The Legend of the Elements of Power

by Random Gamer

2 - Why me?

After finishing my everlasting shift, I wrote a hefty check and made my way into the only pub in Ponyville. Upon going inside, my nose immediately picked up the smell of alcohol, blood and other things I couldn't idenfity. A collapsed drunkard was laying on the floor, occassionaly trashing about, as if wanted to be noticed. Despite the size of the pub and all the ponies in it, no one noticed him and one of the staff members just told others to completely ignore him. I brushed past him and saw a familiar face sitting at a nearby bar table, with a lot of shot glasses on it. It was Flamehoof and by his shaky movements, it was more than apparent that he was quite drunk.

"You celebrating?" I asked as I sat on the bar stool next to him.

"Yep." He uttered, causing me to let out a sigh and put a check on the table. Flamehoof gazed at it oddly, as if expecting a large pile of bits. Since hauling a thousand coins would be quite hard, I chose an alternative - a check allowing him to get them from a bank.

"What's that?" He asked, oddly gazing at the greenish piece of paper.

"You didn't expect me to haul a bag of coins, did you?" I asked him and he took the check, disappointed.

"Well, at least that'll cover some things up." He said, raising his hoove to get another round. "One for my friend too." The bartender gave both us a shot of an unknown beverage and Flamehoof immediately drunk his in just one go. He shook his head, exhaled and then put the glass to the table with the rest of them.

"I... I think I'll be going now." I stuttered. Not matter how many shot glasses would he order for me, I just can't allow myself to get drunk today. Not until friday at least.

"Hey, where you goin'?" he asked, his drunkedness now more apparent with his voice. "Don't you wanna hear how well it went with ol' Nurse Redflank?" I have no idea why he called her like that, but I didn't want an explanation and instead of waiting for more of his mumbling, I got off the bar stool.

"No." I answered and went for the door. As I left, I heard him spew curses to the other ponies at the bar, going as far as insulting Redheart's various body parts. As I polite pony, I won't bring myself to say any of them but if that's how soldiers act all the time, Celestia save us all. Slamming the door belonging to the pub as I left, I promised myself to never make bets with someone who clearly knew what he was doing.

---

Finally reaching my house, I made the decision to cook something for dinner and then take a rest after all this long day. Opening the door, I saw small splinters of glass, yet none of the windows appeared to be shattered on the first floor. Putting my coat on the coat hanger, I followed the trail of glass, finding my kitchen completely devastated, with what looked like remains of pie filling sprayed on the walls. I sighed, thinking this was just a joke by some filly. Ponyville was, after all, full of fillies with rather curved perception of what's supposedly funny.

"Hello?" I asked. "Is anyone there?" I didn't get a response but I heard a bunch of hoovesteps heading from the stairs, almost as if someone was running away. Keen on catching this tresspasser, I walked out of the kitchen and headed towards them through the hallway. Running upstairs, I saw something cyan quickly rush into my room. A bit unnerved, I approached the door knob, twisted and slowly opened the door. My room was a mess, with many shelves out of their places, sheets torn and worst of all - a broken window. I gasped at the sight, unable to understand why someone would do such I thing. Wanting to clean this mess at once, I made a step but stopped immediately after I heard a click behind me.

Slowly turning around, I saw a blue mare aiming my pistol at me. It was a last resort to drive off any thiefs who would wander into my house, but seeing it in the hands of one made me question my tool of self-defense. The mare's mane was messy, with leaves and small branches sticking out and her eyes looked as if they barely rested. Her cyan mane was peppered with glass, with bigger chunks dug deeper into her blue coat. She appeared to be in pain, yet, instead of asking for help, was now holding me at gunpoint.

"Don't move!" she uttered in a hostile manner, holding the gun aimed at my head, her hoove shaking. Since a bullet through the brain is always considered fatal, I had to think of another way to resolve this situation.

"I'm not going to hurt you." I said, taking a step forward. Her hooves shook a bit but she still kept her gun aimed at me.

"Stay back! The Great and Powerful Trixie knows the ponies of Ponyville only mean harm!" she uttured, ready to pull the trigger.

"Oh, really?" I asked, eyebrow raised. "You're the one who broke into my house, vandalized it and wants to kill me." I waited for a while to let that sink in and then added "You've got here through the window, didn't you? As far as I'm concerned, you have no problems with leaving through it. Do you?"

"That's none of your concern!" shouted Trixie. "The Great and Powerful Trixie found your food supplies apetizing but needs shelter!" Of all the houses near the forest, she had to choose mine. There really wasn't anything special to it, really. It was just a house like any other.

"If you wanted to visit me, I would treat you as a guest." Trixie let out a maniacal laugh. "But as any other thief, you are not welcome here and I insist that you leave." A lot of ponies would probably think of something to counter her gun or pounce at her and take the risk. I chose a diplomatic way, hoping all of this can be solved peacefully.

"Do you not see Trixie has the upper hand?" she asked proudly, lifting her head up.

"Well then, what are you waiting for?" I asked daringly, taking another step forward. "Pull the trigger, I dare you. Let everyone know how low you've gotten and give them a reason to hunt you down. Is that what you want?" Trixie's eyes opened wide and her irises shrunk to the size of small dots after she heard me say 'give them a reason'. The hoove holding her weapon suddenly became very heavy and she could feel it lower down, before doing so herself. Her irises returned to their normal size after blinking and she lowered her head in shame.

"Trixie... I... I can't do it." she said sadly, her eyes having a white gloss to them. "I'm not a murderer." Approaching her, she handed me the weapon all by herself and I put it on the nearby drawer, intending to keep it there.

"Leave." I said coldly, ignoring those sad eyes. "Now."

"But... I... I don't have a place to go to." she replied sadly, tears in her eyes. "Please... I'll clean all this mess up..." I delved into my thoughs, trying to find a reason why I should have someone so troubling at my house. Logic and wisdom kept telling me to make her to leave for causing all that mess, while my heart begged me to use it, just this once. It kept repeating 'do not allow her to come into harm's way', using my oath as a doctor againts me, almost as if mocking it. Ultimately, I ended the battle of the mind with a sigh, about to say something which I would probably regret.

"It's alright." I uttered, having a small smile on my face. "You can stay." Hugging me, she started crying tears of joy, glad that of all the citizens of Ponyville, I was on her side. Well, sort of. I never understood showmares and ponies that showed off, but she appeared to have lost her ego somewhere in the Evertree Forest, using the last of it to threaten me. Her silent, muffled crying went on for a couple of minutes and during that, she buried her head in my chest, causing me to blush sligthly.

"I'm sorry." she said as she lifted her head up and let go. "I... I don't even know your name." Her crying stopped but her eyes still had that red tint to them.

"Richard Domitz or just Richard." She now gave me an odd look, as if curious about something. I have to admit my name does sound a little... exotic.

"Rich Art Dome is what?" she asked, most certainly having mishead my name. Instead of correcting her, I sighed, knowing that names aren't as important at actions.

"Nevermind." I uttered. "I'm just the stallion who owns this house and will help you clean the mess you made. Let's get to it, shall we?" Trixie nodded but instead of starting the cleaning right away, I asked her if I can at least have a look at her wounds and treat them if neccesary. She hesitated at first, thinking they were nothing but after telling her the alarming number of them, she gladly agreed.

---

After ten minutes worth of glass extracting, desinfections and bandaging, I took care of her wounds and instead of our plan to clean the house together, I told her to wait for me in the kitchen while I clean the house by myself. While patching up the window with cloth and nailing it to it's frame, I got the idea for us to cook something together for dinner but she didn't really appreciate the idea. Instead, after returning to my room after all those chores, I saw her lying in my bed, sleeping.

"She must be very tired... " I though to myself. "Well, better leave her be." Quietly walking out of the room, I took my reserve bed sheets, a pillow and took refuge in the only object that could be slept on moderately well - a couch. Covering it the sheets, I too, took a nap and drifted into the land of dreams. Or, like the few unfortunate stallions, the land of no dreams and absolute darkness.

---

On the following day, I got up to a crunching sound under my hoove and much to my suprise, it was my alarm clock, demolished. It took me a few seconds to recall what exactly happened yesterday and why am I sleeping on the couch but it came back to me rather quickly.

"Uh oh..." I said cautiosly, remembering I forgot to turn it off in the first place. Suddenly out of nowhere, I caught a mysterious smell and boldly followed it into the kitchen. There, I saw Trixie preparing a vegetable soup, looking fit as a fiddle.

"Oh, you're finally awake." she said and looked at me with a smile. "Sorry about the alarm clock, I may have gotten a bit... angry when it woke me up."

"Trixie, what time is it?" I asked, hoping I won't be late for work. "Was it seven when it woke you up?" Trixie stopped stirring the soup and put the ladle on the sideboard. She then propped her head with her hoove and started thinking.

"Hmm... I think it was ten minutes after seven." I exhaled, happy to know that I'm not so late. "A couple of hours has passed since then, though. Why are you asking?" A jolt of adrenaline filled my veins and my blood pressure became that of an athlete about to win a golden medal. I left behind a smoke silhoutte and sprinted to hall, quickly putting on my doctor's coat.

"I'm late for work!" I exclaimed, leaving the house and galloping to the other side of town. My only hope of keeping my job was the forbearance of my boss.

---

After a minute of running and a quarter of an hour of walking, I finally arrived at the clinic, sweaty like a laborer. Instead of signing myself to duty like I normally do and take a longer shift to make up for the lost hours, I approached the boss' office. I gulped, knowing that this where my career ends and shakily opened the door.

"Ah, Mr. Domitz." said my boss in a calm, yet sociopathic sounding tone. "Please, come inside." I slowly went inside and closed the door behind me, embracing the darkness in the dimly lit office. Infront of me was the him, sitting behind his ivory table and infront of it, a chair that barely held together.

"Mr. Domitz, please have a seat." I reluctanly sat on the chair, hoping it wouldn't collapse under my weight. "Now, tell me, do you know what's the most important thing during an operation?" I searched deep into my thoughs and then gave him an answer.

"Precision and the right medication." I assured him. "Without those, every operation is doomed to fail." The boss let out a small laugh and then fully lit the room, causing me to flinch a bit and wait for blurring to go away.

"Maybe your eyes and hooves are precise and your mind remembers what medication to use, but," he lectured me, keeping a hoove infront of him. "do you know what else matters?" I sat firmly on the chair, though for a while and then shook my head.

"N-no, sir." I stuttered. If medication and precision aren't the most important things, what sort of things are the most important? Before I could at least guess, my boss put a small, silver stopwatch on his table.

"Time and the right timing is above all of those, but the others play a significant role too." he lectured me once more, opening the watch and showing me the small droplets of blood that were near some of the numbers. "Precision not so much, but give someone the wrong meds at the wrong time, operate too soon or too late and you've got yourself a problem. A big one." I noticed it was stopped exactly at eight, the exact time my shift was supposed to start.

"Sir, I'm sorry, I-" I tried to explain why exactly I didn't start the daily shift like I was supposed to, but he cut me short.

"Overslept?" he asked, his voice starting to shift to that of anger. "I had to quickly contact a failed trainee surgeon and get him to do your job. And you what? He got here sooner AND did it better. That's why I'm so pissed. A failed graduate did the same job as a guy who graduated as the youngest of his class. You're worthless to me. WORTHLESS!" With each sentence, I died a little inside and after the final open, it was apperent I have come to my career's own funeral.

"I... I don't wanna go..." I said sadly, thinking of all the lives I saved during my two-year tenure. Now, for the one and only mistake I have ever done during that time, it was all gone.

"That's my not problem, you slowpoke!" he shouted. "If you got here at the right time, you'd still have your job! YOU'RE FIRED!" Without a single word, I left the room, finding the whole clinic on the hall. Some of them laughed at me finally leaving, while others were indifferent to the boss' decision. Then there was Nurse Redheart, who, instead of letting me brush past, gave me a big hug.

"I don't understand." I uttered, curious as to why the mare involved in a dirty bet hugged me. "Why are you hugging me?"

"Because thanks to you, I spent some time with a stallion." she answered me. "Not anything special as he's probably shouting all around the pub, but nevertheless, it was special to me." I wasn't the one who would about intimate relationships but if they didn't sleep together, what did they do?

"If you didn't... um... do the thing, what did you do?" I asked sheepishly. After all, it all happened because I agreed on a bet.

"Oh, old school stuff." she answered, smiling, with a blush on her cheeks. "Rose petals, wine, candles... All went well until he accidentally burned down my house. After that, we just agreed to get drunk together. Thanks to the bet however, I could buy the nearby, small house immediately. So yeah, you deserve a hug for that." I smiled briefly and then remembered my fate.

"Well, it was nice being stuck with all of you for two years." I said, looking at the rest of the clinic personal and giving them a bow. "I knew I was never a good friend or a perfect doctor, but I did what I could do best. I know none of you care anyway, but I'll miss every single one of you."

"I'll miss you too..." said Nurse Redheart, saddened and after those words, I left the clinic. What looked like just a reason for an extended shift ended with me being unemployed. I hope this is the only bad thing that happens today.

---

Upon arriving back home, I saw Trixie sitting behind the kitchen table, eating soup and reading some sort of book. I put my coat back on my coat hanger and sat at the table.

"Oh, you're back." she said, turning her attention from the book and soup. "Well, how did it go? Do you still have your job?" She put a spoon next to my bowl of soup and I picked it up, only to put it back to on the table.

"Lost it. My boss called me a worthless and fired me." I said, picking up the spoon again and started eating the soup. "Took in a failed trainee while I was home sleeping and gave him my job." Trixie gasped, nearly choking on the soup.

"Just like that?!" she exclaimed. "That brattish son of a-!"

"Hey, calm down." I uttered. "At least he didn't literally throw me out like the last guy who gave him his idea during a meeting. His only luck was that he could fly." Perhaps it wasn't the best time to put my clinic to shame by talking about all the horrible overreactions of my boss, but hey, I didn't work there anymore. Might as well write them down and sue him.

"Biscuit! I wanted to say biscuit!" she exclaimed once more, dropping her spoon into the soup. "I mean, this was your only mistake, right?" I nodded, almost finished with the vegetable soup. "That's just.. mean. Not mean in a laughable way, but just outright evil."

"You sure know how to cook." I said, complimenting her. "What's that you're reading anyway?" It wasn't uncommon for a chef to read a cooking book while eating his own work. Meals had to have a specific taste and if it was wrong, the chef did something wrong.

"This?" she showed me the book with her magical levitation. "Predictions and Prophecies. The name is kind of misleading, though. There are a few more obscure legends too." Wait, wasn't the book Twilight Sparkle indirectly used to fight Nightmare Moon? I don't remember buying or borrowing it from someone, let alone have it in my house.

"Obscure legends?" I asked, curious as to what she might mean. Do obscure mean disputed or not well known by ponies? "Which ones?" Trixie opened the book and opened it at a specific page.

"Well, for example, there's a legend called Four Sisters and it's about-" Her eyes suddenly shrank to the size of a small dot and she closed the book violently, tossing it next to me. "Oh, sorry, I was just seeing things. Made me jump." I cautiously opened the book, curious as to why she threw it.

"What exactly?" I opened the book with my hooves and started browsing through it. "I just see predictions, legends and prophecies. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Page forty-seven." she answered. "Anything weird?" I quickly turned to the mentioned page but to my disappointment, there was nothing out of the standard. Just the legend Four Sisters.

"I just see the legend. The shortest one in the book, with just eleven sentences." I said, gazing at the text. "Nothing that shouldn't be there." What exactly crept Trixie out? There's nothing scary about books, apart from a few works of questionable quality that I had to read as a student. That was mostly creepiness from utter disgust, though.

"There were just ten when I closed the book." she said in a somewhat anxious tone. "I saw text appearing on it's own and that made me close the book so meanfully. I just... though I was seeing things." As someone who studied science and viewed magic as nothing more than something science can't explain yet, I was more than sure it was just blasphemy.

"Oh please, you must have overlooked the last sentence." I said with a faint smile. "There's no way a whole sentence can-" I immediately stopped and gazed with eyes open wide at the legend. Letters started appearing at the very bottom and the text itself shrunk down a bit to keep itself contained to the book page.

"See?" said Trixie. "I told you!" For no apparent reason, a whole setence materialized itself, ableit written in a completely different manner. The two sentences made up four verses of a poem.

"To find the wrack, start in the back," I recitated the mysterious poem. "seize the frozen top, don't make a drop." What's a wrack? Back how? The rest probaly meant a mountain since most of them have frozen tips, but the first part made no sense whatsover.

"Wrack... wrack." Trixie though out loud. "Oh, right. It must mean one of the four sisters! It's actually a way ponies way up north near the sea call bad mares." Well, that's that, but what about the back part? Does the book require me to time travel?

"Right..." I uttered. "But what about the back part? No unicorn knows time travel." Or at least, not any unicorn I know. If that magic existed, I wouldn't be suprised if one or all of the Princesses knew it. Knowledge is power, right?

"Perhaps it just means to start somewhere where something else started." said Trixie. "Our of all the major events, only one happened lately - the forming of the Elements of Harmony and their bearers. But it's hard to say when it all started. Maybe it was Dash earning her cutie mark or the moment Celestia banished Luna, but I don't really." Suddenly, out of nowhere, it hit me. I knew where it all started.

"Canterlot!" I exclaimed, pointing my hoove in the general direction of the city. "We need scale the nearby mountain!" Trixie was at first confused at to what I meant, but then, it hit her too. It all begun when Twilight noticed the odd star formations and went to investiagate, inadvertly setting course for the events that made her and her friends the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Canterlot was the place where it all begun.

"But why?" asked Trixie. "Or is that just a suggestion?" I stopped for a moment and thought. I wasn't an adventurous type and yet, after reading vague information, I was bent on getting to whatever secret it pointed at. It seemed rather exciting, though, knowing that I would do something else than just wait for another job application. I just hope I won't have to go back where I came from. Ponyville was a pleasant change and I kinda like it here too.

"Well, since I don't have a job, I thought you and me could, umm... in theory," I said, unable to exactly say what I wanted to. "just purely as a suggestion... um... investigate? Bust or confirm this legend or myth?" I should read the book about talking to mares again. I sounded like a filly trying to ask a freshmare to a date. Why do ponies write such books anyway? They never worked for me. Full o' lies they be.

"Sounds more like a myth, but okay." she answered me. "I really had no idea what to do since you lost your job, but this sounds like a... reasonable way to spend time, plus I don't really think I want to stay at Ponyville. Don't you agree?"

"Y-yes." I stuttered, happy to finally go somewhere with a mare. It wasn't a date or anything even remotely close to it but hey, still better than waiting. Who knows, maybe this will my last chance to spend some time with a mare before... I dunno, another disasterous situation happens.

And so, with some doubts, we set our tomorrow's objective on rearching the top of the mountain. I was the one with the doubts, knowing only a hooveful of legends were confirmed, the most significant being The Mare In The Moon. Trixie on the other hoove kept assuring me that whatever the outcome might be, it's still gonna be a lot of adventure, especially since none of us can climb. Now, where can we find a climbing equipment rental?