“What the hay was that?!?” Shouted Applejack to no one in particular, while still running, now faster than ever.
“I have no idea but keep running!” It was only then that she noticed Spike on her back, clinging to her mane with his claws.
Rainbow Dash was slightly behind them, Pinkie Pie next and Fluttershy almost not being able to keep up. I was then that Dash had the not so great idea of flying above the trees to see how far the swamp went. Just as her body started to gain height above the dense mass of trees, she heard a loud roar. A giant dragon with black scales and red eyes flew right above her, and just as he saw her, a large wave of fire left his mouth, almost hitting her, and burning many of the trees.
She descended just in the nick of time, suffering only from a few burned feathers. At least now there was a little more light and she could see the edge of the swamp.
Fluttershy wasn’t being so lucky, trying to keep up, being surely the slowest of them all, although fear fueled her as she ran until her legs hurt and her chest burned like a furnace. With the new source of light from the burning trees, she looked back to see if their pursuer was still close. Then she saw terrorized as he caught some other pony she couldn’t recognize, and proceeded to insert his chainsaw into his throat, and swing it around, ripping his head off. With a new boost of adrenaline, she ran with a speed she didn’t even knew she had. She wished she could have helped the other pony, but her fear got the best of her.
Applejack jumped out of the first opening amongst the branches, followed by Rainbow Dash and Pinkie, who looked around frantically. “Where is Fluttershy?” They stared at each other’s faces, before a continuous, high pitched scream slowly got louder and louder, and they saw Fluttershy being spat out from the dark swamp, as she tripped into a root.
All of them looked behind as they saw a pair of red eyes stare at them from between the trees, not ever coming into the light, slowly backing off after staring at them for a few seconds. Pinkie approached Fluttershy, who was still down on the ground with her hooves in the air, protecting her face.
“Here let me help you up” Rainbow Dash extended a hoof to her “Please don’t hurt me!” She shouted back, her eyes wet with tears. “Hey, calm down I just want to lend you a hoof” She answered gently. Calmer now, Fluttershy accepted the helping hoof, got up and wiped her face from the tears.
As each one of them took a few moments to regain their breaths, the landscape downed onto them.
As they looked into the sky, it was bright as a summer evening, the Sun starting to descend, but still the Moon could be seen, as well as all the constellations, all of them amplified many times. I was a beautiful spectacle, although something else grabbed their attention at the skies.
Dragons.
Dozens of them, filled the air, many different kinds and races, many different colors and sizes, all of them magnificent but still fearsome. Flying amongst the dragons small dots could be seen moving fast and spinning between each other, small bursts of light being shot between them. One of them suffered a direct hit from the balls of light, and flew right into their direction. It crashed a few feet from Applejack, causing her to jump to the side. As they looked at it they saw that it was a pony, holding to what seemed to be a broken broom, and in its mouth a small and thin piece of wood. It was most certainly dead by now, the broom broken in half and one of the ends sticking out of its neck.
“So ah guess there ain’t gonna be no flying for the two of you”.
It was too much for them to take in at once. Twilight’s mind was a warzone. An absolute mess. “Are you sure that spell really worked? I mean this can’t be inside her head! It’s crazy!” Everyone else nodded in agreement to Rainbow Dash’s statement, except Spike, who quickly jumped out of Applejack’s back.
“Nope, pretty sure we’re at the right place” He confirmed pointing to the distance. Before them was a pathway that seemed to go through a not very dense forest. It would be quite a normal forest if it weren’t for the fact that many of the trees were floating in the air, carrying along in its roots large chunks of the ground. A few of them floated freely, although most were still attached to the ground by pieces of roots. The trees weren’t very tall so they could see that the pathway led for quite a distance before disappearing in the forest, and inside of it the only discernible object was a large round building, made of marble, very far from them.
In the middle of all that what tipped them of that this was the place were the books and the bookshelves. It was hard to notice at first, but many of the trees were hollow, and inside them many books could be seen. Also, there were books spread everywhere on the ground, broken shelves tossed around, ripped pages and covers.
“Hey guys look! This is gold!” Pointed Pinkie gleefully to the small stones that composed the path. They all stared at it, and Fluttershy whispered to herself smiling.
“The Unicorn of Oz”.
Applejack looked at her and giggled. “Toto, ah have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” She said staring at Spike, who seemed quite displeased with being called a dog. “So we going down this road or what?” Mentioned Applejack ignoring Spike that stared at her seeming quite pissed of.
“Of course we are, it’s a golden road, there has to be something good in the end of it, I bet Twilight is there!” Pinkie said happily quickly forgetting the fearsome incident earlier. As she started hopping towards it, she bumped into a book that was over a small log. She didn’t have much time to see it but she saw the letters “D&D” in the cover, right before it fell down and opened.
From the open book came a bright light, and the words on the page started to swirl around, rising from the book. They all backed off quickly from it, Fluttershy letting out a squeal and trying without much success to hide behind Spike, holding him in front of her.
What appeared before them was much less frightening than what they expected. It was a short earth pony, brown coat and a white mane, wearing a red and yellow robe. His cutie mark was 3 dices forming a triangle, each one with a different number of faces.
“Settle down young ones, and do not be afraid for I am here to help you” They relaxed slowly, and approached the unknown pony. “Who are you?” asked Pinkie.
“You may call me Dungeon Master. I know who you are and why you are here. You are here to free a friend from the claws of madness. Your journey will be dangerous, but I believe you can succeed”.
“I don’t believe, I am sure we can do it!”Said Spike enthusiastically. The ancient pony smiled. Although he was not much taller than Spike, they could see that he was really old. “I admire you willpower young Spike, but that alone won’t suffice” Spike opened his mouth to protest, and also ask how could he know his name, but he continued quickly “But I can help you. Follow the road before you” He now spoke looking at all of them “And you will reach your goal. Be cautious for it is filled with danger, but there may be others willing to help. For you my young and enthusiastic friend, I have something that will be helpful” He produced from his robe a small hourglass attached to a chain, and laid it down in front of himself. Spike walked towards it and picked it up. It had some engravings in a strange language and as he flipped it the sand did not move.
“Wait what is this for? What does it do?”
“When the time comes you will see. And a last prevision for all of you. You start this journey together, but only one will reach the end, for you to be then reunited once more” He finished walking behind a rock not much larger than himself.
“Wait Dungeon Master! What does that mean?” Rainbow Dash asked following him to the rock. He was nowhere to be seen.
“Am I the only one that gets the feeling that this isn’t the first time he does that?” Asked Pinkie.
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At Canterlot, the situation was the one to be expected. Chaos reigned absolute as Discord had chosen a new playground. The citizens were absolutely terrorized by the situation and had no idea what to do. At Ponyville things went bad but this was even worse. After being imprisoned a second time, right after managing to break free, he was absolutely furious. And this was reflected directly in his “pranks”, that were a bit too brutal to be called that way.
Instead of the former chocolate rain, each little water drop was now turned into a sharp spear. Discord dodged his own projectiles and laughed as he watched the small clouds impaling dozens of confused ponies. Large spiked roots grew from houses, destroying them completely. Some of the ground turned to ice and the ponies slipped directly into the thorned messes that their houses had become. And to top it all it was night. A constant night induced by Luna, since her sister no longer had the strength to keep the Sun lit, and the Moonlight was sparse, making the only decent illumination down at the streets be a few large torches that were kept lit by using some unfortunate ponies as fuel, ponies that were pretty unlucky to be near Discord when he decided to play basketball with said torches as baskets.
The princess herself had to come down to the city, bringing along the entire royal guard. Since most of the commanders had been strangled by a strange plant that sprouted into the tent they had made as provisory HQ, she was the one in charge.
“I need you to evacuate the entire town! No pony is to be left behind, for I shall face Discord alone and I wish no more losses!” She was having relapses with her speaking slowly returning to the old way, but she couldn’t care less. Her sister was dying and she had to take care of this mess. She could only hope that Twilight Sparkle would recover before Discord did something even worse. Behind her two pegasi could be seen pulling a large carriage, visibly exhausted by its humongous weight.
In the distance she could spot Discord, sitting upon the roof of a house which he had bent in order to be shaped like a throne. He was calmly admiring his work, all the desperate ponies running around, when he spotted a little foal running desperately screaming for his mother. He smiled deviously and drifted towards it.
Luna took flight and signaled for the two pegasi to follow her.
“C’mon kid! The floor is lava what are you going to do now?” Discord asked sarcastically as he had surrounded the kid in molten rocks. He cried and screamed his mother’s name. “What now? I thought you kids liked this game!” Then a blue blur passed flying in front of his face, and the kid was gone.
“What the…” He didn’t even have time to finish his sentence, as he saw the blue alicorn, he couldn’t help but give a wide smile.
“Run child, find one of the guards and ask him for help!” Luna said hastily, turning around to face Discord, anger filling her eyes and thoughts.
“Well, look what we have here. The Princess of the Moon came here just to appreciate my new playground. I thought you should be somewhere crying over a certain corpse?”
“He thinks she is dead?” She thought to herself “You fool! My sister is not…” She stopped. If she told him, he might go and head straight to the castle to finish the job. Her sudden pause earned her a puzzled look from Discord.
“…not one to leave her subjects to die, and I will carry that as her death wish!” She quickly made up. “If you want to die that much so be it. Don’t you remember that it took the two of you to take me down the last time? What makes you think that you stand any chance alone?”
“I have grown much in power since our last encounter Discord. I need neither my sister nor the elements by my side to defeat you” Of course this was a bluff. She was just gaining time for them to come. “And with the Moon in the sky my magic is even more powerful”.
“Is it night already? I can’t really tell without there being much of a Sun anymore” He smirked.
Luna could feel her heart beating faster and the adrenaline flowing. She had to hold him for as long as she could, but talking to him was proving a bit more than she could handle. She couldn’t let her anger get the best of her. She then remembered the carriage behind her and the two pegasi.
“The two of you! Be gone. I do not wish to see any unnecessary deaths here, just leave the carriage”
“But Princess you can’t take him alone, it’s suicide!” one of them protested. “I not only can and I will. You would only get in the way. Now go!” They left with their heads down, but still flying as fast as they could.
“I believe that wasn’t your smartest decision” Discord slowly moved one of his hands in a circular motion. All of a sudden appeared in the air a large club. It was curved like a bow, with a thick tip that became smaller until it formed a long hilt. It looked like it was made of some sort of bone. When it touched the ground it formed a crater around it, showing the absurd weight of the weapon.
“Do you remember this? It is the dragon tooth I used in our last little duel. I find it quite ironic for me to use a weapon that comes from a being so similar to me. You can tell that the dragon in question was pretty fond of this tooth. He already had a bunch, why couldn’t he give me just one fang?” He burst into laughter once again.
“I find it ironic that you want to use the same weapon that already led you to defeat once” Luna attempted a taunt.
“I am still trying to understand why you refuse help. You think you can defeat me alone but I can see that you are weaker that before. I believe your banishment had something to do with this am I right?” She looked down “I’ll take that as a yes. Anyway I believe you should summon some of your guards. If you had a little army with you this would be a lot more interesting”.
She couldn’t hold it back anymore.
“Army? I NEED NO ARMY!”
With a powerful shout, she raised her front legs in the air, her horn glowing intensely, and as she stomped them both into the ground, the carriage behind her exploded into thousands of pieces, revealing its contents. Dozens of blades were lifted into the air, all enveloped by the same glow of her horn, many blades of different shapes and sizes, but all of them black as the night sky. And in the middle could be seen an enormous hammer, just as big as her.
Discord licked his lips and grabbed the club, his smile impossibly wide.
“Let the games begin!"