//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: The Unbreakable Shining Diamond And His Dogs // by PonyOfNi //------------------------------// Chapter 2 It was dark. It was dank. But worst of all...it was dirty! Rarity couldn’t believe those three...mongrels had dared to drag her in these tunnels, these dark, filthy tunnels after ponynapping her! “Where are you taking me!?” “To Pack of Hierophant Alpha!” The lead Dog chortled as he heaved her alongside, the smaller and larger - and both apparently, dumber - of the trio at his heels. “Who is that?” “You will see soon pony!” Rarity could barely see by the light of the gems on the Dogs’ collars that glowed faintly, as the rough and broken tunnel walls began to become smoother, more worked, and glowing gems like those in the Dogs’ collars began to appear, set into the walls. The tunnels progressed to clearly, professionally worked and fashioned, clear floor, walls, and ceiling emerging from the bare, unformed stone, and sconches bearing metal torches that, instead of wood, oil and flame, were lit with unnaturally shaped and powered gemstones that blazed with light bright enough to make it seem like it was day. Rarity was, for a moment, caught up in the beauty of the halls, as murals began to appear. Wonderful artwork, carved into the stone and set with bright, shining metal of gold, silver, bronze and more, with gems inset at points to represent stars or eyes or any number of things. She could only catch glimpses as they rushed past, most of the murals dissolving in blurs of gleaming color and sparkling light. Soon though, they came to a rest, the three dogs skidding to a halt in front of a pair of dogs in heavy metal armor, before a pair of enormous stone doors. Rarity studied the guard dogs, covered snout to paw in heavy-looking plates of dark gray metal, with runic silver patterns and gemstones inlaid into them. She was sure Twilight could tell her what, if any, significance this had, as well as any real magical effect, but all she was concerned about was the overall style - which was tribalistic and brutish. Especially combined with the spiked halberds they held in their paws. The guard dogs heads followed the three who had captured Rarity as they crept closer, and she noted the helms were not open and clear, but rather possessed visors of chipped ruby that Rarity couldn’t possibly tell how the guards saw through. As the three dogs with Rarity came within a dozen feet, the guards growled, a harsh, guttural sound that sent shivers down Rarity’s spine, and made the three dogs with her drop to all fours and bow their heads. The guards barked and snarled at the three, who responded with barks and whimpers - a conversation that Rarity couldn’t follow. After a minute of back-and-forth, one of the guards howled. The stone doors rumbled, and moved, the grinding of their bases against the stone floor sounding like the snarls of a thousand dogs. A wave of heat seemed to blast Rarity in the face, a hot breeze blowing through the doors and ruffling her mane. Behind, four guard dogs clanked up to her and her three...escorts, taking up positions around as they moved forward. As they passed the doors, they ground back shut, but Rarity didn’t notice, as taken as she was by the sight before her. Surrounded on one side by a moat of lava, and the other by one of water, both fed by falls of their respective substance, was a city of granite and gems. Buildings carved in intentionally harsh angles and brutish styles out of granite of white, pink, and gray colors, all under an enormous diamond that shone like the sun. And right under that diamond, a tall black tower of a building, that the dogs were dragging Rarity to. They passed over a bridge that kept the lava and water from meeting, traveling on roads paved with smoothed stones, past crowds of dogs in all sorts of garb who turned at sight or sound or smell of them to stare, glare, and growl at Rarity. They were at the tower within minutes, Rarity becoming more and more cowed as passing dogs snarled, barked and growled at her, a cacophony of derision and loathing. The tower had doors similar to the ones around the great cavern this Diamond Dog city resided in, if only smaller, and carved with stoic visages of dogs. Unlike the doors outside though, their opening was whisper-quiet. Within, the tower and its twisting stairs and chambers were as quiet as a tomb. The dogs that had taken Rarity had fallen ever more silent since they entered the city, but now she imagined she could hear their heartbeats they were so quiet. Even the guards took to moving slower to prevent their armor plates from clanking, going from a hard march to a careful tread. Eventually, they reached their destination. A room atop the tower that held twelve alcoves around its perimeter, and a platform in the center where stood a tall dog, dressed in robes and bearing a staff with an enormous gem topping it, a large black crystal Rarity identified as a spinel. As the tall dog turned and approached her, she saw that under robes of linen and silk, there was a shirt, tattered and threadbare, patched with paws both novice and trained. Only with her trained seamstress eye could Rarity spot the oldest remnants, barely keeping its original tanned desert camouflage, around a patch of a dog’s head, with the smallest diamond Rarity every saw serving as the dog patch’s eye. “Pony.” Rarity snapped her head up from her study of the tall dog’s clothing to realize her escorts had disappeared. “W-what? What do you want with me?” “Want? What I want, pony, is the resurrection of the great land of Romulus! What I want is to see the spires of Remus scratching the clouds! I want Diamond Dogs to have the glory that ponies stole from us!” Spittle splattered Rarity’s face, and she reared back in disgust. “Ugh! You uncouth -” “Silence.” The staff’s butt slammed into the ground under Rarity’s front hooves with a crack, splitting the basalt floor. The dog withdrew the staff, and the floor creaked and groaned and sealed shut again. “You in and of yourself cannot give that to me, pony. But, you can be the key to it, through this!” The dog gestured with the staff towards one of the alcoves, and Rarity gasped as she saw within. An enormous metal shape, a great huge machine in the form of a Diamond Dog. Metal items, weapons obscured the form somewhat, but the overall shape was that of a fifteen-foot metal Diamond Dog curled up into a ball. “Behold pony, the gigant machina of the Hierophant Arcana! Within it, is sealed my predecessor, the Hierophant of ages past, cursed many, many, many tens of tens of years ago by pony magic. Pony magic that has only recently returned.” “Wait...you don’t mean…” “Yes...The Elements of Harmony. And the Pack of Tower has seen it, seen you, Rarity, the Element of Generosity.” The dog leered at Rarity, looming over her as he backed her into the alcove with the machine. “Would you be so generous as to release my honored ancestor?” “I-I would love to dear, but ah,I don’t have -” Rarity is interrupted by a grinding shake of the floor, and a pedestal emerging, bearing atop it what appeared to be the Element of Generosity. However, Rarity could feel it wasn’t it. A flawless replication of the Element as it appeared presently, with a blue diamond much like her cutie mark, and charged with an impressive amount of magic, but not the same as the Element itself. “That’s nice, but it’s not the Element...and even then, I couldn’t possibly do anything without the others.” “You will try.” The dog growled, taking the fake Element off of the pedestal and thrusting it at Rarity. Hesitantly, she took the necklace, her magical aura enshrouding it and bringing it around her neck. She moved to the ‘gigant machina’, the giant metal dog, and probed it with her magic. And then her face was covered in chocolate milk. “What are you trying pony?” “I’m not trying anything! I just tried to probe it and UGH, this milk is rancid!” “Bah! Useless pony...use Element magic!” “I told you! I can’t do anything without the real Element and the others! Not that I’m sure the Elements can even do anything about this...they’ve only been used to banish Nightmare Moon and then cure her from what I know.” “Pony will try harder, or I’ll -” The threat was cut short by an explosion of purple magic, followed by a flash of rainbows. Later “- and that’s when we busted in and rescued her!” Rainbow belted out, much to the amusement of her friends and Celestia. “And a very impressive rescue it sounds like Rainbow Dash.” Celestia allowed the pegasus a moment to bask in the glory, before she turned to Rarity. “Now, Rarity, can you tell us exactly why the Diamond Dogs ponynapped you?” “Oh yes, it was quite strange. They wanted me to break an old spell on these horrible metal things they had -” “Metal things?” Celestia interrupted, a frightful look taking over her face. “Um, the Alpha dog called them gigant machina? And said they held the...A-arcana?” Celestia’s look only darkened in response. “And he said that the... Elements of Harmony were used to cast the spell?” There was a moment of silence as the current bearers of the Elements looked awkwardly at one of the previous bearers. After that, Celestia gave a deep sigh, before turning and walking for the door out of the throne room, gesturing with her wing for the others to follow. “Almost 500 years before Luna became Nightmare Moon...before we became the rulers of Equestria...the kingdom was ruled by Discord, the Spirit of Disharmony. Eventually, the time came when we raised a rebellion against him and threw him out. However, Discord waged a war against Equestria to conquer it, and his soldiers were Diamond Dogs. They wielded strange and powerful weapons and magic, with machines far beyond what any at the time could comprehend that they called machina. The most dangerous and powerful of those were, of course, the gigant machina.” As Celestia spoke, she paused to gesture at stained glass windows, showing images of a bizarre creature, a serpentine being composed of random creature parts, in one window dangling ponies over a pit, in another being chased by Celestia and Luna, and in a third, surrounded by devastation wrought by giant metal dogs. “That was the start of a war that lasted some thirty years, with many hundreds of thousands suffering from Discord’s wrath. The Arcana were twelve dogs in their gigant machina that were the most dangerous, capable, and ferocious warriors of all Diamond Dogs. And every time we took to the battlefield personally and were not met by Discord, we were instead fought back by the Arcana.” More windows were shown, of twelve very specific giant metal war machines being shown fighting against Celestia, Luna, and any number of pony soldiers, Discord depicted in a laughing fit above the conflict. “We were unaware, however, of a Thirteenth Arcana. It only appeared at the end of the war, when it and the twelve other Arcana attacked us at our castle - the Castle of the Two Sisters in what is now the Everfree.” A new window, showing a gigant machina taller than the rest, near four times Celestia’s height, and bearing a bipedal form unlike any other, with a head adorned with an enormous v-shaped crest. “We learned from Diamond Dogs later that its gigant machina was called ‘Gundam’, and it was the most powerful of them all, and was operated by their leader, whom the Dogs only ever called ‘The Glorious Shining Diamond’ or ‘The Great Master’. This, we assumed, was the second-in-command of Discord. And it wreaked untold havoc.” Another window showed the ‘Gundam’ standing before a force of ponies with a magic shield covering them and the Castle of the Two Sisters - only for a beam composed of scintillating emerald shards to break through the shield and the ponies in another part of the window. “When the attack began, many of our more talented guards and magicians were assaulted and kept away by the Twelve, while the Gundam pursued us relentlessly. The greatest asset of the gigant machina was the powerful magic shield that protected them from spells - direct magical blasts and any attempt to telekinetically grab them or teleport them failed, without question, unless a large number of unicorns gathered to perform a spell on one machina, or a single very powerful spellcaster - which usually came down to me or Luna - performed it. The Gundam, however, was impervious even to both me and Luna’s spells, and in turn could annihilate any of our magical defenses. It hounded us in a running battle that saw many ponies dead in our wake, and it was only through a chance of fate that we survived, when the Elements of Harmony appeared to us.” This window showed the sisters side-by-side, the Elements surrounding them, arrayed against the thirteen gigant machina, the Gundam and the twelve Arcana. “That was the very first time the Elements were used - to banish Diamond and his Arcana from Equestria. They were sent to the sky, in the form of the Dog’s Head constellation.” “Wait, the same constellation that disappeared when Nightmare Moon returned!?” Twilight’s eyes bugged out as she began to comprehend the enormity of that constellation. “The very same. The twelve stars that outlined the head were the Arcana, and fell just before Luna was purified by you six. The single remaining star is Diamond, and thankfully, it remains in place. And it seems the Arcana remain asleep even now, many months later.” “B-but why?” “I can only assume that the spell the Elements bound them with is only partially broken - and so long as Diamond remains bound in the sky, the Arcana will sleep.” “Sounds logical enough.” A new voice chuckled, a male voice, with a menacing undercurrent that brought a spark of fear to Celestia as her gaze darted around the hall of windows. The voice continued to laugh, and finally she saw it, the Bearers quick to follow her sight - the last window, depicting Celestia and Luna blasting Discord with the Elements. The stained glass composing Discord’s image was shivering, shaking, as it moved and laughed. “Discord! How -” “Dear Celly, it’s obvious! You and Luna don’t have those tawdry pieces of jewelry anymore, so everything you’ve done - it’s all coming apart! Why, I bet good ol’ Danny boy will be down here any day now!” “Danny?” Twilight chimed in. “Yes, Danny. Ruler of the Diamond Dogs. A fun enough chap, but I imagine he’ll be a bit miffed at you all when he comes down. Especially with you Celestia. I bet he’ll want a bit of payback...I know! I’ll tell him all about these new Bearers, like, say, Twi-” A blast of magic shattered the glass, Celestia’s horn smoking from the sudden burst of power. For Discord, this, of course, didn’t hurt in the slightest. He withdrew slightly, leaving only a shard of his awareness there as Celestia hurried the Bearers to where the Elements used to lay as he reached out magically to the unseen star that glared at Equestria from the sky. Tch! Ow! He hissed to himself, nursing an intangible magical appendage that didn’t physically exist in any sense, but was still stung by the sparse shell of harmony that surrounded the Gundam. He made a bank of cotton candy clouds burst into existence around Canterlot to mark his irritation, a downpour of chocolate rain drowning out some noble mansions. He carefully studied the magical shell keeping the Gundam suspended, even as a part of him taunted Celestia and the Bearers, delivering his riddle. Sensing things with magic was much like sight or hearing in some ways, relying on the reflection or disturbance of some medium to translate the existence of the reflector or disturber. However, for magic, that very medium was magic...which is a problem when one is composed entirely of one kind of magic, attempting to discern that of another kind that is, in a very basic elemental sense, anathema to oneself. The sensation of Discord lightly brushing his chaos magic across the sphere of harmony that hung near the moon was much like the sensation of a human running his fingertips across a hot stove. Searingly painful, that is. However, Discord’s magic was infinitely more sensitive and complex than the nerves of a human fingertip, and was able to find the intricate curves and whorls in the surface of the magic shell, despite the pain. He smiled to himself, as a talon of carefully molded chaos nipped at the orb of harmony, which began to unravel. Slowly, to be sure. The Gundam would not fly back to the earth in hours, days, or weeks, and perhaps not even months. But eventually, it would fly again. Discord returned the bulk of his awareness to Equestria, parts of him messing with the Elements, while a large portion seeped into the space and time around Celestia. “Do you remember, Celestia?” His voice oozed out, causing Celestia to peer around suspiciously. “How you were so afraid of dear ol’ Danny’s dreadful Diamond Dogs? How you were so paranoid how they seemed to know your every move? Well guess what? They did.” A sweep of magic passed through the room, one which Discord seized upon and distorted and warped, sending a loud bang and bright flare that dazed Celestia. “You see, you and your sister control the very sun and moon - a task you took over from the unicorn councils to spare them their precious magic. But did you ever stop to think, if there was someone who had the same connection to the earth? Because there was.” “Every hoofbeat on the ground, he felt. Every mine you dug, he heard. Every armor plate and sharp blade you forged, he smelt. Every farm you kept, he tasted. And every gemstone you dug up, shined and admired, he saw through. Your troops never made a move he didn’t know, so heavy their hoofbeats and clanking armor were, so glimmering and gold were their gem-studded regalia.” Celestia swept another wave of magic through her surroundings, a wave of heat and light that burned fabric and cracked stone. “You suspected it, but I’m here to tell you Celestia, that there were only two reasons you even survived the war, much less won it. Danny’s mercy...and a twist of chance, a bit of chaos that just so happened to be in your favor. And now, I’ve gotten rid of that harmonious bit of chaos, and...well, I imagine Danny won’t be quite so merciful when he comes back.” And Discord left her with that, with a smouldering room and a scent of fear. Mere hours later, his schemes against the Elements would first succeed, and then fail, leaving him encased again in stone. However, instead of the fearful pose he would have assumed in another time, here he was frozen with a vicious smirk, and a single pointed claw, aimed at the sky.