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// Chapter 1:  Beginnings 
// Story: Secret Search 
// by computerneek 
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When he absorbed the Alicorn magic from Princess Twilight, Tirek believed that hers was the last he’d need to gain omnipotence.  That’s what he’d been told, in that ancient prophecy- if he could take the magic of every pony in Equestria, he’d become omnipotent.

Only, he’s not becoming omnipotent.  While the powerless ponies and draconequus in front of him do their thing- he really doesn’t care what, it’s not like they can fight him- he scans the area around him.  He doesn’t feel so much as a smidgen of power anywhere other than himself- but he also doesn’t feel his pending omnipotence.  Seriously, it’s supposed to be instantaneous!  He spends just a few more seconds analyzing this, uses his newly acquired alicorn magic in a wide scan for any pony he missed, and briefly vents his frustration on the forest in front of him.  The ponies- and the draconequus- have left, but no matter.

Now that the first piece of his ferocious temper is satisfied, he turns back towards Ponyville, and places his concentration into a powerful magical scan fit to identify every pony in Equestria, check them for magic, and tell him if anypony is missing.

This scan takes him a few minutes, but it eventually completes with a rather disappointing result.

One pony.

One, single unicorn, the spell couldn’t find.

He compares the number of unicorn magics he’s absorbed to the total number his spell reports should be found…  Yep, that one unicorn still has magic.  And he can’t find it!  He lets out an enormous roar, and resumes venting his frustration on the leafy eyesore around him.  He drops scan after scan into the atmosphere, searching, searching for that one survivor.


Unbeknownst to him, there existed too many layers of stone and spellwork between him and his faraway target.  Had he known where she was, getting to her would have been easy.  Had he been looking for just any pony, he would have seen the standing enchantments and looked closer.  However, he’s looking for a specific pony, so the enchanted objects in the desert aren’t worthy of his attention.  He doesn’t sense anypony near them, so it’s more worth his while to examine everypony else’s signatures more closely.


Very suddenly, he senses a massive surge in magical energy very close to him, and whirls to face.  It’s those six mares!  With rainbows!  How?

Oh, they’re responding.  He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud.

“...ost powerful magic in all of Equestria:  The magic of friendship!”

Even as he feels their magic- friendship, apparently- building to similar power levels as his own current state, he feels an even greater surge elsewhere- behind him, in Ponyville, paired with one in that desert…  Wait.  That was two ends of the same spell; the enchanted objects in the desert have moved…  and gone down enormously in residual energy.

More importantly, he can now sense the missing unicorn- it had come with the enchanted objects.  Part of him forgets about the mares in front of him and starts turning towards Ponyville.  Part of him stays focused on the charging Elements of Harmony in front of him- how the mares activated them without their magic, he doesn’t know.  The rest of him is indecisive in what course of action he wants to take.

Unfortunately for him, this proves to be his downfall.  His stolen power is split between three different tasks- and the one that would have saved him, defense against the Elements, gets the least power directed towards it.  Most of the rest was directed to indecision, leaving about thirty unicorns worth of power to locate the final pony and drag it out to him.

And what the combined magical power of almost every Equestrian soul might deflect with dismissive ease, two unicorns’ worth of power will be swatted away by with similarly punitive ease.  The quantity of magic directed to his indecision is then looking absolutely nowhere when the powerful magic strikes his form- and strips him instantly of his stolen magics.  Except those two unicorns’ worth- that takes a quarter second to strip out, thanks to its direction towards his defense.

As the magic of the Elements burns through his form, reducing him back to the powerless centaur he had left behind, memories flash through his mind…  including his brother’s last words, before he departed back home.

“Your attention span will be your undoing,” he had said.

And so, Tirek the Omnipotent once again failed to come to be, while Tirek the Banished once again arrived in Tartarus.  He was so close…  Maybe next time.





Finally, she’s home!  It had taken weeks to build up enough power in her enchantments to move the thing.  Then, she’d moved it- what perfect timing Tirek had, she’d been able to hide the inevitable earthquake produced by the repositioning of so much material in his defeat- and set to work getting out of it.  There had been a cave by one of its doors back in that desert; nevermind that she had constructed the cave in the sandstone.  Now, however, that cave leads to a rather large quantity of rather unremarkable dirt and rock.  Nevermind that it’s the kind of dirt and rock that one normally doesn’t find in a desert in any quantity.

But the cave may also have collapsed.  She hadn’t been able to shape the returning lump of rock to match the thing she was teleporting; unfortunately, if she wanted to do that, it would have taken her months longer to charge…  and, when she performed the jump, she had only had enough food left to last a single week.  Aside from the fact that somepony would have felt that much magic, and she’d have investigators in her mane.  It’s the small shape differences that produced the earthquake in Ponyville- rock suddenly standing over empty air pockets, or thrust aside by the magic delivering the enormous metal object.  When she stops to consider, she’s actually quite pleased with herself; the resultant quake had been much smaller than it could have been and, so far as she’s found out, it hadn’t broken anything…  the vases in Murphy Law’s living room don’t count.  Neither does the only book left on its shelf in the Golden Oak Library; Tirek had blown the rest of that up.

She’d been most worried about the ponyquins in the Carousel Boutique- but not one of them had fallen.  As a matter of fact, her alibi- a magical duplicate she’d made of herself, directly controlled by and drawing on her real self- had been nearby…  they’d hardly even wobbled.  She had heard that a cake had nearly fallen over in Sugarcube Corner- but that was really all the damage.

While her alibi- a constant drain on her magic- trots back to her home, she heads for the shower.  Even after she had teleported it home, it had taken her close to three full days to build the sturdy tunnel now connecting the thing to her basement.  Tomorrow, she’ll build herself another secret door to cover the opening, move the last of her food back to her kitchen, and start work on the walls of the hallway she’ll have connect it to her home, rather than the tunnel it has now.  Once she’s finished with that, she’ll run electricity down and start trying to figure out how it works…  and, possibly, to get it working again.  As near as she could tell, out in that desert, it’s safe to restore.

As she passes through her third-level basement, her mind crosses to that strange energy her book called ‘electricity’.  She can’t quite remember where it had come from, but it’s penned in impeccably precise characters far smaller than the finest hornwriting; as a matter of fact, many of the characters it uses are smaller even than the lines her fine-tipped quill leaves on parchment!  Not that she’d ever tested actually in the book; no, she’d layered that thing in so many protective spells it should be impossible for the ink to get within a foot of the thing.  Not that she’s ever allowed it closer than six feet.

On that topic, the characters had, despite being amazingly regular in addition to their miniature size, most certainly not been regular Equestrian.  She’d required a translation spell, at first, to understand them; in particular, a translation spell she’d had scan the book for about two hours before it was of any use.  Nowadays, she can read it directly.

It has no title, and the solid covers are faded blue, with no decoration.  Inside, she’d found, it talks all about this electricity.  Back in the day, she’d hardly gotten half a page into the first chapter before she’d first gotten excited about the possibilities presented to her.  Said first chapter served as an introduction, with all sorts of details about the stuff; mostly about how to be safe with it.

So nowadays, she’s got a magic-powered hydroelectric power plant in her basement, producing a constant flow of energy.  She’d been disappointed to find that the book doesn’t once mention magic of any sort, and this had been the best solution she’d been able to come up with.

The rest of the room is filled with various contraptions she’d assembled from the book.  Many of her attempts hadn’t worked; a small pile of such nonworking constructions rests in the corner, waiting to be recycled and rebuilt.  A relatively small portion of her attempts had been successful.  There’s the light in the corner, shining its harsh light forever on an unforgiving blackboard.  The one with two whirly bits sticking out of it, theoretically called a ‘blender’.  The one with a whirly bit inside the glass jug…  ‘food processor’.  The kitchen-y setup in her second-floor basement runs on electricity- fridges that stay cold without recharging a cooling spell, ovens that heat themselves to the desired temperature- and maintain it- without the assistance of magic.  The strange oven that, despite remaining cool inside, still heated whatever she put in- not metal, the book had warned- to extreme temperatures in a matter of minutes.  Oh, and how a couple of touches on the controls of any of the ovens would start a timer…  A very precise timer, to be exact, that would ring loudly when the time came.

Then, she’d found this.  A giant, metal thing out in the desert.  It wasn’t in her book, but she’d found a couple patterns and realized it must also run on electricity.  She’d been able to test that onsite, thanks to a carefully modulated lightning spell…  But unfortunately, she can’t actually watch what it’s doing when she powers it directly like that.  Much distraction at all and she could produce an unsightly power surge, fit to disintegrate some of the more delicate electric things, like the tiny silicon brains running her basement kitchen.  As a result, she’d forced herself to end the spell once she was sure it’s electrical; and now, she has it close enough she can theoretically connect it to the small electrical ‘grid’ she has in her basement.  Well, no- she’ll connect it to a second generator she has sitting next to the first.  That way, she can be sure she won’t be damaging her basement kitchen appliances.

She works her way carefully up the layers of secret rooms.  Each basement is separated from those above it by its own secret door; she must make sure that, whenever she emerges from them, she doesn’t do it in somepony’s line of vision.  Her first-level basement entrance opens up into her living room, behind the staircase; the door isn’t visible from the window, so she needn’t worry about outside.  She uses a quick spell to check the house- completely empty, and her alibi is still five minutes away- before she heads out and upstairs, to where the shower is.  Oh, another electric thing- her hot water heater, hidden in a closet in her second-level basement.  She no longer has to manually heat a large tank of water, by magic, to high temperatures every few days- it does it entirely itself!  …  Though she does still have a magic-powered heater in her home, though it’s not hooked up to anything.  It’s more for show than anything else, in case she ever has visitors…  or somepony to fill the other three bedrooms…  Or, even, to fill the other side of her own bed.
She quickly discards that thought, and steps into the shower, switching on the blessedly hot water without having to adjust the hot/cold ratio every five minutes.  While she showers off weeks of dirt and grime, her alibi gets home, locks the door, and finally disappears when she releases the spell.