No April Fools Joke This Year, Preview for Last Bow Chapter 7 · 12:27am Mar 31st, 2021
So, I've been in a bit of a rough spot lately, and haven't had the time to do one of my typical April Fools pranks like I usually do. Last time I did something MLP-related for April Fools day was in 2018, when I did the whole Steamed Hams chapter for Apprentice, which will absolutely age well. Last couple of years, I've written some really awful Zelda fics, and originally I was gonna do one this year, but due to a combination of work, my job, my occupation, my place of employment, and the place that pays my salary, I will not be posting the completion of the epic Zelda Danger Trilogy this year.
No, this is not an April Fools joke either.
I don't know how many of you actually read my April Fools material, but to those who do, I apologize for the lack of laughter.
In the meantime, here's a preview from The Archmage's Last Bow, Chapter 7 as a sort of apology.
Their haunting eyes were watching his every move, as they always did.
Ten thousand years ago, this city had been their home. They had lived and ruled from this jewel of a city, but in a short time, they were gone, reduced to being spirits frozen in time, forever above the empty city, forever trapped in this plane.
He could feel their pain every time he stepped hoof in this place. He could feel the murderous gazes directed at him, even if he could not see them. How dare someone in an inferior form tread in this place? This was the home of Gods and Kings, not even the slaves from subservient species had been allowed into this holy location.
The beautiful white city.
The Apex of the World.
The Pinnacle.
Scala ad Caelum.
Elysium.
Now a mausoleum to the alicorn empire and its influence. But even a mausoleum had its treasures.
He had come here many times before over the millennia. He always needed to remember what had happened to his kind, to remember what it was that drove him.
Your torment will be ended, he thought to himself, thinking to the many who looked down on him with their fury, their pain, and their jealousy. How dare a subservient step hoof here? Has he come to gloat? To revel in our pain?
He had worn many faces in his time, but surely they had to know him by now. They had to know that although he wasn’t wearing the guise of an alicorn, he was one of them. He had survived. He had escaped the calamity and rescued his daughters, but at the cost of their mother.
His thoughts became pain in that memory, so he put it away. He was not here to dwell on the past. He was here to prepare for the future.
Harmonic Convergence was approaching. The groundwork needed to be laid.
The Shadow-King believed that with the Crown of Life, he could control the world. He believed that the Crown of Life was the key to allow him to take over the world. What Sombra did not understand was that act with the crown upon your head, and so too would the crown act upon you. Imperius had discovered that. That poor, poor fool, in his desperation to avert the calamity...
Ars Arcanum shook his head, dispelling the memories yet again. That was the unfortunate curse of those who had lived far too long. Oftentimes it was hard to remember to live in the now, and not the before. So many happier days, and so many sadder ones. So many days of greater consequence, and so many days of rest and leisure.
Yet here they were, in the most pivotal time. The planets were shifting into alignment, and in the brief window, those few moments when all the planets in the Celestine system aligned, that would be the window of opportunity. So short a time, a few scant minutes, and if he failed, he would have to wait another ten thousand years before he could do it again.
Ars Arcanum’s gaze drifted downard, until he was looking down at the snow-covered ground. To an outside observer, he was simply lost in thought and looking at the ground, but in truth, he was staring at where he knew the Crystal of Eternity was kept.
It’s not like he didn’t have all the time in the universe…
He strode through the familiar streets, making his way to the place where he knew he would find the relic he sought. He had spent time playing with Imperius and Harmonia in that very alley, right there… he had broken a wing in the old days after falling off that building… he and Harmonia had begun their courtship in that very park.
Oh what he wouldn’t give to return to days of yore! What he would not sacrifice just to be reunited with his friends and loved ones! To talk and jape with Imperius again, to have and to hold Harmonia again... Yet it was not to be, for one was gone forever, and the other could no longer be with him.
Still, Ars Arcanum cast his eye southward toward the others that he longed to reveal himself to, when the time is right, perhaps I may be able to reveal myself. They deserve that much. They must know why this is all happening, and why it cannot be stopped.
Who would have thought, in those innocent days millennia ago, that the three of them would play such pivotal roles in the downfall of their race, and the rebuilding of everything that came after?
“I suppose,” he spoke to the empty air in the Old Tongue, to the spirits lingering just beyond the veil of sight, “I should have guessed that my fate would be tied to mine own creation,” he strode forward, entering the Imperial Vaults, an austere building standing in stark contrast to the magnificence of the structures around it. Unlike the ostentatious buildings that his kin crafted, this building was practical.
It didn’t need to be showy. What was kept within it was all the showiness it needed. Not even the walls had any decor; they were simply crude flat expressionless surfaces with only vault doors or support pillars interrupting the monotony.
He passed vaults, some still sealed away with the treasures of ghosts locked away behind them, others empty and open, displaying their lack of contents to the world. Rather like this city, he suppressed a smile. Once so full of treasure, now a barren waste of what once was.
Finally, he arrived at the King’s Vault.
It was neither taller nor grander than any of the vaults around it. It simply sat at the end of the hall, the vault every visitor had to see, to wonder just what lay behind its doors. Ars had spent thousands of years working to undo the many enchantments that lay within the walls, and roughly three thousand years ago, he had finally succeeded in planting his own magical resonance as a valid entrance identification for the vault’s enchantments.
Despite the stasis placed upon this place, the magic within still flowed and functioned just as it had, and so when Ars Arcanum issued a stream of silver energy from his horn, which struck the direct center of the door. From the point of contact, the magic seemed to split and spread in six directions, before shimmering like the seas themselves under the light of the sunset. Each beam then glowed brighter and brighter, before the vault door was completely enveloped in their light. Then, the light faded, revealing yet another ordinary vault.
Empty, save one thing.
There was a small pillar sitting in the center, nothing more than a plinth an expertly-carved out of arcanostone, with orichalcum filigree decorating it in many intricate shapes and designs running up from floor to top. But sitting atop this plinth was nothing short of the most valuable treasure in the entire world.
It would not appear as such to the untrained eye, and even now, it held no true value on its own. Nothing more than a circlet of blackened orichalcum, with two short curved spikes, one each on either side of a taller third central curved spike in the front and center of the crown. Below each spike was a socket, the insides of which were lined with miniscule inscriptions and channels.
Ars felt a nostalgic half-smile, half-grimace cross his face. He remembered shaping this. He remembered the many failed attempts at getting it right, the botched letterings, the failed channelings, the bends, the scrapes…
But his final attempt had been his masterpiece. It was a work so great in arcanosmithing, so magnificent in its execution, nothing would even approach it ever again. It was a simple matter to create a simple socket and harness out of orichalcum to contain the energies of a Gem of Being. It had been ruled as impossible to create an object that could contain and channel the power of all three of them at once.
He had done it anyway, as his king had asked. He had created the Crown of Life.
Ars Arcanum stared at the crown for a long while, looking over that which he had forged over ten thousand years ago. After so very long, everything was finally beginning to draw toward the end, and everything-- every plan, every deed, every life he touched, every word or whisper he had uttered-- would all be centered upon this humble orichalcum crown.
“It won’t be long now,” he whispered to the open air, to the dead who were listening to his every word. “Only a few more months.”
His horn shone silver again, and the vault door closed with a flash of light, hiding the crown from the eyes of the world once again.
He turned around, and began to march upward, out of the Imperial Vaults and back into the haunted city. This would be his last visit until it was time.
For now, there was work to do.
