//------------------------------// // Chapter One // Story: A Tempest Tossed // by LotusTeaDragon //------------------------------// Chapter One City of Canterlot Canterlot University, Sciences Wing Room 401 A light rain was tapping against the glass of Violet's office window. It went unnoticed by the mare, as she was hooves deep in paperwork. Her blue eyes, now bespectacled thanks to a little too much late night reading and not enough daylight, scanned over the submissions from her 4th-period Climactic Geomorphology class. How do you misspell rain? she thought to herself as she marked off another red 'x' on Saffron Summers' end of quarter exam. A quick glance through the rest of the document showed an impressively comprehensive understanding of how the climate actually worked. The telltale that made her sigh, though, was when she got to the bottom and read the words "Copyright YOC 997, Hoofton-Martingale Publishers." Violet sighed. Saffron had copied the entire paper from a dictionary page. While that sin alone would have been enough to sink her grade, what irked Violet the most was not that she had copied it from the textbook. No, what bothered her more was that even copying it straight from the book she still managed to misspell rain! Violet leaned back in her seat and put a hoof to the bridge of her muzzle. This year's crop of students were going to be the death of her. Teaching at Canterlot University was an honor and a privilege, but there were days. Oh, there were days when she would have rather been anywhere else. When she had graduated Summa Cum Laude from The Royal Academy of Sciences, she had felt honored. When they offered her a teaching position at Canterlot University, she felt overwhelmed. Now she still felt overwhelmed, but in a much different way. It was the kind that caused ponies like Mr. Withers, the Buckball coach, to hide in his office every day fortifying his nerves with liquid courage. Liquid sanity? Maybe. It's not that she was ungrateful. She taught class after class filled with fresh young minds, year after year. It worried her that she was becoming used to the routine. She didn't want to teach by rote, but by her passion. Ten years she had been teaching, and for every one of those years, she wouldn't have missed it for the world. She wasn't sure if she felt that way this year. She had been the youngest professor in Canterlot U's illustrious history when she started, but now she was its most exhausted. She glanced at the mug sitting on her desk. She reached over with her hoof and moved the handle back and forth until the message could be easily read. "Climatologists Do It With Their Anemometers In The Air." She snorted. It had been a gift from one of her students in the second year of her tenure. His name was Snowball Segue, and he was the best ukulele player she had ever heard. Unfortunately, he was also one of her worst students when it came to the class material. She worked with the pegasus all summer that semester helping him study. She had spent half of an hour just teaching him the difference between evapotranspiration and transubstantiation, of which the latter wasn't even a meteorological term. She forgave him for that one since that's what happened when you had a cute stallion sitting in the seat ahead of you. Violet chuckled to herself. He graduated that year with a D+ average but managed to earn a "B" in her class as a result of his efforts. She was proud of him. A knock at the door shook her from her thoughts. She sat up in her chair, having not realized earlier that she had been slowly leaning further on her desk. A quick cough and a straightening of her tie was all she needed to recover. "Come," she said aloud, giving a wave toward the door. She still didn't know why she did that automatically. No one could see it. The door creaked open, as in walked a light orange unicorn mare. Violet smiled. "Yes, Miss Valencia?" The school secretary offered her a timid smile before speaking in her low, wispy voice. "Hello, Miss Tempest, I'm sorry to bother you, but Dean Head Honcho has asked you to join him in his office. He, uh, didn't sound too pleased," she quailed. That struck Violet as odd, that the Dean would wish to see her out of nowhere. She wasn't aware of any infractions she had committed. Her teaching record was exemplary! Still, there was no reason to sit around wondering when the answer was two flights down and a brisk walk to the administrative building. "Thank you, Miss Valencia, I will be along in a moment," Violet said to the soft-spoken mare while offering up an appreciative smile. The mare only nodded once and scooted out of the room, eager to get back to her files and folders. Violet stood and stretched, her spine popping and cracking as she turned her head from left to right. Sweet Celestia, I've been grading exams for 7 hours straight! she thought to herself as she worked a kink out of her right foreleg. Rotating the hoof, she placed it back on terra firma and received a satisfying pop in response. She trotted out of the door, leaving the pile of unfinished reviews to languish on her desk. She approached the administrative office, stepping inside to find Miss Valencia shuffling papers by a filing cabinet in the corner. She gave Violet a quick glance and a nod of her head to indicate that the Dean was waiting in the next room. She knocked on the open door as she stuck her head around the side. The Dean glanced up from his paperwork, and motioned for her to approach. He cleared his throat. "Take a seat, Professor Tempest." His voice was all business. Violet couldn't tell whether he was pleased or disappointed, as the Dean had a knack for keeping a well crafted poker face regardless of whether his audience was student or faculty. Violet took a seat in front of his desk. Dean Honcho scribbled something on one more form before setting the pile aside, placing his hooves together on his desk, and looking at Violet, his expression placid, composed. "Professor, when I asked you to join Canterlot University more than ten years ago, it was because I expected a level of competency, teaching acumen, and an innate sense of propriety unparalleled in the schools of academia." Violet's stomach tightened into a knot. What could she have possibly done wrong? The Dean adjusted his glasses before continuing. "I realize that may have been too much of an expectation to place on one pony, but I had faith that the decision to bring you on right out of graduate school was not only the right one, but the optimal one. It seems that the only real time tested teacher is the future. Today, it has taught me a new lesson." Her heart began to make thudding sounds against her rib cage, while her stomach performed aerial loops. "Today, I must bid you farewell." She was going to be sick. Her mind began to rattle off possible scenarios where she had failed the school. Her hooves began to feel numb. "Princess Luna has commissioned you for immediate transfer to the Royal Equestrian Meteorological Society..." Her heart stopped. "...where you will join their advisory council on Climatological phenomena." He stood up from his desk, and held out his hoof, a grin splitting his muzzle. "Congratulations, Professor." Violet's jaw dropped, taking the Dean's proffered hoof from years of habit. "You will report to the Royal Sciences wing of the castle tomorrow morning, where you will be brought up to speed on your position. Miss Valencia will assign someone to finish reviewing those exam papers, and I want you to know that the student body and faculty stand behind you in your great leap forward, Miss Tempest." "Uh huh" was all she managed as the Dean moved from his desk to show her out, a thought ran through her mind. Why in the wide wide world of Equestria would Luna choose me to head her advisory council? Frostmuzzle Village Northern Crystal Mountains Sunpike Star awoke to silence. She had fallen asleep on her favorite rug once again. The frayed, worn floor covering offered a modicum of warm respite from the cold, damp floor. The cold and damp were nothing new to her, so she didn't give it a moment's thought as she jumped to her hooves and walked to her wash basin, her hooves sloshing about in a mixture of snowmelt. A few splashes on her face, a quick dry with the tattered towel, and she was good to go. The sunlight was streaking through the decaying wooden door that lead from the single room hut to the outside. The rays of light looked warm and inviting, but they weren't by any stretch of the imagination. She stepped outside and froze as she stared at what she saw before her. The first thing she noticed was the extreme heat. Frostmuzzle Village was situated on the outer edges of the Chill Fields, a large ice shelf located in the northern Crystal Mountains. It was a plateau covered in permafrost that extended more than 10 hoof lengths deep below the earth. The only thing that would grow this far north were the crystal berries, a hardy shrub that bore grape sized fruits that resembled raspberries, but with a distinct salty flavor. They were prized for their versatility in various dishes. Equestria's top chefs paid top dollar to have them shipped across the Crystal Mountains and into their eager hooves, and more for Frostmuzzle crystal berries. It was said that the village could survive for decades just from the profits alone, made on berry exports. "No one can grow a berry like Frostmuzzle!" they would brag, and for good reason, because the Chill Fields had the coldest climate in all of the Crystal Empire. The second thing Sunpike noticed was the massive fault line that ran across the entire plain before her. "Sunpike!" came a shout behind her. She turned to find her longtime foal-hood friend, and village blacksmith, Ten Penny Nail running up to her, his panicky voice matching his wild eyes, and his stumbling gait. "Are you seeing this?!" he yelled, slipping as he approached her position. "It's the heat! The heat is melting the ice!" Sunpike blinked quickly, recovering from her shock. "I see it, Ten," she said as she helped him back to his hooves. His earth pony body was just a little too heavy to handle sudden stops, especially on the slush that had formed where solid ice had once existed. "What's happening, Sun, why is it so hot?" he asked her as his head snapped back and forth at the cacophony of villagers yelling, screaming, and running out into the fields to save as much of the crop as they could from the rising watery mix. Sunpike shook her head in response as she watched two earth pony stallions trying to life an old cedar chest filled with berries. Instead, she stood in the same spot, unable or unwilling to commit her thought to action. She had never before felt anything like the heat they were experiencing. Yesterday had been just as cold as any other, and yet today? Blazing. It was enough to terrify any mare and bring back thoughts of Lucien the Fire Mage, a stallion of ancient Crystal legend who had purportedly burned an entire village to the ground for offering him no sanctuary from the frigid environs of the plateau's harsh winters. A loud rumble caught their attention, and the surface under their hooves heaved as if someone had grabbed the edge of it and snapped it taut. Both Sunpike and Ten Penny fell to the ground, their coats covered in muddy water, and bits of thawing soil. As she got to her hooves, attempting to brush some of the silt from embedding itself into her coat, she heard Ten Penny behind her as an earsplitting shriek tore the air asunder. "Wha- what was that?" he asked, his voice filled with fear. Turning to face her friend, Sunpike was certain they were about to find out as she watched the open fault begin to spread. The act of separation made a growling sound, as if an Ursa Major had shown up at their doorstep demanding its hunger be satisfied. The ground beneath them rumbled once again, though the pair managed to maintain their footing. The village huts didn't fare so well, as they began to collapse, including her modest home behind her. She didn't get a chance to feel dismay at its loss because what came next made her heart stand still. Even without ever hearing it in her entire life up until that point, Sunpike knew the death knell of a large mass of ice losing the battle against gravity. She turned just in time to see a wall of ice heading right for them, and uttered one last word to Celestia before knowing nothing more. The plateau screeched as it opened its maw, hungrily swallowing Frostmuzzle Village, the devastated bounty of the Chill Fields, and any witnesses who could have spread the news of what had happened there. If only they had could have told someone, anyone, before their world was upended, but not one pony in all of Equestria had any idea of what was coming for them all. /)*(\