Noise...
So much noise...
So much Chaos...
The valley between the walls of mountains was filled with so much noise, filled with so much activity. The earth rumbled constantly, quaking in fear. Trees and plants rooted deep into the soil trembled endlessly from the shaking, their branches and leaves rustling together and creating such crackling noises, scaring away the birds and other little critters. Above, the twilight sky was blotted black from the flying masses of countless birds that swarmed overhead, their thousandfold cawing and flapping of wings thundering louder than the nearby storm that still rumbled angrily.
Over all this though was the fearful siren that blared out for miles from within the sprawling depths of the metropolis that hugged the valley's corner.
Within the city, panic was prevalent. The streets were filled with scampering ponies desperately galloping about, the drumming of their thousand hooves against the stone streets racketing up more noise than their own terrified screams. Many of the ponies were searching for family and friends, their calls of familial names echoing loudly against the canyon walls of buildings. Some ponies screamed out for others to get out of their way, carts filled to the brim with materials being pulled behind them as they tried to save what was their's. Still others had forsaken both, fear taking a hold of them and numbing their morality as they set upon a direction and ran for their lives.
All of this noise...
All of this life...
Thousands of bodies, each one composed of trillions of cells—of trillions of single-minded micro-organisms devoted to one or few tasks in their short lives—all forming together to create components of a body: organs, blood, muscles, bones and all sorts of bodily fluids. They were all multi-cellular tools in an interlocking, organic system—cogs in a machine—nothing more. Lungs took in air, oxygenating blood. The heart pumped blood throughout the body by arteries and veins. Muscles, bones and organs received this blood, giving them energy to continue what sole functions their existence revolved around.
Even now as the ponies panicked, their bodies continued to work in their Ordered way: their hearts beaten faster, lungs accelerated their work and muscles increased in tension. These living components of the body did so, without thought or question of why, and without an understanding of what these actions were for. They only did what was Ordered.
All Life was sustained by magnificent components of Order...
Life that acted so Chaotically...
Chaos had brought the ponies here. It was the Chaotic forces of Choice and Chance that had the ponies construct their city in this valley, and it was the Chaos of free will that had the ponies behave so disorganized and differently in the path of encroaching destruction.
As creations of Order, Titans know of this. They know all of this, but have no opinion of it. Instead, they only continue to focus on the tasks they exist for, like the good little forces of nature that they are.
So it was that the Mountain Bull strode forward, unperturbed and unattached to the maelstrom of panic around it; incapable of caring for the destruction it wrought.
With the World continuing on because of it...
The Saddle Arabian desert was quite possibly the largest expanse of arid starvation to ever exist in this world. With miles upon miles of scorching dunes that burned at the eyes of weary travelers, along with harsh storms of sand that choked down their throats, no other desert was as quite as ruthless to the participants of life as this one was.
Somewhere deep in the midst of this vast desert, the entrance to a small cave could be found in the side of a mesa that barely jutted out of the dune landscape like a flat hump on a relatively mild hunchback. Those that have journey forth into this cave were soon to come upon a massive whirlpool of sand that took up the entirety of the mesa's hollow gullet. But this sandy whirlpool was no violent thrashings of swirling forces that were so often described in great epics of the sea, rather instead its coiling trails of sand were slow and meticulous in their movements towards the center; like a conveyor belt born for productivity than a vortex of nature.
And in the very epicenter of this desert whirlpool, there laid a lone statue upon a barren pedestal of onyx.
For the rare few that have gazed upon this statue, its appearance always seemed to differ to each of whom beholden it. Ponies that looked upon the statue saw an equine much like themselves; for griffons, they saw a similar hybrid of bird and lion; minotaurs saw a replica of a minotaur; and so on and so forth, with each and every appearance: a stone figure of rough exterior and stiff posture.
This was the Statue of Order.
And he liked to count sand in his spare time.
49,993...
49,994...
49,995...
49,996...
49,9—
The desert whirlpool that surrounded the statue paused. Every single particle of sand that had been flowing within the whirlpool at a steady pace had come to an immediate and abrupt stop; all at once.
The cavern was still.
A moment later and the statue swiveled exactly forty-two degrees to the right, where the dry cavern wall greeted it. Then, from within the carved details of the statue's stone eyes, glowed the white, hot glare of arcane light; and now the statue saw far beyond the cavern wall, far beyond the reaches of the desert it resided in.
Titan #8 has awakened, noted the statue.
Reason: the Ordered Rule of the Conservation of Momentum has stagnated in areas 84467-84521 (decaying 1% under the optimal requirement of 100% functionality), as such, Titan #8 has Awakened and begun its Movement towards its next place of Slumber, reasserting the Ordered Rule back into the World again.
Analyzing pathway of Titan #8 in order of importance of conservation...
Tree of Harmony: out of contact with pathway.
Statue of Order: out of contact with pathway.
Titans: all are out of contact with pathway.
Tartarus: Warning! One minor entrance to the Underworld is on pathway. Destruction of minor entrance will result in minimum damage to the cosmic tethers that bridge the World to the Underworld. These parameters are acceptable, but unrequired.
Within the desert cave, the statue's glowing eyes flashed incredibly brighter for a single second, signalling the far away titan about the Underworld entrance. The titan won't divert from its path, but now it knows to watch its step.
Reanalyzing...
Tartarus: safely out of danger with pathway.
Conclusion: acceptable parameters.
The glow of the statue's eyes receded back to the dull, stone craftsmanship that they were, with the whirlpool of sand surrounding it once again churning at a slow, meticulous pace.
49,997...
49,998...
49,999...
50,000.
Mild elation swelled within the statue. Another fifty-thousandth particle of sand. Add that up to his previous countings, and he has now reached nine-hundred twenty-four thousand, three-hundred forty-five times ten to the power of three-hundred eighty-two (924,345 X 10^382). A new personal record.
1...
2...
3...
4...
Within a black expanse of consuming shadows, a breath of mist sashayed through the deathly air in a huff; its soft details of cloudy shape quickly disappearing into nothing by the sea-foam glow of the mystical pool of water that shimmered below.
From where this mist originated, one needn't look further than the shadowed shape of a dark equine that loomed over the pool; where by the burning flames of blue fire that were its mane and tail, an outline of dark, leathery wings and a pair of long, curved horns could be seen within the abyssal chamber.
This was the Underking, the Lord over all Damned and Dead.
And as he gazed deeply into his Pool of Calamities, irritation welled within him.
As if taken from the eye of an airborne crow, the mystical pool before the Underking presented him a high-above picture of some faraway mountain valley, where a city and its impending ruin could clearly be seen. Conjured up from within the pool's glowing depths, the pictured valley was overflowing with the currents of fear and panic; all of it swirling around the massive bovine of stone that trampled across the earth in its movement towards the city.
Another breath of mist huffed out into the darkness, the annoyance within it now much more obvious to see.
More souls for the grind.
Which meant more work for him.
Eyes that glowed as bright and as powerful and as terrifying as the blue essence of a bared soul turned away from the Pool of Calamities and gazed into the shadows of the chamber.
"Undertaker..." was whispered into the abyss, heavy and deep with a power that could only be born by an ancient and absolute authority.
At the call of this authority, from out of the darkness stepped forth the skeleton of a pony. Fleshless and bare to the cartilage, this skeleton was no jumble of bones puppeteered like a cheesy Nightmare Night decoration, but rather a wraith of Tartarus; those who hunted and guarded all of the damned souls of this Hel. Standing tall and lithe even for a skeleton, this wraith wore a prim suit and a top hat that were as black as the abyss that surrounded it, mingling its form with the shadows. Over its vacant eye-sockets, a pair of glasses were placed, with spectacles that shimmered as brightly as a duo of glaring moons.
"Gather your wraithstriders for a mass ghost-hunt," commanded the Underking, almost lazily from the expected compliance, "there's an entire city that will soon need exorcising."
Exorcism: the expulsion of a spirit from a place.
When lives are cut short, especially of those incurred from such violent ends, their spirits will oftentimes linger far longer in the mortal plane than they have any right to, latching onto anything familiar to them to stave away the pull of the afterlife, leading to hauntings and cursed lands.
By the amount of death that will soon be upon the city, there will undoubtedly be many a traumatized soul that will still linger in the metropolitan corpse, lost and confused as they haunt the remains of the inevitably ruined city. Not only that, but the sheer mass of expected ghostly spirits in a single location will lead to disastrous results for the setting. If they are not quickly exorcised, their cries of woe will curse the land, condemning the city's remains to a sore upon the earth. It has happened before, with long-ago battlefields of horrendous brutality transforming into marshlands of blood and smoke by the littered corpses of dead soldiers, and with times of famine decaying a once fertile field into a dead wasteland where nothing grows by the starved souls that haunt it.
"And on your way out, inform the ferryponies to expect a mass influx of dead," added the Underking, before turning his gaze back to the Pool, "Go," he ordered.
The skeletal wraith had no capacity for facial expression, besides that of a morbid grin that was so eternal to a skull, and as such made no expression to his king's orders other than to bow his lithe frame in compliance before turning about to disappear into the darkness, the wraith's every movement accompanied by the creaks and snaps of old bones.
"Wait..."
The Undertaker paused and looked back to find his king still staring at the Pool of Calamities, only this time, as a glow of emerald green flashed from out of the Pool, bared teeth could be seen in a smirk.
"Inform the ferryponies that there ...might be a mass influx of dead."
Sometimes, lords of the dead got a break every now and then.
Her crystalline leaves fluttered in the wind.
Her deep roots vibrated from the distant tremors.
She can sense it, even so far away...
Another of Her brother's tools; repairing what needs to be repaired.
The Master and the Tool; both blind to the inconsequential yet irrecoverable damage that their repairing inflicts.
She must remedy this.
Order will not cease its work—cannot cease its work.
Chaos cannot be expected to fine-tune Order's mistakes, Chaos cannot be expected.
Harmony can.
It is why She Exists.
She brings Balance between the Opposites.
But Her tools of Cleansing and Banishment will not do.
Her Children/Aspects are not Gathered anywhere near Order's tool.
Luckily, Her Investment is.
A cloven hoof of stone as large as a small cottage slammed down onto the brick road leading into the city, crumbling the bricks from the impact and spreading spiderweb cracks across the hard surface. Over the outer limits of the metropolis, where the shorter buildings of small businesses and humble housings had set up away from the tall towers of the city's bustling center, a large shadow stretched out, encompassing entire streets and darkening the buildings' windows that had glistened from the evening sun. Ponies caught in this shadow froze in fear and glanced upwards to find a giant bull of stone towering over them, two pinprick eyes bright as rubies staring ahead, not even taking notice of them.
The Mountain Bull had arrived.
To the little ponies in their city, here was the giant come to kick down their little ant hill that they called civilization.
Rocky nostrils flared, puffing out clouds of dirt and dust into the air with a contempt manner. Over an earthly coat, fissures opened and closed to accommodate movement that a figure made of stone was not meant to have. A hoof too massive for the land steadily lifted off of the trembling ground.
This was it.
The Mountain Bull had raised up a towering leg, intent on going forward just as always. With this step, the Mountain Bull was about to enter the city proper, unleashing ruin. Its massive hoof was going to collide into the path of several buildings—several homes—destroying them and beginning the loss of lives.
All it had to do was take one more step—
*KER-POW!*
...Except the Mountain Bull didn't take that step.
For it was at that moment, with the rumbling earth covering his strides and with the twilight sun shadowing his approaching visage, that the Guardian arrived and punched the titan in the face.