Something is wrong. The Master returned from her stint at unleashing hell and she seems... unwell.
I won't say she seems angry, far from it. There are no flaming spheres of death, lightning bolts, gouts of blistering ice or even a rolled up newspaper in sight, but where the outward signs of anger are missing, she seems, somehow... smaller.
Well, not physically, of course! She's still taller than Spike and I, but she's moving slower and her ears are down.
I wonder if they cursed her and she is recovering. Something to worry about later; the Master is far too powerful to succumb to some piddly little hex.
No, whatever this is, it has clearly sapped her energy.
I, honestly didn't know what to do. Normally, a good maniacal cackling will cheer up a warlock. She just sighed. Maybe a few orphan sacrifices? We are SORELY lacking both orphans and sacrifices in this little backwater-flower-shop.
Stitchface used to love watching the flickering of firelight on a quiet night when she was feeling low, but somehow I doubt the Master will approve of setting her own little hamlet on fire just to boost her spirits.
No... No! Something must be done! I shall convene with that little herald of the apocalypse and see if he has anything to suggest. Between Spike and I, I'm sure we can come up with something.
---
It was a long afternoon, and one I'm not terribly happy with, but we've come to a conclusion, Spike and I. Well... two actually.
I believe the Master has been afflicted with a lingering synecdoche based curse. That's pronounced 'sin-nekt-duh-kee., It means a spell that targets a part of something to mess with the rest of it.
Voodoo. Okay? It's freaking voodoo. Pretty much means that as long as it's out there, the Master is vulnerable.
I bet its those 'princesses' she keeps talking about. I bet they invited her to tea the other day to steal a tail hair or something so they could keep her in line. I BET they think they've got her under their thumb!
Oh, but they are so very wrong. The Master can't be controlled with such a simple trick. Oh no. She'll figure it out and then the gloves will come off. It'll start with a little spying, something to wet the appetite as it were. She'll have Spike and I go out and infiltrate the castle. We'll start small, checking guard rotations, locating access for the peasants, tracking food shipments and that sort of thing. Then, she'll have us sneak through, finding the commissary, barracks and kitchens. She'll muster her little minions and have them on standby, hiding in the rocky terrain nearby as Spike dismembers the guard, destroys their armor, and I poison the UTENSILS in the kitchen.
What? You think they wouldn't check the food? No... the Master is too clever for that. She'll want the food to be fine so when they grow ill and start investigating it'll be hopeless. Before long, they'll assume the food stores are tainted, but when they check, they'll find nothing and continue on eating more, all the while chasing ghosts. Eventually, the deaths will start piling up, but by then the guard will have been overrun, the peasants routed from their fortified city, and the royals will have to face the full might of a scorned warlock with the power to leash the little death-wyrm and summon demons as a hobby.
I shall start the preparations myself. If I can't find the Master's stash of spell components, I'm sure I can make some. There are plenty of children in the town; blood of the innocent can't be that difficult to find. The Rarity can supply us with enchantments and I'm sure the Assassin will be of help, what with her own dark secrets being used as blackmail. Even the Sweatstain and Traitor can be capitalized upon for their brute force approach in culling any Guard that missed breakfast.
Pinkie Pie can bring her artillery for any war machines these royals may be hiding.
And once they surrender the accursed focus of the Master's affliction, I'll strip it of her essence and peel off a bit of flesh from the royals themselves before having Spike nibble on it while I broil the blasted thing until their screams echo from the four corners of the realm!
Spike, however, thinks she's just depressed about having no 'royal duties' of her own.
Silly Spike, no self respecting warlock desires 'duties' that would detract from their pursuit of knowledge and power.
Well, I suppose I can forgive his naivete; he is only a baby dragon, after all.
Regardless, I will NOT simply stand by and let my Master be forced to serve their will. Absolutely not. She is MY Master and I will NOT allow such a thing to pass.
Er... she is needed. For the Legion.
...
...
I feel, somehow, less comfortable with that than I should. I will have to think on this some more.
-~oOo~-
I can't really express my confusion enough to convey just how much I dislike magic bubbles.
The Master had been puttering around the lair, looking upset, and patently denying my suggestions to simply usurp the uppity royals when she received yet ANOTHER summons to this pair of overly needy royalty.
So, without preamble, she ran off to the train station again.... after just arriving back at the lair the day before.
Honestly, if I wasn't certain that they were incompetent, I might find the sleep deprivation and psychological stress to be funny. As it is, she sealed me up in a little magenta bubble of magic and told me to be good while she was gone.
Then, she left.
Spike came in a few minutes later and asked if I wanted to do something, but I'm fairly certain he didn't take my suggestion to rouse the minions into a preemptive strike seriously. Regardless, we ended up lounging around the lair for the better part of the day before the Master returned, looking even more upset than when she left.
My bubble popped, and I scampered over to offer my support when she said she just wanted to go for a walk.
This, apparently, warranted my inclusion via magical magenta bubble... AGAIN.
Have I mentioned how much I hate that thing?
Well, a minute or two outside and her minions had somehow known to assemble. They caught up with us just at the edge of her hamlet and proceeded to invite themselves in her walk.
I should point out that when the Master decided to go for a walk, her chosen destination was apparently deep within a region of primordial forest... a place so foreboding that it creates its own predators out of whatever is left laying around.
That's right. When a tree falls in this forest, not only does it make a sound, but it might very well get back up, howl, and start systematically dissecting whatever caused it to fall in the first place. I'm not even making this up... the Master said we just needed to be on the lookout for timberwolves, and when I expressed my confusion, she described them as wolves composed of the jagged, broken, and dead remains of trees infused with a malevolence borne of the primal will of an eldrich forest.
I laughed at her joke until the Sweatstain barked to keep it down... apparently they are unkillable and can fuse together to become an even more dangerous beast.
The Master confirmed this.
Anyway, the Master's 'relaxing walk' destinations aside, we ended up at a cliff overlooking a rocky gully. Oddly enough, rough hewn steps seemed to descend into the darkness, and even more surprisingly, that was the path the Master took.
We descended down into the cold, stony heart of the forest, only to come upon a cave with a tree entirely made of some kind of manacrystal. The thing was huge, at least as big as one of those steam-tanks the dwarves seem so fond of.
And there, they stood, discussing how they had 'returned the elements' to the 'tree of harmony' or something. In all honesty, I was trying not to be creeped out by the sheer size of that thing.
See, what you have to understand is that a mana gem is composed of the crysatalized will of a mage, compressed and infused with the life force of countless victims. A warlock can make something pretty close called a 'soul stone', or the less powerful 'soul shard'. Where a shard is literally a fractured chip of the spiritual essence of a victim, a soul stone is the entirety of a victim's soul, used as fuel for a warlock's more powerful magics. Where a warlock will summarily execute a victim to fuel their goals, a mage steals bits and pieces... like mosquitoes siphoning blood... from everything nearby.
A respectable mana gem is about the size of an egg.
This 'tree' was either older than dirt, and still stealing life, or evidence of one of the greatest magical thefts I can imagine. And while I was going over the implications of the Master not only knowing about, but having such a creation in her possession, one of the olde gods just decided to show up unannounced.
...
And other than saying the mismatched ancient maddness' name outloud, a dangerous feat in an of itself, the Master and her minions didn't even flinch.
I, meanwhile, phased, pulled up as much magic as I could and prepared the hottest, most vicious. ball of fel fire I've ever created in my long long life. The thing was beautiful, roiling with the suffering of the damned, hissing as the air around it flickered and burned with little gouts of smoke. This fel bolt, it... it was a piece of art.
So I threw it at the abomination hoping to distract it long enough for the Master to flee. She had enough minions along with her to stall it once the threat was distracted.
And that elder god? It plucked my glorious fel bolt out of the air, twisted it around a mismatched claw, and manifested a PAPER CONE to stick the fel fire to.... and proceeded to nibble on it like cotton candy.
At which point, I may have fainted... I'm not sure. I mean... I'm still here, telling you this story, but.... FEL FIRE IS NOT COTTON CANDY!
-~oOo~-
Well, what can I say? Elder gods just prancing about and the Master only looking a bit annoyed? Yheah, pretty much told me my assumptions have been right all along.
The Master is some kinda top tier uber-warlock.
Heh... I mean, yes, it was kinda obvious the way she's always going on about 'behaving' and 'etiquette' and 'playing nice' with others, but to just roll her eyes when a FREAKING ELDER GOD POPS INTO EXISTANCE? That's hardcore.
That's Eredar level power there buddy.
To put things in perspective, Stitchface was an undead warlock capable of poisoning the mind, crippling the body, and forcing the very tissues of her victim's bodies to wither and die. She also liked to eat their faces occasionally.... you know... for self image or something. She would throw around balls of fel-tainted shadow magic on a whim, taint stockpiles of food with corrosive chemicals and had a habit of dropping boxes of scorpions into orphanages to 'toughen them up'... you know, pretty standard stuff really.
She liked to kill things, often hundreds or even thousands of things, in an afternoon, because she could.
And she died almost as frequently as she recovered from dying.... you know... a few times a day at least.
But the Master? The Master hasn't died a single time since I've been here.
She's been crushed, lit on fire, poisoned, blugeoned, zapped with lightning, hit with spellfire, been exposed to dangerous chemicals, and even exposed to fel-magics on many occasions! I've checked... she hasn't died.
I don't even know if she keeps a soulstone around... and frankly? I can't blame her with how tough she is.
I don't care how hardcore someone thinks they are, taking anvils and pianos to the head while unarmored is NOT healthy.
She put a few bandaids on and used a wheelchair for a few minutes.... which I'm pretty sure was mostly to keep prying eyes from asking the wrong kinds of questions.
Oh... and she didn't flinch when the eldrich abomination that is an ELDER FREAKING GOD just showed up unnanounced to her little walk through the primordial forest of doom.
...
They're apparently on a first name basis, by the way. Her and all her little minions.
So, anyway, after he shows up, this 'Discord' just kind of puttered around, mocking the Master a bit and randomly altering reality before manifesting one of the Master's books and flipping through it. Said something about how they should really just take a look at some of the better parts and then tossed it aside like an orphan's hopes and dreams.
Granted, those aren't really worth anything to begin with, but I've seen the Master get rather upset when her possessions are tampered with.
From what I could see, he'd stuck little colorful bits of paper all throughout its pages.
So, despite the vile thing's appearance, he didn't really stay long, opting instead to hop on a purple vehicle of some sort and drive through a door that simply popped into existence as he used it.
The Master, despite everything, did not seem overly upset... once more affirming my belief that she simply didn't loathe him enough to waste her precious time in eradicating his being from time and eternity.
Which might actually explain why he didn't cause more trouble. I mean, if you know someone can destroy you, but chooses not to, I guess there's a bit of a professional respect going on or something.
Still don't like that thing.... makes my head hurt just trying to imagine how all those claws and wings and scales and fur and horns and teeth and colors and....and...an....a...................
That way lies madness.
I don't like elder gods. Some things just aren't meant to be around after time started.
But the Master? She went right on back to work, like nothing had happened at all.
-~oOo~-