//------------------------------//
// I. Prelude 
// Story: The War in Heaven 
// by voroshilov 
//------------------------------//


“Amongst our ancestors there are numerous myths around key historical events. One of which is thus: the first of our kind to venture beyond our homeworld’s atmosphere remarked, ‘I see our world, by the ancients, it is beautiful. We must preserve this beauty for all.’”


- An Abridged History of Vortex, Volume III by Gaius Solum -


From the radio, barely audible through the pervasive static, was a sound Twilight had, days earlier, not known well at all: fear. Ponies were screaming orders back and forth, her CAPCOM had been issuing her meaningless tasks and trying to calm her nerves, whilst she herself had been staring with a numb feeling of worry at the quickly approaching planet.

"Alright Twilight," Octavia said, to the CAPCOM's merit, had remained outwardly calm in spite of the disaster occurring far above her, "if you could repeat the G-force you're measuring within." As she spoke, Twilight swore she heard a shout from a pony in the background, suggesting something about a 'total TPS failure' and a sudden rant about 'certain death' and 'massive detonation' that eased Twilight's fear of certain annihilation to no end.

"2.6," she said, a bare 0.2 increase from the previous time she checked, which was a few minutes earlier. Truth was, it was beginning to get unbearably cold, so much so that she began to fear a breach through the window. She wrapped herself further in her protective clothing, not that it would do anything to protect against the vacuum of space.

She thought back to the design phase - why hadn’t she designed a pressure suit? What had she been thinking? A goldfish bowl would do more to protect her than the few blankets and winter coats she had given herself.

It had been beautiful to see Equestria from miles above. Yet, all that ran through her mind as she descended was fear, fear of what could be. Fear of what, most likely, was going to be.

The capsule began to shake and jets of flame began to lick at its window. Even within, Twilight could feel herself beginning to burn, her breath, previously coming out in visible chunks, was suddenly barely coming out at all. The ice on the windows suddenly thawed, becoming liquid, and then evaporated a second later. The capsule rumbled and began to gyrate, Twilight could feel herself slipping into unconsciousness. Only her magic kept her awake, even as she wished for her deadly ordeal to end. All contact with the ground was lost, her radio didn't even release static, just a fatal silence.

Then, an impact rocked the capsule, stopping its turn and focusing it straight down. Twilight feared she had been struck by a meteor, perhaps Princess Luna had attempted a mercy killing. She closed her eyes, ignoring the outside and preparing for the inevitable explosion, only to be ripped from the realm of peace by further thumping. Were more meteors striking her? Twilight actually felt happy, for a brief moment, Princess Luna was still attempting her plan, she had not given up, for Twilight's sake, yet.

Twilight had, though she didn't really like to admit it, always been terrified of death. Not like the usual pony's fear, which was less an outright fear and more an unease, but acceptance, around the subject. Twilight however, having glimpsed what could be considered as the afterlife after a magical experiment involving an ancient spell and a misplaced magical gem, had developed an unnatural phobia of the mere idea of death. The simple mention of such was enough to make her blood freeze and limbs shake. Perhaps that could help to cool her down when she inevitably caught fire.

She opened her eyes, out of a mixture of some morbid curiosity and a wish for her final sight to be of home, no matter if she was tens of miles above it. When she did so, however, she was not met with the fire ringed windowed image of Equestria, but with a glowing cyan orb that seemed to bore into her very soul.

Twilight felt herself get lighter, then all feeling was suddenly lost from her body, her throat seized up and her eyes burned. Her vision darkened, slowly at first, but soon her eyes saw nothing but a tiny pinprick of swirling blue.

"No," came a voice inside her head, "no!" The voice shocked her out of her unconsciousness, for it was one constructed in its entirety from malice and cruelty. She had heard Tirek speak, his voice had a terrifying weight to it, that was a voice of an evil being, of that she could be certain. This, however, was different, it was the voice of evil itself. There was no middle-pony, no intermediary, this was evil: pure and undiluted. "This is not your time." The orb at the window pushed back, revealing itself to be one of three eyes mounted inside a head of segmented black bone. The creature to whom the head belonged was vast, easily dwarfing the capsule, and consisted of mostly the same substance as it's head: segmented black bone that was entirely unaffected by the searing heat outside.

It wrapped its wings around the capsule, plunging Twilight into an eerie semi-darkness. The dark red skin began to glow white, but no pain was visible on the creature's face, at least none Twilight could interpret. "I still need you," the voice said, the creature clearly moving its mouth as the voice spoke, revealing razor sharp fangs that slotted next to each other cleanly.

Suddenly, the capsule shunted and the shaking stopped. The creature outside, still grasping onto the capsule, opened its wings to reveal the rapidly approaching, but clearly visible surface. With a single mighty beat, the capsule jerked to a near halt; followed by a complete stop on another. Twilight was now, for all intents and purposes, floating.

The creature then released it's grip, sending the capsule tumbling down to the ground. Twilight's momentary shock-induced stupour was broken when she, acting on autopilot, activated the main parachute with a thump of a hoof. The parachute slowed down the capsule almost immediately, shunting Twilight upwards before her buckles forced her back down into the command seat. She landed with a thud in San Franciscolt Bay, the parachute flopping down next to the blackened capsule.

She breathed a sigh of intense relief, she had not only stared death right in the eye: she had defied it; Twilight Sparkle, first pony in space.

Something began to bubble near her hooves - something cold and wet.

Then came a thud from atop the capsule.

The metal roof, one Twilight had designed to protect against all manner of stresses and forces, was sliced apart by a three clawed hand, as a hot knife does with things a hot knife should never have come into contact with. The hand, larger than Twilight's body, reached in and grasped her in it's cold boney grip. She was lifted from the capsule, petrified of what she saw as her oncoming demise: for the second time that day, no less. The creature brought her close to it's naturally armoured chest, before spreading it's massive wings and taking flight to the shore.

The creature put her down on landing, facing her now sunken capsule with only the parachute a reminder of its existence. Twilight fell back onto her haunches, now certain in the knowledge that the universe was out to get her. Her mission, which had supposed to be a simple half-day long orbit of the planet, had so nearly ended in complete disaster twice. What was worse was the fact she had designed the entire vessel herself, along with all of it's equipment and the protocols necessary to pilot it safely. All of her hard work had not only failed spectacularly in the air but it now lay at the bottom of the bay.

"Yes," the creature's voice was both hissing and thunderous, "such a waste."

Twilight turned her head to it, now very confused by the situation. Had it just read her thoughts?

"Why is that so hard to believe? And I am no it," the creature said, clearly amused by her now frantic inner babbling, then answered her unspoken question "I am Nicholas, The Master of Time. And you are Twilight Sparkle, I have been watching you for a long while now."

“Oh,” she said, “I must have died.”

Nicholas, The Master of Time, bellowed out a laugh. “I am afraid not, young one. Some of us seem to have a knack for surviving.”

“I fell out of the sky,” she murmured, “we fell out of the sky. How did we do that?”

“With great ease,” Nicholas said, “gravity usually does most of the work in that regard.”

Twilight nodded, though she clearly had not properly processed what Nicholas had said. “There was a pony who told me it was impossible to go to space. Where is he now? Hmm? I went to space, then came back, and I brought a friend too, take that! Now I can write another friendship report.” She turned to a patch of pebbles beside her. “Spike,” she yelled, “take a letter.”

“Let us hope you break from this catatonia soon,” Nicholas said, watching Twilight dictate her rambling and entirely unstructured letter to an imaginary servant. “Hmm,” he hummed, allowing himself the chance to speak out to himself, “I wonder if there are any libraries around here.”

Twilight immediately snapped out of her catatonia. She stared at the titan Nicholas for a moment, seeming to test whether what she had heard was correct or not within her head. After a somewhat uncomfortable minute, she had decided it was and spoke, “libraries? You like libraries?”

Nicholas chuckled. “Indeed, he said, “I have the largest literary collection in existence.”





Twilight's initial recovery attempt had arrived in the form of a rescue ship, which had searched her landing area for all of a minute and a half before promptly fled upon seeing Nicholas. A second, far more sizeable, rescue force had arrived an hour later: in the form of a veritable army of guardsponies headed by Princess Celestia herself. The Princess had clearly been expecting a battle, clad all in golden armour and with a magical presence visible from miles away, but had frozen solid upon seeing Nicholas.

Then, she had bowed.





"Hail," said Celestia, whole body as low as it could possibly go, "mighty Lord of Time. I am but your humble servant."

Nicholas laughed, which caused even the most veteran guardsponies to go pale with terror. "Arise, Princess Celestia. This is no place to bury your face in the mud."

Celestia giggled nervously before rising, keeping her eyes below the gaze of the Master of Time as much as she could.

Twilight herself, the initial object of Celestia's mission, felt in the dark; she felt confused and above all she felt ignorant. Those three feelings turned her blood to solid ice, for they were the three feelings she despised the most out of all there were.

"Princess," Nicholas said, again having read Twilight's thoughts, "tell Twilight of who I am."

The Princess was immediately compliant, slowly trotting over to Twilight before sitting and beginning her tale.





Nearly a thousand years ago, Celestia had been called to a small village on the border of Equestria and the Griffon Kingdoms by a scryer pony who had reported disturbing visions to the guard garrison. Celestia herself, an expert in the arcane, had teleported herself into the village square on the notion she was dealing with a powerful rogue wizard. When she arrived, however, she had found the town entirely normal, ponies simply going about their daily lives as they would do normally. The scryer pony had been waiting and quickly ushered Celestia into his tower, where he laid out an ancient tome and a recently written diary entry.

"There is a force," said the scryer, "watching us from afar. The Master is soon to come."

"You speak in riddles," said Celestia, her patience long since having been destroyed, pointing her hoof accusingly at the bearded wizard pony, "explain to me what the nature of this being is, at once!"

The scryer simply shook his head, "not a being, a force" he reiterated, "one outside of such pitiful realms as mortality and logic. One not bound to the laws of reality. One so powerful that all of Equestria is nothing to it."

Celestia laughed, "I'm sure it is." She gave the scryer a dry look of sarcasm, who simply looked back at her with a grave face of sincerity.

"The Master," he said again, "The Emperor."

"No Emperor can even hope to challenge me," Celestia laughed again, striking her mightiest pose and using her pinkish-red aura of magic to make herself appear even larger in comparison to the scryer, "I am a goddess!"

"You are wrong," the scryer said, words caused Celestia's anger to flare, but he continued regardless, "the Emperor kills gods."

Celestia's anger was stopped for a moment, before her powers redoubled. “I am sure he does. Tell me, where is this Emperor now?"

"Far from here," the scryer said, "he has yet to deem us worthy. But he sends an envoy in his stead."

"Whom?"

"Kyhron," the scryer spoke the name with a shudder, his voice suddenly becoming cold to the ear. Celestia herself froze, a strange feeling of worry creeping over her - though she had no idea why.

"And who is Kyhron?" The word alone made almost silent whispers echo through her mind. It must have been a word of power, she thought. There was some sorcery afoot.

"You have heard of Tartarus, yes?" On Celestia's nod of affirmative, he continued, "it is said that Tartarus was once a gate, one of many by which daemons entered this world. Billions of dark creatures held the gate, even one powerful enough to kill every pony in Equestria with but a thought," he paused for a moment, breathing slowly to calm himself, "the Emperor descended within, and, behind him, each of the gates were shut. With him went in only one other: Kyhron. Whilst the Emperor fought, Kyhron both chronicled his father's deeds and learned from them. He presented them in this book, which he left at what we now know as the gates of Tartarus, to be claimed by whoever dared to. Then, before you yourself were even born, Equestria was awash with evil. What little good was doomed to die. Until, that is, the gates of Tartarus reopened. From them emerged Kyhron, who, in but three days, had banished all evil from the world and sealed it into Tartarus. Tirek, formerly ruler of all of this world, fell by Kyhron's hand."

“Tirek?” Celestia questioned, certain she recognised the name. A moment of thought later and it had clicked. “I banished Tirek,” she said, before bursting out in laughter. “You had me for a moment there,” she chuckled, pointing a hoof at the scryer - who clearly didn’t understand - “you may have wasted my time, but that was an excellent trick.”

“There is no trick,” the scryer said, “the creature you banished was not Tirek, but merely one of his servants. It was Kyhron who slew Tirek.”

"And he is coming here?" Celestia asked. A small and nagging feeling the scryer was telling the truth within her.

The scryer's expression changed, to one of pure dread. "He arrives tomorrow. Await him in Canterlot, he shall judge you in the Master's name."

Celestia had taken the scryer's book with her and had poured over it labouriously, suffice to say what she read frightened her - if it proved to be true. When first light came from the rising sun, it was immediately shrouded by a baleful green glow.

A tear opened up in the fabric of reality, a door to some realm Celestia had to look away from to shield herself from madness, and out of it stepped a titanic figure. It was over four times Celestia's height, with it's vast crown alone larger than much of her body, it's body was made up entirely of segmented bone, forming a natural armoured exoskeleton, that radiated green light and a black shadowy vapour. It's sword alone was larger than her and screamed out every time Celestia focused on it. The creature had three glowing red eyes, which stared unblinking at Celestia, and it had no mouth to speak of.

But it spoke nonetheless.

"Celestia," it said, voice loud and awful on the ear, "I am Kyhron, first of the Emperor's sons."

Kyhron looked her over, his head moving slowly up and down as he did so. He eventually made a huffing growl, before a black ball in his hand shot over to Celestia. It stopped within an inch of her face, small tendrils of black vapour, similar to that bleeding off Kyhron, lolled over her face. The ball made a screeching sound, before vanishing entirely with a ghostly burst.

Kyhron almost seemed to laugh, if such a thing were possible from one such as him, whilst the daemonic whispers in her brain continued. “He has found you worthy." Kyhron reached out a three-clawed hand, surrounded with glowing tendrils of energy which wrapped around the alicorn. Celestia soon found herself completely helpless, entirely incapable of movement. "Do you accept the blade?" Kyhron asked, to which Celestia could only whimper in what she hoped he would consider as an affirmative. Suddenly, the tendrils began to crush her. With a crack and a jolt of pain, Celestia's body collapsed in the tendrils' grasp.

"Your mind is peaceful," said someone else in Celestia's head.

The immortal alicorn, one of the most powerful beings in Equestria, had been reduced to a shivering and weeping wreck on the floor of her mindscape. She refused to even look up at the strange new voice, though part of her inner psyche did admit it sounded beautiful, almost melodic in its nature - but she knew it was wrong, no voice should sound as it did. It was an odd mixture of masculine and feminine, as though it was two voices speaking at once. Both spoke murder.

"Why do you weep?" The voice asked, "Kyhron merely did what he had to to get you here. You feel pain, yes?"

Princess Celestia, still spasming from her pained sobbing, gave a pathetic attempt at a nod and a half choked "yes." Barely a moment later, all her pain and fear was gone. She felt notably larger, stronger and her magic seemed to have been enhanced by some outside force.

"Who are you?" She asked, looking up slowly to the speaking figure.

The figure was small, barely taller than she was, and was far thinner than anypony she had ever seen. There were holes in his limbs where the skin should be, with the bones black and flesh charred or gone entirely. Tendrils of intersecting white energy wrapped around him, forming mostly around the upper quarter of the left hemisphere of his head, where his eye should have been held. He had no mouth, or any discernible facial features, instead there was a plate of an iron like metal.

"I am Nicholas, The Emperor of Sorrows. My herald brought you here: into your mind."

"Why?"

"Why did I want you here? Simple, there is a war coming. One that will shape the future of the omniverse for the rest of time. I am not in need of you to fight this war, but I do require the one who is to come after you. She is vital to my plans and her survival and training must be ensured.” Nicholas walked in circles around her. But, given that he had no real eyes to speak of, she couldn’t tell if he was looking at her or elsewhere.

"Who is she?"

"Twilight Sparkle," he said, the name seeming anathema to him, "there are many centuries until she will be able but you must ensure that she is. I have not the time to remain, so I will take my leave of you." Nicholas' form evaporated right before her and she was left alone in the blank landscape that was her mind for a brief moment. With an echoing roar, she was pulled from it and back into the real world.

She regarded once more the form of Kyhron, who now seemed slightly shorter than he had been previously. He too looked upon her, his head moving up and down once more as he scanned her over.

"When the light ends," he said, "await my coming from the black gates. I shall herald my master's arrival upon this planet. And with him, the beginning of the War." Kyhron did not wait for Celestia's response, instead, his form was sucked into a singularity in his chest, into which he vanished entirely with a burst.





"But," said Princess Celestia, turning to Nicholas after she ended her story, "Kyhron has yet to arrive. The black gates remain sealed."

"Indeed." Nicholas stepped over to her, kneeling to allow his titanic form a better view, "I have arrived with a very different purpose," he paused for a moment, "tell me, where is your sister Luna?"

"In Canterlot, attending the royal court. May I ask why?"

Nicholas brooded for a minute, his very thoughts seeming to blacken the sky. "Bring her here," he said at last, "under the guise of assistance with the recovery operation. Do not inform her of my presence." Celestia bowed and rushed off to give the orders but it was plain to see that she was questioning them. What irkingly little Twilight knew of Nicholas told her he was more than aware.

"Twilight," spoke the Emperor, "I believe you like books on the archaic." On her sudden interested nod, he continued, "take this one." From some place unknown he levitated a thick, black bound tome towards the alicorn, where he had pulled it from wasn't entirely apparent. "It contains both tales and instructions on the most powerful magicks in the omniverse, use it well."

Twilight opened the book on its first page and was presented with ancient paper and barely legible script of a language she had never seen before, written in a particularly leaky fountain pen.

"How old is this book?" She muttered, more to herself than anyone else.

"It does not conform to something as simple as age. It exists all across time, it has both existed and is yet to exist. It is older than you yet younger than you. But, the scriptures contained within will grant powers beyond your most wildest imaginings."

As she looked closer at the first page, still struggling to wrap her head around the concept of the book's lack of age, the script began to warp and change. The previously unintelligible scribbles had become perfect Ponish.



The Word

The Prophecy of the Eight foresaw the Dread King's arrival. It portrayed in only truths his demise by their hands. And so, when the Dread King arrived upon the world the Eight marched out to meet him. They presented him their prophecy, its words weaponised. They sung their songs of war, their verses saturated with killing magick.

"The Dread King who would have them die will fall to the Eight," their prophecy said.
The Dread King heard this prophecy, and twisted its truth into a lie.

"And they shall, with the mighty axe Lightbringer, will decapitate the incarnation of evil," so said their prophecy.

The Dread King heard this prophecy, and swung the mighty Oathbreaker to shatter the divined axe.

"The Eight shall speak, and The Dread King shall live no more."

The Dread King heard this prophecy, and spoke upon its orators. And thus, they lived no more.

Twilight felt a burning in her throat. She collapsed to the ground, choking on incomprehensible fumes and dropped the book to the floor beside her. Beneath her coat, her skin turned black and boney. The burning cleared as soon as it had arrived and Twilight felt a sudden surge of new power.

"Luna," she heard a call from Celestia, who seemed so distant from her book, "thank you for coming so quickly."

"Anything to escape the court, sister," Luna jested, the pair chuckling to themselves, "why did you call me here, though?"

Before Celestia could speak, there was a slicing sound, followed by a thump. Luna's head lay on the ground, staring at her, eyes wide in shock and mouth halfway through protest. Celestia turned to regard Nicholas with horror, who stood looming over her sister's corpse with his sword held high.

"As I suspected," he rumbled, pointing to the corpse.

The body of Luna had almost entirely melted away, replaced instead by a mass of white sludge with glowing golden spots. The sludge seemed to form a mouth and began to slither towards Celestia, leaping up at her before Nicholas brought down his sword once again.

"Kar'oi, nayeel jarun'," Nicholas spoke in an unknown and painful to hear tongue. Upon doing so, however, all movement from the sludge ceased at once. "That was not your sister," he said to Celestia, "it was a daemon who had taken her form. Your sister yet lives upon the satellite," he raised a claw towards the moon, which hung near invisible in the evening sky, "I sense her upon it. We must make haste to bring her down."

Nicholas paused for a moment, deep in thought, before he turned to Twilight. "The daemon sabotaged your rocket craft, to ensure you did not make contact with the Princess." He then turned to Celestia, who still seemed shell-shocked with the death of what had, just moments ago, the face of her sister. "Return to Canterlot, and prepare for Luna's true arrival, I will bring her from the moon."





Amidst the silence of the Tartarus valley, buried within the highest mountain in Equestria, stand the black gates of Tartarus. The gates had remained closed ever since Tirek had broken free and were thus surrounded by hundreds of Royal Guards. The average guardspony, unknowing of the true powers of the prisoners within, could only stand around in a perpetual state of boredom, whilst their more veteran counterparts mounted patrols and watches with an almost religious fervour.

Then, the silence was broken, a scream erupted from Tartarus' gates, and every guardspony froze solid in implacable terror. The black gates of the ancient prison swung open, squealing as they scraped away the rock. From them emerged a titan and a vast blanket of shadow - behind him, though invisible, were the fingerprints of death. The newest of the guardsponies collapsed to their knees or scrunched up in balls, hiding their faces from the beast before them. Only one of the ponies did not fear, a Captain by the name of Iron Shield.

"Halt!" The Captain shouted, bearing his spear at the titan, "you will go no further, evil spawn."

The titan roared with laughter, staring down at the tiny creature below. It raised it's sword high above it's head and it glowed with malign ethereal energies. The Captain stared back, prepared for the blow. The sword swung, slicing through the air with a thousand ghostly wails.

It stopped just above the Captain's head, the pony having not flinched in the slightest. His steely gaze still fixed on the titan, he said, "why do you not strike me?"

The titan laughed again. "You are worthy. I am Kyhron, Emissary of the Emperor and I have an audience with your Princess."