoy the political side of ruling Equestria, her recent correspondence with the young king had been surprisingly enjoyable. Not only had he proved himself to be a just and wise king on multiple occasions, but he was also, surprisingly, a funny and good-natured man, uncommon for a someone who had fought in a civil war on a side that was losing through out most of it. Plus, there was the generous gift of The Solar Staff, the object that had single-handily turned the tide of what would have been a failed rebellion.
Princess Celestia unrolled the letter, eager to see what he had written. But as she read it, she paled, no good news in the letter at all. The king wrote about how The Solar Staff had been stolen the night before, how the two mages guarding the staff had been attacked by two shadowy individuals, and that he had his best 6 mages, which included the two that had been attacked, looking for it as they spoke, and that he was terribly sorry, but it didn't look like she would be receiving the staff anytime soon. As she finished the letter she sat back, closed her eyes, and thought.
The Solar Staff in the wrong hands could be disastrous, not only for Alkarzar, but for Equestria, a close ally of Alkarzar, as well. Any human wielding the staff would have their magic amplified a hundredfold, enough power to go toe-to-toe with King Asher, or even her, and with a pretty good chance of coming out on top. Anyone with a perchance for conquering would be unstoppable with it, free to take over any country he or she pleased.
She sat back and thought about who would want to steal the staff, Possibly someone who held a grudge with Asher, or maybe the whole of Alkarzar. Suddenly, her eyes snapped open. Celestia thought she knew who had stolen the staff, and, if she was correct, she knew they would need her help to find the perpetrators. The princess of Equestria started searching for some paper, a quill, and some ink. She had two letters to write. One to King Asher, the other to her personal student, Twilight Sparkle.