“Telling you every single detail for the third time isn't going to make things make more sense,” Emerald growled before muttering to herself. “As much as I'd want things to start making sense, too...”
Currently, Emerald Gleaner was in one of the conference rooms of the League Headquarters. She was wearing her formal uniform, a suit very much like a naval dress uniform; stark white in color with golden buttons and a band on the right bicep bearing the emblem of the Enclave, a black field with a crimson biohazard symbol and stylized Diamond Dog head. Her neon pink hair that normally hung loose and wavy was gathered into a neat ponytail with her bangs swept to the side; the waviness was still there, but subdued. Over her uniform was a cloak clasped over her right shoulder so that it left the Enclave emblem exposed. The cloak was pure white just as her uniform, but underneath was a moving field of stars and nebulae, a constant reminder to all those who bothered to notice that Emerald was Princess Luna's student. With Emerald were Princesses Luna and Celestia who were not as officially dressed as Emerald was, having little time for it due to the rapid call they had answered.
The call was for all members of the League of Nations to send their representatives to attend an emergency session to discuss the flash of light that had enveloped the world. People had become especially quick to answer this call when the Zebra Prime Minister would be giving full exposure on what exactly had happened as it mainly pertained to his own country. Considering Emerald's previous track records with bursts of energy that threatened the world, rumors were rife that she was responsible for this one as well. Plenty of people - mainly those she supplied with meat fruit - defended her, saying surely it was much too premature to go around blaming those without due cause. A goodly number of herbivores ignored this opinion utterly and went on talking about how dangerous it was for someone so powerful to do as they pleased and wished with lands of the world. Emerald was sure they were spreading other insidious sounding rumors as well, but that was all she had bothered to listen in on. She was honestly quite out of it.
It wasn't that Emerald was still hurt from what the dark spirit had done to her. She had caught her breath ten minutes after that and was fully recuperated soon after. No, rather it was the fact she had lost... Emerald hadn't lost before. Sure she had faced stumbling blocks, things that slowed her down and forced her to get clever now and then to get over or around them. But she had always overcome everything that opposed her, always managed to come out on top and stronger for it. This was the first time she had unquestionably lost. She had the dark spirit at her mercy in the end but it was little comfort when that spirit had accomplished... whatever it was the energy had been intended to do. It was a victory so complete the Spirit hadn't even been in the slightest upset at the thought of dying once it was accomplished. And so it was... Emerald lost.
'Fuck... I didn't realize I was a sore loser!' Emerald thought in an attempt at personal levity. It didn't really work; Emerald honestly felt frustrated and distressed. 'God damn... those smarmy grass munching bastards in the other room would just love to see how out of it I can get when I lose.'
“Emerald, focus please,” Celestia stated firmly but not harshly, a look of fierce determination flashing in her eyes that had Emerald feeling admiration for a moment. “Mind on the now, at least for this event.”
“I thought you wanted to know what just happened a few hours ago!” Emerald retorted, hackles raising defensively and far too quickly.
“I did, but it's clear to me that what happened is upsetting you and what is to come is not something you can be distracted for,” Celestia replied calmly and gently, trying her hardest to instill a sense of serenity in Emerald via tone of voice alone and quite succeeding to be honest.
'She's right,' Emerald thought as she took in a deep breath and rubbed her temples. 'I have to focus, clear my head and think only of what's going on right now. The various dignitaries and representatives will be demanding answers, and unlike last time I don't have an ace up my sleeve to distract everyone with. I have my influence which is nothing to sneeze at, but the last thing I want is to give that herbivore faction more ammunition to snare more support and people into their group. I need to be on my A-game here.'
“...Right, I'll be ready.” Emerald nodded.
Suddenly there was a knocking at the door and Celestia called out.
“You may enter!”
“Excuse me,” spoke a pegasus wearing a blue concierge-like uniform. The symbol of the League of Nations upon their chest, a white star within a blue pentagon. “But the last members of the League have arrived and everyone is being called to the general assembly hall.”
“Thank you for informing us.” Celestia nodded. “We shall be along shortly.”
Emerald stood up as the pegasus left. Closing the door behind her, she took several deep breaths, making motions with her hands as she inhaled and exhaled. The virus then glanced over at the Princess of the Night to find the alicorn staring at her in concern.
“Will you be okay?” Luna asked her student with a frown.
“Enough for this meeting,” Emerald said honestly before shaking her head. “I hope I'll get a bit of time to myself after this, though. I need a bit of downtime to work through a few things.”
Suddenly Celestia grimaced, a truly ugly expression for the serene alicorn, which caught the attention of both her sister and Emerald.
“What is it, dear sister?” Luna asked.
“I... have a feeling of ill omen.” Celestia frowned. “It is... disconcerting. Usually when I get warnings it is a vision in a dream. Rare is something of such terrible portent I am warned in the middle of the day rather than when I sleep.”
“Great, more prophecy,” Emerald muttered.
“I know the experience with the Tapestry of Fate has soured your views of such things, but in my long life such an ability has never failed to be useful,” Celestia lectured Emerald, who sighed.
“I know.” Emerald shook her head as she made for the doors. “But what's the point of seeing the future if nothing changes?”
Emerald led the way out of the room and to the general assembly hall. The crowds of representatives were thick but the three were actively given space with a good many people shooting suspicious looks at Emerald. Suddenly the virus realized it was probably not doing the Royal Sisters any favors at all to be leading their little group of three. It would be too much of an admission of making a social gaffe for Emerald to just let herself fall back and let Celestia or Luna take the lead now, however.
'Whhhhhhhhyyy?' Emerald bemoaned her current situation, noting that several carnivore representatives had fallen behind their group purposefully. 'All I wanted was for people to leave me the fuck alone and now I have to play the dignified ruler all the god damn time.'
Putting aside her dismay at being caught up in politics, Emerald focused on the task at hand. She'd be giving her own account of events in Zebrica alongside the Prime Minister. While the Prime Minister promised he'd be wholly supportive of her actions in Zebrica despite the cost in life, Emerald knew she'd be eating quite a bit of political capital today no matter what. While having the Zebricans support what Emerald did helped, it didn't clear away the fact that her soldiers snuck into Zebrica as a subversive force, spying, stealing and kidnapping and ultimately engaging in open warfare that caused quite a bit of death. There was going to be a lot of righteously and rightfully ruffled feathers at this and smoothing those feathers were going to take most of the day, not to mention all the people that would now be thinking she was some insidious, power hungry influence.
'No matter what, the herbivore faction is going to be getting a few more members before the end of the day,' Emerald thought with an internal sigh as she and the princesses entered the assembly hall and made for their shared desk, subtly scanning over the room with her eyes as she took her seat.
The Zebrican desk all too often had no representative at all in the year following the Prime Minister's possession, but now the Prime Minister sat there himself. He definitely wouldn't have been in any state to attend had Emerald not restored him. He probably also felt a bit more up to attending this meeting thanks to being a few years younger.
'A silent favor for accidentally scorching him,' Emerald thought as she stared ahead.
The Secretary General appeared and made for his podium. He wasn't exactly looking any healthier. The effects of several years of intense stress weighed on him heavily, but it was also clear he was utterly relieved. There was a noticeable spring in his step and an almost youthful energy that hung about him.
“Distinguished members of the League of Nations, I welcome you all today during this emergency session of the League of Nations,” the Secretary General spoke solemnly. “Usually we cover minor issues first, but such is the severity of situation we must speak of that there must be no delay. The Prime Minister of Zebrica will now speak.”
“My friends and compatriots in the League, it has been several years since I have walked these halls and-” the Prime Minister began when he was suddenly interrupted.
The room started to shake; people could have thought an earthquake was at fault if it weren't for the fact they were in the middle of the ocean, so it was impossible. A low, deafening pained groan filled the air, but Emerald wasn't really paying this any mind. She was distracted by something else.
'That energy... what is that?' Emerald thought as her magical senses detected a powerful presence that filled the air and not only that. 'The air suddenly became ice cold...'
Emerald looked around and everywhere she looked, peoples from warmer climates were shivering already and everyone's breath fogged. Suddenly there was another rumble and another pain filled groan. Muffled screams sounded from elsewhere in the League Headquarters and the sound of something crashing through walls filled the air. And with a cloud of debris sent flying and filling the air, the roof was suddenly ripped away and the open sky was revealed.
“Small, frail, fleeting things of flesh, be silent and heed my words,” spoke a deeply resounding voice that all heard very clearly, even the one dignitary that had come with an interpreter for his deafness. “For Endless, Great Spirit of the Eternal Currents, speaks to you now.”
Amid shouts of shock and terror, a great serpentine head appeared over the whole of the ripped away roof. So huge was its size that its shadow practically covered the whole room. Its glaring visage was made up entirely of ice, as was its body. There appeared to be a wound marring its face; from its right eye spider webbed a great many cracks and an icy slush slowly but constantly spilled from the socket of its missing eye with an ethereal light shining from within. Emerald's past experience identified such a wound as one that cut down to the soul; she knew this fact intimately so.
“I come to you now to give you the courtesy you denied us,” Endless continued, and before anyone could air a question he roared deafeningly. “WAR! COMPLETE AND TOTAL! No mercy, no hesitation! The ultimate goal the end of all things fleeting! Know that-”
Emerald didn't need to hear anymore. In a half second a pair of blade wings had already fully burst from her back. She was already in the air with hand shifted into deadly claws wreathed in energies of the spirit strike technique. Barely a second after she burst from the ground she was already crashing through Endless' face, claw first. Thankfully the princesses were quick on the uptake and they had already cast shielding spells to protect everyone from flying shards of ice. Unfortunately, they weren't the only ones with quick reflexes.
“Of course I am not an utter fool who comes before those who can kill him unprepared,” Endless spoke from an already newly formed body rising from a spot of the ocean opposite his old, now crumbling body. “I may not have the might to face you, but I do not need to.”
“What the hell do you want!?” Emerald bellowed out with a magically amplified voice.
“To avenge past wrongs,” Endless answered righteously before affixing Emerald with a stare from his one good eye. “I know not why or how these fleeting things became worthy of protection in your eyes, but I do know only a few are of any real importance to you. I offer this in respect of one who has grown so mighty. Take those who matter to you, hide them away and seal them with protections under your power, stand by and let us complete our just work.”
“And just what is your work?” Emerald asked, glaring down at the massive ice serpent.
“The extermination of life! The restoration of a calm and serene world under the full power and influence of the rightful wardens of this world, THE SPIRITS!” Endless replied, his voice a natural, deafening bellow.
“Because a bare, lifeless world to live on is something my family would enjoy,” Emerald scoffed, hand still a claw wreathed in soul shattering energies.
“We are not inflexible!” Endless assured, utterly confident of his words. “Know that while we shall return the world to a better state, we shall tolerate the return of life to the world... under strict circumstances and a firm understanding of their place. No longer will the mortals dare to control the natural order of the world! Never again shall the seasons be dictated by paltry wants! The world! The weather! The very light of the Sun and Moon! ALL SHALL BE FOREVER FREE!”
“NO DEAL!” Emerald shouted out with barely a moment's hesitation.
“Ah well...” Endless said easily with a shrug-like motion that had Emerald blinking in surprise. “I shall simply have to ask again... later. Much later.”
Emerald attacked again and this time saw what Endless did to avoid her attack. A near instant after Emerald burst forward, claw outstretched, the light left Endless' eyes and Emerald knew she was simply smashing an incredibly tall ice sculpture for all the good it did. She looked around for Endless again but he didn't reform physically like he did last time.
“And I must mention...” Endless' voice boomed from everywhere. “I did not come alone, either.”
Suddenly, a massive storm cloud surged overhead and a storm of lightning bolts crashed down. A low, deafening roar of agony filled the air as electricity filled the sea and rapidly fried the massive creature. Emerald reacted quickly. She teleported within the heart of the League Headquarters and quickly cast a barrier to absorb any lightning strikes before quickly wrapping the structure in a layer of her magic. Concentrating intensely, the Evolved then cast a single massive teleport spell and the structure disappeared with a blinding flash of light... and reappeared hundreds of miles away in the heart of Equestria.
“Ohhhh... shit,” Emerald muttered as she briefly stumbled in place before shaking her head clear.
“Emerald, where are we?” Celestia asked as everyone rushed about, half panicked and half confused.
“The field below Canterlot,” Emerald replied before taking a deep, calming breath. “It'll probably be long too late but everyone here needs to head back to their home countries and tell everyone to be prepared for war as soon as possible.”
“WAR?!?” screamed a nearby dignitary that happened to overhear. This one scream had the effect of piercing the cloud of panic that hung over everyone and they collectively looked towards the source of the scream.
“Yes... WAR,” Emerald stated loud and clear, looking around her to see she was the center of everyone's attention. “The Spirit, Endless, came before the fully gathered League of Nations and threatened death and destruction upon all their representatives and by extension... their nations.”
“I am unsure of our enemy's capability and their number,” Emerald continued in the ensuring silence. “Perhaps they only have the means to attack us each in turn, perhaps they have the power and numbers to siege us all at once. As much as I'd want to hope for the former I'm going to go ahead and expect the latter. And to further the bad news... it's entirely likely they are starting their attack already so as much as I'd like to personally carry you all to your homes... I can't.”
“W-why not!?” shouted one of the representatives and an uproar about to begin when a new voice cut through the noise.
“Because she has to investigate our new enemies.” Emerald turned to see the Eldeer Warlock Taleena calmly walking towards her, flanked by lesser Eldeer diplomats. “Spirits care not for hundreds of miles between places they wish to go, they merely need to abandon their physical forms and reform elsewhere. So she can not waste time. She intends to go convene with sources she trusts to learn more about our new enemies. And thus knowing this, it would be most remiss to postpone her further.”
“... Thank you, Warlock Taleena.” Emerald nodded after a moment in appreciation for the Eldeer's words calming the herbivore faction and, by extension, quite a few independents.
“Our hopes go out to you, Emerald Gleaner,” Taleena said with a small bow of her head and serene smile.
Emerald took that as her signal to leave and vanished in a flash of light and reappeared an instant later above the Everfree Forest. Emerald then reached out with her more spiritual senses gifted to her via Channeler memories. She wished she could have checked in with Twilight and the girls, but she had been telling the truth when she thought it was likely Endless and who knows how many Spirits had already started attacking people.
'All I wanted was some time to relax. Just a few days to myself to rest and unwind with my family,' Emerald thought with a frustrated growl as a soft pounding in her ears resonated. 'Now I've got a god damn war to deal with and who knows if I can settle this anytime soon.'
Emerald was feeling quite stressed at the moment, her first actual defeat and piling this onset of war atop of it wasn't doing her mental state any favors. She was feeling really agitated and liable to snap at people for the slightest thing. It was also definitely getting in the way of her spiritual senses and the virus had to wrestle her broiling frustration into a forced calm. The moment she did, she felt the location of Sovereign's physical form. But that wasn't the only thing she felt...
'The hell is that?' Emerald thought as she narrowed her eyes. 'It feels like deep darkness and... terrible, horrible loneliness.'
The feeling was so intense Emerald grimaced as she stopped sensing it and proceeded to teleport to the spot she felt Sovereign was. She arrived to see Sovereign in the body of a small, house sized timber wolf and in the shadow of the tree he was lounging under...
“The hell...?!” Emerald exclaimed as she spotted the dark spirit she had expelled from herself back in Zebrica. “FUCK!! I knew letting you live was-”
“Be at peace,” Sovereign stated with complete calm, so total was the feeling he exuded it caught Emerald off guard. “The Nightmare is no threat to you.”
“... is that what it's called?” Emerald narrowed her eyes and cautiously approached before her eyes suddenly widened. “Nightmare... do you mean as in Nightmare Moon?”
“That was once the name I had gone by when my being became intertwined with my Luna,” The Nightmare replied with a longing, bittersweet tone.
“That's... an interesting mode of address... for the person you possessed into attempting to overthrow her sister,” Emerald commented lightly.
“We were two beings of loneliness,” The Nightmare continued with a defensive tone. “Her a being consumed by it, and I a being made incarnate of it. Her tears into the dark called to me, enthralled me. We were alike, the same. We both desperately wished for loneliness to end and so we made it end together, by becoming one and never again being alone. And it was in that combined, fused state that we made a realization together of how to truly end the loneliness for the both of us, to make ponies adore her again and for I to regain my family.”
“The Eternal Night,” Emerald stated, but her eyes were narrowed in confusion. “But how was that supposed to release your family.”
“By disrupting the natural order to such an extent. To force the sun to never rise would cause havoc,” The Nightmare explained. “Not just on a physical scale, but cosmically as well. The cursed slumber enforced upon near all spirits would weaken and sunder. Had I been allowed to maintain the Night for but a few days... alas, it was not to be and I was torn away and cast into the night twice over.”
“Okay, well, that explains Nightmare Moon but it doesn't explain the sudden insurgence of angry spirits,” Emerald stated impatiently with a tapping foot. “Clearly what it-she did in Zebrica had something to do with that, but why the sudden call to war? Sovereign, I know you have little memory but do you have any clue-”
“My memory has returned in full, thanks to The Nightmare,” Sovereign interrupted. “And to explain our rage will require a retelling of a past long forgotten by mortal kind. Of the formation and ensuing Tyranny of Order created by the Alicorn Empire...”
“The Alicorn Empire... I've never heard of that,” Emerald stated and narrowed her eyes in thought. “In fact, I don't think there are even any hints or implications of its existence in the lore of any nation's history.”
“I know not why the mortal races of today know nothing of the Empire that dominated the world,” Sovereign replied, uncaring. “I only know this truth, the Alicorn Empire existed eons ago and it dominated both the physical world and the spiritual.”
“Seriously, there ought to have been some signs of a world spanning empire...” Emerald muttered, not skeptical in Sovereign's claim in the slightest but curious at the lack of evidence. “Hmm... right, explain it to me from the beginning.”
“Eons ago I roamed the forests of my domain not as the spirit Sovereign, but as the spirit Dauntless,” Sovereign explained. “In those times I was a predator, a hunter of my fellow spirits. I would track down those whose spiritual presence would whet my appetite. It was in this way I became a greater spirit, by feasting upon my peers and neighbors. Eventually my standards of what classified as a worthy meal grew beyond the capacity of most spirits and my lesser kin found shelter in the canopy of my domain. I found my meals to slow to a near halt as I grew ever more discriminating, and so I found my gaze wandering upon the lands I claimed as within my authority and I learned of the deeds of mortals...”
And so Sovereign told the lost, ancient history of the world, of an Empire ruled and populated by Alicorns, of their Empress the Immortal Kirin. The Empire grew and spread like wildfire, lands fell under its influence purely through its overwhelming presence. The magics of the Alicorn Empire were advanced compared to the crude arts the other nations of the world knew. It was hard to tell from Sovereign's words alone, but it seemed that everyone else was in the bronze age compared to the late industrial revolution might of the Empire. There was simply no way the shockingly primitive kingdoms of the time could hope to resist the Empire's constant expansion. The Immortal Empress constantly pushed for expansion and only allowed the Empire's march to slow to allow for the population to grow to resume in the following generations. And it was over the following centuries that the Empire's magical might only grew as they refined their arts further and their conquests to be could only struggle to catch up.
“Watching the mortals establish their fleeting realm across the world was amusing,” Sovereign spoke. “Much more so with the knowledge that their Empress was another spirit.”
“The Immortal Kirin was a spirit?” Emerald questioned.
“Yes, she was Harmony,” Sovereign growled before his calm reasserted itself. “Harmony was not only a spirit, but a Primordial Spirit. Her might could only be challenged by another Primordial and her opposing Primordial actually took glee in the actions she was driving her Alicorns to perform.”
“Why would a Primordial Spirit take up a false identity as merely an immortal creature?” Emerald thought aloud. “I mean, I guess it would give people some point of reference if their leader was flesh and blood in turn, but I'd hardly think it would matter in the long term.”
“The spirit that would rise to be Harmony had taken interest in the Alicorns early in their development as a tribal species from what I recall,” Sovereign answered. “She had been guiding them for ages, shaping them til they became the winged horned equines you would recognize today. Perhaps she had grown overly sentimental towards them? I know not the truth, only the consequences of her guiding them for all spirits.”
“The spirits were all slumbering until just a few days ago...” Emerald stated. “Harmony turned on her own? For some reason she decided spirits needed to go and gave the Empire the means to do so?”
“So it would appear,” Sovereign replied with a nod from the Nightmare. “After the Alicorn Empire's realm stretched the world over and they held every scrap of land within their influence, they turned their attentions to solidifying that control. In our confidence, in our absolute belief in the implacability of our might to be moved by mortal kind, we felt no concern as the Empire started to control the very world itself.”
“So that's who started this whole thing in the first place.” Emerald folded her arms as she looked down towards her feet thoughtfully. “Strict control of the progress of seasons, deciding when it rains and storms, telling the animals when to sleep and when to wake up. It was the Alicorn Empire extending their authority simply from the peoples under their influence to the land itself. But they couldn't master the cycles of nature if there were spirits around to become affronted by it, could they?”
“Indeed, and so it was we spirits began to silently fall into slumber one after another,” Sovereign continued. “By the time we noticed something was wrong, the Sun and Moon were already rising and setting to the whims of mortals and so few of us remained awake. We did not go silently, however. We raged and resisted the coming slumber no matter how futile it may have been.”
“It was not futile for all...” Nightmare stated softly and seemed to briefly wrap around Sovereign like a cloak. “Sovereign's resistance allowed the Everfree to remain the same and I had been such a solitary creature even for a spirit that the enchantment hadn't affected me.”
“Okay... okay...” Emerald huffed and paced in agitation. “But what happened to the Alicorn Empire? They ruled a whole planet by the end and there was no power greater then them. Why isn't this world still the Alicorn Empire or at the very least a myriad of successor states each claiming ultimate legitimacy? Instead, each nation is its own creature with its own unique quirks, and while the Empire may explain why there are ponies everywhere... it was the Alicorn Empire. Not the Pony Empire, not even the Equine Empire, the Alicorn Empire. If there were so many alicorns back then, why are there only four now and where the hell did the pony tribes come from?!”
“I know not, I had been forced into slumber,” Sovereign replied calmly.
“And it had been an age before I noticed the world had changed,” The Nightmare added. “Both the Empire and my kin were gone by then.”
“And you can't even give me a general timeline to go by either because spirits don't recognize the passage of time like we do,” Emerald muttered with a sigh as she placed her hands over her face.
'Okay, just think... who is so old that-' Emerald began before her eyes suddenly widened in realization.
An instant later she disappeared in a flash of magic.
ALPHA
“Left to get away from here and the princess treatment...” Gilda murmured as she glided slow, lazy circles around the Great Hold of Clan Stormclaw. “I feel weirdly glad to be back, though...”
Gilda glided down towards the city. Considering that everyone who lived in a Great Hold was a griffin, the mountaintop cities had no road paths and no gates dotting its perimeter walls and she was therefore allowed to enter from any direction. Great Holds were interesting cities in terms of design. They were always ruled by a powerful Clan because of the financial demands for creating and ruling one. A mountain top had to be smashed into rubble and the resulting pieces recycled as stone bricks, then the flattened mountain top could be used as a foundation. Using the stone collected from flattening the top was a good way of halving costs of building materials, however it was never enough to finish the outer curtains and grand keeps the Clans would rule from. And because of their location, a Grand Hold could only get trade from airships and flying races carrying the goods up themselves. This was less of an issue in the modern world thanks to airships, but in the past everyone was left airlifting great barges of materials up to the holds. It was very well paying work, but extremely physically demanding. Another fact of life in a Great Hold was the utter lack of poor people. Space was worth far more than its weight in gold within a Great Hold so the only people who could live there were the upper middle class and the nobility. The only thing that could approach a low class population were the indentured servants of the Clan. All the rest were craftsmen, merchants, Knights or Lords and Ladies. Therefore when walking down the streets of a Great Hold, one can almost say it was the idealized image of life in medieval fantasy without any of the actual muck and odor. It was perhaps this very thing being why Gilda hated staying in a Great Hold for long periods of time.
'Never was all that great about being a proper princess,' Gilda thought with in internal sigh, facial expression carefully apathetic as she landed and started walking through the streets. 'Even the rough and tumble warrior princesses of the Clans still have an image... ever since going to school in Equestria...'
Gilda, before being sent away for schooling as a method to give her experience for dealing with foreigners, had always known life as an uptight warrior princess, a knight of Clan Stormclaw. She had been allowed to enjoy her childhood... to a point. She was a daughter of nobility to a powerful Clan. No matter what, Gilda's life would be heavily regimented as she was driven to become one of two things; a proper Lady of the Clan or a stern Knight ready to raise mace and shield for honor and justice. Gilda had known nothing else and simply accepted this... that is, until she was sent away. Suddenly the world seemed to open up to Gilda and she experienced new ways of life and just new ways of being. Cynically, one could simply take her trips to Equestria at face value, simply giving her experience in dealing with foreigners with foreign values. Gilda, however, was smart enough to realize her father had done this as a favor to her, to grant just a bit more time to his “skyflower” to enjoy herself and pretend to be something else for a time before she had to focus on her duties to her Clan.
'And then Rainbow Crash had to be a spoilsport and ruin it all!' Gilda thought, growling in anger.
Of course, Gilda could have returned to Equestria and attempted to form a friendship with some other pony, but the griffin was hung up on Dash. Dash was her first casual friend and honestly felt far closer to her then anyone back in the Principalities barring her brothers. For Gilda, if she couldn't have her first, truest friend back for trips back to Equestria, there was no longer any point in coming back.
As Gilda walked through the streets, she got a lot of attention. More and more Griffins took note of Gilda, shocked mutterings filled the air as griffins stared with wide eyes. Gilda was used to ignoring attention from people in the streets of the Stormclaw Great Hold and so didn't notice it was different from before. However, there was one thing she did notice...
'Did... did they do some really quick remodeling or something?' Gilda thought as she found herself standing at a fork in a road that definitely hadn't been there the last time she was here. 'No, that's stupid. I know how long building crud takes... so why is this new?!'
Gilda found herself pondering this for a few moments. She was about to shake it off as not her problem when a voice boomed.
“YOU! HOLD THERE!!!” a deep male voice filled the air from above.
'Great... nice to hear you again...' Gilda sighed and turned in place in time to see two armored griffins lighting down. She blinked at their appearances. If she thought the inexplicable appearance of new buildings and roads was weird, then the changed griffins before her were completely unbelievable.
Gilda almost didn't recognize them. The two griffins were her brothers Magni and Modi. Magni took strongly after their father, Bergren, with his dark head feathers and gray fur and wings speckled with white dots, though he lacked Bergren's natural scowl or his bat-like ear tufts. Modi, on the other hand, took after their mother Villja, like Gilda, though his head feathers were more of a gray and his wings were speckled with white. Gilda knew her brothers when she saw them and that was the only reason she managed to recognize them. She was older than the both of them by three years and now it was as if the both of them had aged five years since she saw them last. Both of them were easily taller then her and had clearly put on a ton of muscle.
“By the great stormbird, she looks just like Gilda!” Modi exclaimed with wide eyes that rapidly filled with hope.
“Looks aren't everything,” Magni said gruffly with a swat of his wing at Modi before striding towards Gilda. “You! Explain yourself and your presence in the Great Hold of Clan Stormclaw!”
“Wha-you-I'm GILDA you numbnuts!” Gilda shouted back with increasingly riled temper. “Modi, Magni, how in the world are you both so big?!? The both of you were barely my size two weeks ago!”
“Gilda... Gilda...” Modi spoke softly, gasping with a distinctly lost look on his face. The same look appeared briefly on Magni's face before he quickly shook it off and scowled deeply.
“How dare you claim to be her. Have you no respect...” Magni stepped forward to loom over Gilda with his impressive bulk. “I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION! If you don't start explaining yourself right this-”
“RRRAAAAAAAAGGGGH!!!” Gilda roared in fury in Magni's face and the effect was instant.
Magni recoiled and tripped on his own feet as he fell backwards onto the ground near Modi, staring up at Gilda with startled bewilderment. Modi, however, was different. The other griffin was staring at Gilda with open joy and tears building in the corners of his eyes.
“Gilda... it really is her...” Modi said with gleeful laughter choked by tears.
“What the?” Gilda blinked in confusion at her brother. “Modi, why are you-GAH!”
“I can't believe it! I'm ashamed to admit I didn't want to believe it!” Magni shouted happily as he sprang back up and gathered his sister in tight hug. “But only you could consistently scare me like that!”
“Magni!” Gilda shouted and tried to wiggle out of Magni's grip, her wings madly flapping. “Let go of me, darn it!”
“Modi, we have to bring her to mother!” Magni said as he practically manhandled his sister absently and packed her under an arm like a piece of luggage. “Maybe she'll finally calm down!”
“I'm not sure if this will fix everything, but it's a start!” Modi agreed and the two brothers took flight.
“MAGNI! LET ME GO RIGHT NOW!!!” Gilda screeched in frustration before halting her struggling for a moment as she considered what she just heard. “Wait, what's wrong with mom?”
“She... she hasn't been great for a very long time, Gilda,” Modi said softly as he and Magni flew towards the keep of the hold. “I'm hoping seeing you will give her some closure.”
“Closure?! What???” Gilda sputtered in confusion as Magni finally let go of her on the three's approach of a landing balcony leading into the keep.
“Enough!” Magni barked out as he began to lead the way. “Come on Gilda, we have to see mother right away.”
“Fine...” Gilda grumbled as she and Modi followed after Magni. “I better get some kinda explanation and soon!”
The three children of Clan Stormclaw walked through the halls of the keep, two princes and one princess. As Gilda walked, her anger downgraded from broiling to simmering and she began to notice some details. Firstly, there were a few tapestries and paintings missing from the walls. Specifically, she vaguely recalled them showing the whole family or her father and some duet paintings of her father and mother. Along with this, Gilda noted that the guards of the keep were giving her looks of shock and disbelief, like seeing her was something completely impossible.
“... Are you sure I can't get some kind of explanation?” Gilda asked as her anger started getting replaced with confusion.
“You'll have it in just a minute,” Modi assured his sister.
Not mollified at all, Gilda still kept silent as she realized where they were going; her parents' study. Soon they were walking down the hall that had the door of the very same study on the left. As they approached the door, Gilda noticed her brothers growing tense. While it was true princes’ and princess’ parents could be rather strict and demanding upon their children - a necessity with the responsibilities they'd inherit - Gilda never knew her brothers to actually grow nervous before meeting either of their parents. She furrowed her brows in confusion as she witnessed Magni and Modi pause to take a calming breath before they reached out to knock.
“Enter!” Gilda heard the voice of her mother Villja call out.
Taking one more breath, Magni and Modi then opened the door.
The study of her parents, Prince Bergren and Princess Villja, was nearly the same as she seen it last. Bookcases lined one wall and the opposite wall was dominated by paintings, tapestries and a large, fenced hearth. Large windows covered the wall opposite the entry door, letting in rays of light from the sun. In the center sat a small oak table covered with beautiful carvings and circled by expensive armchairs and couches. The one thing missing from this room since the last Gilda saw it was the large portrait of Bergren and Villja, made when they were newly wed.
Villja sat at the table which was currently covered in a number of rolled out scrolls. Her purple cloak hung on the back of her seat, over her torso she wore a practical black and purple doublet. The Princess of Clan Stormclaw was currently busy writing and likely had been busy at it for a while now judging from the pyramid of rolled up scrolls atop the table.
“Well, what is it?” Villja began as she finished up another scroll and began to look up. “You know I am busy do-”
Suddenly Villja's eyes locked on Gilda and she froze utterly and completely, her beak simply hanging open as her eyes bulged incredibly. There was a long, silent moment filled with nothing but Villja staring along with Magni and Modi looking like they were hoping they did a good thing. Gilda for her part felt incredibly awkward and like she was missing something incredibly important.
“Uhhh... I feel like I'm missing something really important here,” she began hesitantly, her voice causing Villja's eyes to dilate with some unknowable, powerful emotion to all that were watching. “Mom, whats wro-”
“DON'T YOU DARE CALL ME THAT!!!” Villja suddenly screeched, having moved so fast to get in Gilda's face that she seemed to teleport. “YOU-YOU-WHATEVER YOU ARE! YOU! ARE! NOT! HER!!!”
“Wh-wh-???” Gilda could only recoil and widen her eyes in shock. Her mother had never spoken like this to her before. “Mom, wha-”
THWACK!
Magni and Modi gasped aloud in shock and some horror as Gilda tumbled to the floor, staring at her mother in wide eyed shock. It wasn't like she hadn't been hit before. You couldn't be Prince Bergren's child without being trained in combat no matter what you ultimately ended up doing with your life. But never had it been Villja's job to train or even help train the children, and this was hardly a training environment.
“TAKE THIS THING AWAY TO THE DUNGEONS!” Villja screeched to Magni and Modi, tears born out of both anger and grief rapidly welling up in her eyes. “AND WE WILL BE SPEAKING ABOUT THIS LATER! I DID NOT RAISE WEAK MINDED FOOLS FOR SONS AND NEITHER DID YOUR FATHER!!!”
Magni and Modi did not know how to respond to this at all and silently gathered up their sister, each one grabbing an arm and dragging her out of the room in a manor they hoped was believably rough. Thankfully Gilda was definitely not in a state to make any kind of protest towards this treatment no matter how hollow it was.
The silence hung heavily on the trio as they walked through the halls, the two brothers having given up all pretense of holding Gilda in their custody the moment they were safely out of eyesight of their mother. After a moment longer, Gilda noticed they had been passing through the same hall over and over. The griffin Princess realized her brothers had no idea what to do and frankly neither did she after that display... but she was confused and wanted answers to some of her questions at least.
“Magni, Modi...” Gilda said quietly and her brothers came to a stop and turned to her. “What in the world was that all about? Just... what happened here???”
There was a long, silent moment as the two brothers shared a look between themselves, one filled with pain and uncertainty. Eventually they nodded and Magni turned to Gilda.
“There is something you need to see, Gilda,” Magni said solemnly and started walking at a brisk pace with his brother in tow. Feeling like she'll be getting her answers one way or the other, Gilda silently followed as well.
Some ten minutes later, Gilda started getting a bad feeling in the pit of her heart as she found herself being led to the small, private courtyard at the back of the Clan Keep. It was a courtyard decorated with short hedgerows, hard black mountain flower beds and statues depicting great Knights of the Clan. This was a place of solemn respect and reminiscence and also where the entrance to the Clan's mausoleum was. The young princess' worries were proven correct when Magni led her directly towards the ancient, millennia old crypts of her family that wound into the mountain.
“Magni, why the heck are we going down here!?” Gilda whispered harshly. She never did like the crypts. The very nature of their design made it very unsettling.
“There is... someone down here you need to see...” Magni said quietly as he continued to descend into the depths of the crypts. Modi remained silent at Gilda's side.
Gilda, for her part, felt a spike of dread go through her before willfully shaking it off and continuing to follow her brothers. The flagstone floor resounded with the clicking of their clawed and taloned feet, the light of expensive gem lamps lit their path with a warm orange glow. As they descended, a faint howling noise reached towards them along with a persistent breeze and Gilda couldn't help the shudder that went through her.
Eventually they reached the end of the hall, a landing that abruptly led out into open space. The crypts of Clan Stormclaw and indeed most other families rich enough for a Mountain Hold designed their family crypts in such a way as to allow ease of flying indoors. This meant that vents had to be strategically and carefully carved through sheer stone out into the mountain side where they had to catch air currents and funnel them inside the crypt itself. The end result was an endless howling noise created by the winds blowing through the vents and a constant flow of wind that allowed only sealed oil or gem lamps for lighting. It was very expensive and almost a statement of one's wealth and the constant howling was just so very unsettling for Gilda.
“Uugh...” Gilda couldn't stop the cringe that appeared on her face and the chill that went down her spine. Even since her first visit when she was a young griffin she was utterly convinced the place was haunted by restless spirits. She was over the belief itself but the noise just brought up irrational fears nonetheless.
The three griffins glided down to the very bottom of the crypt where the newest tombs were placed and landed before a fairly brand new looking one. Gilda couldn't help but blink in confusion and looked to the tomb next to it, the most recent one she recalled. Her confusion was justified. Deaths in the Clan were always major events that called for everyone to attend and the last one she attended was the funeral and entombment of her grandfather, the stern and uncompromising Clan Prince, Atli. If there was a new death in the family she would have gotten immediate summons and it wouldn't take place until everyone in the family could be there for it. This fact often meant that sometimes dead clansmen wouldn't get properly entombed for months up to a year depending on luck and circumstance, but it made them all very memorable. It was then that Gilda saw the name on the stonework over the short opening into the tomb.
Gilda Stormclaw
“W-what?!?” Gilda gaped in utter disbelief and shock. “Is this some kind of stupid joke?! I'm overseas for a few weeks and suddenly everyone thinks I'm dead!?! What-”
“You were considered dead for over three years now,” Modi interrupted solemnly and stared searchingly at Gilda. “Father thought you were missing at first, but he sent a letter back stating his certainty you were dead... and his drive to avenge your murder on the creature who did it.”
“Three years?!?” Gilda continued to gape and her mind started whirling with half formed thought, she had to force herself to focus, otherwise she'd lock up with the incredulity of it all. “Dad... where is he? I need to talk to him!”
“Over here,” Magni stated tonelessly from in front of another new looking tomb, pointing silently at it.
“No... no no no...” Gilda said repeatedly and half stormed and scrambled over. “That's a sick and twisted joke, Magni! I don't like it and-and... and...”
Gilda's words slowed to a halt as she stared wide eyed at the name over the opening, her mind denying what her eyes were seeing yet the terrible truth remained.
Bergren Stormclaw
Panting like she had just run a marathon, Gilda charged within the opening and into the tomb. Along the walls were tapestries depicting the histories of the entombed but Gilda only had eyes for what stood at the center. A great stone coffin with a stone effigy of the one entombed within looking like they were slumbering. The effigies were always perfect recreations of the ones who had passed on and in Gilda's mind she thought that perhaps if there was some difference in appearance she could justify it being not true.
Gilda skidded to a stop at the coffin's side and searched desperately over the effigies' carved features. The longer she peered, the more foolish her belief felt and the harder it become to fight the tears. Eventually the truth won over her desperation to deny it and Gilda started to choke as tears ran down her face in tiny rivers. She didn't know how long she stayed there practically hugging the effigy and crying, but eventually the world returned to her when she heard the telltale clicks of claws on stone. She looked over her shoulder expecting to see her brothers but widened her eyes at the sight that met her.
Villja stood at the opening, features hidden in the shadow of her hooded cloak and a line of Anvil Knights at her back looking utterly foreboding in their full kit. Just behind the Knights were her brothers looking incredibly worried. There was a long, terrible moment of silence as Gilda stared at her mother and the Knights arrayed behind her. Eventually Villja stepped forward, silently she stalked over to the other side of the coffin and paused only briefly to glance down at it before continuing forward. She finally came to a stop before a tapestry dominating the back wall of the tomb and Gilda widened her eyes as she finally took in what it showed.
The tapestry that would take position facing the head of the coffin was always the one dedicated to the final days of the griffin in question. Typically it was symbolic and not an actual historical account compared to every other tapestry in the tomb and therefore did its best to shine the last days as something positive, whether it be content in life at old age or dying in service to one's knightly duties. Bergren's tapestry depicted his last days as one in battle and what a battle it implied.
Bergren stood on a stone edifice spiking out towards the sky, fully geared in his armor, wings flared and mace arching with lightning that filled the empty spaces of the artwork. Behind him were Knights and Rangers, baring bow and blade, both held out in fearless challenge of a foe and in support of their liege. Dominating the other half of the tapestries was this terrible, shapeless thing shrouded in darkness, being struck by lightning but charging forth all the same. It was obvious Bergren did not survive the battle with his foe but Gilda immediately felt rage and the hope that at least her father had taken the evil thing down with him.
In utter silence, Villja started up at the tapestry hanging on the wall before she finally spoke.
“I know not what you are,” Villja stated. “My husband took the best Rangers in the Clan with him and was utterly certain that you were dead. I would not doubt the certainty of a father's belief in his daughter's death or the competency of the Rangers who followed him... yet the grief you show is very real to me... and very familiar... what do you know about Emerald Gleaner?”
“E-Emerald Gleaner...?” Gilda was taken aback by the sudden question and had to honestly search her memory deeply to recall anyone with that name. “The only one I know with that name is some freeloader staying with that teacher's pe- er, Celestia's Student.”
“Hrm.” Villja huffed in a tone that could very faintly be called amusement. “That freeloader as you called Emerald Gleaner... in three years, Emerald Gleaner has become the leader of a nation, an outed being of incredible power that towers over the Princesses themselves and a world wide influence... also secretly a monster that killed my husband.”
“WHAT?!?” Gilda screeched in outrage, clenching her talons so hard her knuckles audibly popped. Suddenly, Villja's head whipped around to face Gilda and this time the shadows of her hood did not hide her face.
It had to be said that Gilda was practically a carbon copy of her mother. She had been known as such since a young age and when her grandmother had been afflicted with senility she often confused her with Villja as a child. As such when Gilda saw the mask of anger and grief on her mother's face she knew she might as well be looking into a mirror of her own at that moment.
After a long moment, Villja averted her face away from Gilda so that it was once more hidden in her hood.
“... Perhaps in time, you'll convince me you are not an imposter,” Villja stated tonelessly.
“...” Gilda clenched her fists tightly at the idea she needed to prove anything. “I want to get back at that monster for killing Dad. Nothing else matters.”
“Then you will give everything that you are so that justice will be brought upon this beast and the honor of the Clan will be satiated,” Villja stated curtly and began walking towards her Knights. “Magni! Modi! The both of you will be l-loo...”
Villja was suddenly interrupted by a low rumble and the crypt shaking beneath her feet. She paused for a moment, as did everyone else. Soon, another louder rumble resounded in the earth followed by a longer quake. It was when multiple rumbles started resounding in the air and the quaking picked up and didn't stop that everyone realized something serious was happening.
“Outside, now!” Villja commanded and everyone took flight.
After soaring to the roof of the crypt and sprinting through the entrance hall, all the while the whole mountain seemed to quake and shake, everyone burst into the open air and took flight immediately. They couldn't fly very high, however, as in the time everyone had spent underground a tiny hurricane-like storm cloud swirled overhead and cast powerful gales in every direction. It was an intense struggle to both gain decent height and maintain your position. But the group did manage to attain a height that they were able to see what was wrong besides the storm overhead.
Climbing the mountain from all sides were swarms of animals made of rock and dirt. Most were the size of the typical griffin while many were the size of a small house, but the notable few were easily moving hills. A challenging roar resounded above and the group was met with the sight of a centipede made of swirling clouds scuttling through the air and hissing angrily, lightning arcing in its great eyes.
Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light as lightning rapidly built up in the clouds and lanced out...
BETA
With a flash of light Emerald appeared in the great cavern of the Eldest Dragon.
“Eldest!!!” Emerald called out with a magically amplified voice.
“There is little need to shout, I knew you were coming,” boomed the living mountain that was the dragon himself.
There was a sudden surge of heat and the many large fire rubies dotting the internals of the great geode that was Eldest's home was lit up with their warm glow. The amethyst scales of Eldest's titanic form glittered in the light and his eyes shone like beacons. Every movement causing a minor quake, he folded his arms beneath himself and rose his head up high to gaze down upon Emerald.
“You knew I was coming?” Emerald said questioningly. “You never leave this cavern, how?”
“A combination of some educated guessing and my ability to see the past through my dreams,” Eldest answered. “It is how I stay amused down here, dreaming instead of sleeping and hoping I dream of something interesting.”
“Then... I had come down here hoping you might have maybe grown up during the fall of the Alicorn Empire,” Emerald said. “And if you can see the past by dreaming...”
“Yes, I had seen the fall though I was not physically present for it.” Eldest nodded. “A weakness of post cognition, if one is busy scrying the past of far off places one can hardly see the recent past. I'll try to speak quickly and concisely, time is clearly of the essence...”
“You know the story of the Alicorn Empire as far as their apparent victory over all spirits,” Eldest began. “Though the Empire's intentions may not have inherently been harmful, for the forced slumbering of the spirits allowed for the undisturbed spread and growth of life without the constant hardships of dealing with such alien minded beings. Spirits are still a natural part of the world and the Empire's enforcement of their own views of Order and Chaos brought terrible imbalance. An imbalance that would be solved by any means necessary.”
“And so it was, a world enchained by the Empire's morality of Order VS Chaos birthed these very aspects into two newborn spirits.” Eldest reached out with a colossal hand and an image of a pristine world of clean beautiful grasslands, idyllic forests and eternally calm seas appeared. “Born in the aftermath of the Empire's victory over mortal and immortal alike, these two spirits were cursed with the power that should not have been entrusted to infantile minds, the power of mighty, age old Primordials with none of the wisdom. Newly born, no experiences to draw upon, these two spirits were slaves to their power and their aspects. Order born into a world dominated by her aspect was still and unthinking, Chaos whose aspect was nigh existent in this world leaped into action driven by impulse. He sealed away the Avatar of Order, his own sister into a prison she could never escape on her own where she would spend eons stewing and brooding on the crimes of her brother and the plotting of vengeance. This done, he turned his immense power upon the world...”
The image displayed above Eldest's hand changed, showing the two newly created spirits, one of which Emerald recognized instantly. It seemed despite being the Spirit of Chaos, Discord remained physically unchanged for who knows how long. Emerald witnessed the Discord from eons ago seal away his unmoving sister, a being much like him but only in shape; where he was a mismatch of limbs, she was a perfectly symmetrical serpentine being that looked like a bare marble statue. Once she had disappeared in a flash, he looked over his surroundings with an utterly blank expression. After a moment he spread his hands outs and clenched them into fists.
“Normally even the power of the Primorials have limits...” Eldest started to explain as the world in the projection started to shake. “But at this point in time, Discord, the center point of the aspect of chaos, the center point of the Empire's morality of good and evil, Order and Chaos. For as long as he was this, he had the power to sunder the world... and so he did.”
The image drew back to show the entire globe and the first thing Emerald noticed was the fact that instead of a single super continent, it was many separate ones covering the world. After seeing this, she knew what next to expect. Emerald then witnessed Discord stretch his power across the world, covering every single continent and then he pulled.
Multiple images appeared alongside the picture of the world. Pictures of fantastical cities -even for the likes of Canterlot- at street level and vistas of vast tracts of land. Emerald took in her first and probably only visual image of the Alicorn Empire. Some parts of the cities reminded Emerald of Shrangri La, of how a city inhabited by a population that could fly would be built. Briefly Emerald's attention was drawn towards a ceremony going on in one of the urban images, a gathering of Alicorns surrounding a podium atop of which stood two officials in gleaming regalia and before them was a young alicorn. The alicorn youth used magic to create the stylized image of what might have been a computer chip and the officials cast their own magic at the image and it suddenly attached itself to the youth's blank flank. Shifting her gaze to the vistas, Emerald saw throughout them were structures of grand scale and artistry and also obviously built for the sake of being built. The instant the past Discord had acted, all the images were affected at once. In the main image of the world, Emerald could see the continents moving. In the other images Emerald saw the world instantly sunder and break, the ground roiled and rippled before cracking and snapping open. Gleaming spires and sky scrapers withstood a shocking amount of bending and twisting before finally giving away and collapsing. The alicorn population took flight literally or magically from the catastrophe that was taking place beneath their very hooves. The movement of the ground was so fast and violent that magma erupted everywhere there were fissures.
“So much death and destruction was wrought that day, so much terrible chaos,” Eldest spoke. “Discord being the infant embodiment of what the Empire considered evil was slave to his aspect and the way it was viewed as the idea of evil. So, as the world settled into its new place, there was still a great many survivors of the Alicorn Empire, saved by their own magic and physical abilities but their joy would be short lived.”
A new image appeared of a bland faced Discord reaching out with his power and gathering up the alicorn survivors and placed them in a single area before terrifying them with raw power into running away from him... right into the site of another mighty spirit with a bag over its head surrounded by powdered desert.
“Near mindlessly Discord directed the survivors into the location of another Primordial Spirit, The End,” Eldest commented as he and Emerald could only watch as alicorns simply fell face first into the powder by the hundreds, many sacrificing their lives to shield others with their magic from the effects of the Spirit's presence. “The End is not a spirit of any kind of maliciousness but he is the epitome of supreme apathy and as a spirit this state of being affects his surroundings. Many Alicorns simply fell to the ground and their bodies, their very cells, lost all urge to do anything. They were not all dead however, and Discord enacted one final act of chaos before he would turn his attentions elsewhere.”
Emerald saw Discord lift all the alicorns into the air before stretched his power forth once more. All the alicorns glowed and suddenly each was split into three before being unceremoniously dropped onto the ground. With that Discord left to torment something else, leaving his victims to stumble about dumbly in utter confusion.
“The pitiful state of affairs would remain for a thousand years,” Eldest stated as the images faded away, the last being the image of the world and the newly formed pangea. “The entire time Discord was a near mindless slave to his instincts, little more then a spirit beast of terrible power. It was only after this milenia of ignorance that he began to grow and become something more then just chaos incarnate. This was a hundred thousand years ago...”
'So the three pony tribes were created from the alicorn survivors of the Empire and Discord was born from their absolute control over all of nature,' Emerald thought. 'The spirits were forced into hibernation which they are now awaking from en masse and blaming everyone alive for. Do I have time for some questions? I have to know, I-'
Suddenly Emerald's thought process was interrupted by a shrill screech of an alarm projected into her head. The virus' eyes widened. She had set up a series of alarm systems on certain areas keyed to alert her first and foremost before anyone else. She recognized this alarm sound for the one she set on the vault... the vault containing her nuclear bombs.
Eldest watched calmly as Emerald suddenly teleported away without warning. After sitting for a moment, he shifted in place and carefully stretched his stiff, mountainous limbs in his space. After a moment of stretching, he began to sit up and roll his head on his shoulders.
“Well... I'm a living being, too. This involves me as well...”
GAMMA
“She never looked me up after I gave her my card, you know.” Hoity Toity sighed.
“Ahhh, she never needed help to be world renowned,” Photo Finish remarked casually as she polished her glasses before setting them aside. “From the moment I saw her I knew she was going to be big one day, whether I had a hoof in it or not.”
Hoity Toity and Photo Finish were lounging together in Hoity's penthouse in Manehattan. They were in his living room, a large space with the sitting area facing a glass wall revealing a beautiful mid afternoon sky over an ocean and some cityscape.
“Somehow I believe you understate the truth of the matter,” Hoity stated as he sipped some sparkling grape juice.
“I always considered politics from a reputation or scandal angle, never as a position of power angle,” Photo Finish replied as she lounged back on Hoity's couch with an utterly relaxed sigh. “For I am but a simple photographer with a modest eye for talent. How could I have foreseen the rise of a world power?”
“Indeed.” Hoity Toity smiled at his dear friend and colleague. “Ah, speaking of models, how is your other catch still doing? Fluttershy, correct?”
“Hmph, she could have gone far with her looks and personality but is content to mediocrity,” Photo huffed before pouring herself a glass of juice. “There is only so much I can work my magic on somepony when they become a part timer in modeling.”
“Don't you mean 'Zee magics' hmm?” Hoity corrected pointedly.
“No, you are doing it wrong, again,” Photo Finish retorted and quickly put her glasses back on before sitting up. “It's like this: I! PHOTO FINISH! Am here to work! Zee magicsss! ...It's too flat sounding without the accent otherwise.”
In the fashion world it was expected for the big names to be quirky or stand out more than just their fashion sense. It took quite a bit of tweaking to formulate a diva personality that stood apart from the other divas and the diva wannabes. Of course it helped if one was naturally a diva, but for Photo Finish her speech pattern and public behavior were constructed things for the purpose of standing out. Hoity Toity for his part was a bit more true to himself in public. He was still a noticeably different person in private with close friends but much of his persona wasn't faked.
When shadows quite suddenly blanketed over the room, both Hoity and Photo Finish turned to look out the windows towards the sea to see a massive stormy cloud bank rolling up. Already, thinner clouds had blotted out the sun and had overcast the skies over Manehattan.
“My word!” Hoity exclaimed as he stood up from his seat to walk through his glass doors and out onto the patio of his penthouse. “I thought this was getting fixed! There wasn't supposed to be a storm for the rest of the month! What is the world coming to when the weather can't even be relied on when nothing is wrong?”
“Hoity... get back from the windows...” Photo Finish said with wariness as she noticed the ocean begin to churn and broil. “I don't think this is a scheduling issue.”
“O-oh, oh no what...” Hoity muttered as a massive wave suddenly rose from the ocean.
The wave rose as tall as the highest skyscrapers of Manehattan and shapes began to appear within the wall of water. Soon faces appeared out of the wave, a great many beasts from sharks to birds to otters in varying sizes protruded from the front of the wave. With a collective howl they charged forth in a stampede of water and foam.
“HOITY GET BACK FROM THE WINDOW!!!” Photo Finish screamed and the fashion celeb didn't need to be told again. He turned on the spot and bolted back towards Photo Finish. “Did you ever get that safe room ready?!”
“Yes, quickly, this way!” Hoity shouted back as screams filled the air, a combination of frightened ponies and enraged beasts, both of which were quickly being drowned out by the roar of crashing water. Hoity led Photo Finish into a gallery filled with statues and paintings. The fashion celeb quickly darted over to a statue of a deer standing majestically and reached up to tug on the antler. There was a clicking noise as the antler turned and the sound of something heavy and metal being moved. Suddenly the wall beside the deer statue gave away.
“In here, quickly!” Hoity shouted as the building began to shake and the sound of crashing water began to grow truly deafening.
“Can this room survive the tower falling!?!” Photo shouted over the din as she darted in.
“For a quarter of my net worth it better!” Hoity shouted back as he quickly dashed in after her and the door closed behind them.
Outside the waves seemed to break apart upon the towers of Manehattan, causing superficial damage initially, a surprise considering the sheer size of the wave. But as the waters churned and flooded the streets the spiritual beasts filling the waves jostled against one another, biting and shoving for the right to dominate their patch of water and crash their foe. This lack of harmony and cooperation had a profound effect upon the power of the wave itself and rather then bulldoze the whole of Manehattan as it should have, it broke upon the city and merely flooded it.
Though one had to ask how fortunate it was to avoid instant annihilation in favor being slowly hunted down by sentient water...
DELTA
Emerald arrived with a sharp bang, not outside her vault but within it, an alarming fact considering all the magical defenses she had piled onto it.
The virus took in the view of her vault to find it horrifyingly empty. The vast majority of the nuclear weapons she had kept in here were gone with only a dozen still visible but rapidly sinking into portals in the floor. In the center of all this was a being wearing a hooded cloak floating a short distance off the floor, holding a glowing lantern. Emerald decided he was clearly the one taking her nukes and was about to teleport into him when she suddenly felt an unyielding interdiction field slam down.. She heard the rustling of wind and suddenly her head was simply gone and she was sent tumbling along the floor. She only just regenerated her head when she felt the agony of a soul deep stab tear through her chest.
Gasping in pain, Emerald turned her head to look back and widened her eyes in shock at what she saw. Standing above her with a blank expression and hoodie up in absence of his hat was Oskar. She couldn't help but let out another agonized gasp when she was hoisted up and harshly thrown back down onto her back. Gazing up at her attacker, this time Emerald was able to see the weapon he attacked her with, a blade made out of a gray colored matter that was stone-like in sheen and seemed to be made out of one piece. The only remarkable feature about it was the gem in the cross guard; it was dodecahedron shaped with a pitch black ball in its heart.
Emerald moved to leap away from Oskar only for a slash faster then anything she was capable of to rake across her torso and she was incapacitated by another wave of pain.
“Enough of that. There is no point in fighting to the death against a mere burglary,” spoke a voice like a winter breeze. “Especially for one whose history is as torrid and grand as yours.”
Emerald turned to see the cloaked being now floating just a few feet from her. He held the handle of his lantern in both hands now, holding it up so it leveled with his stomach, its intense light like a small lighthouse.
“W-who are you?” Emerald ground out between gritted teeth. “What d-do you want?”
“I am a Curse, the Curse. I am Curse,” the ghostly being replied. “And what I want is to end a foe I am fated to fight, fated to hate, fated to be a slave to their violence.”
“I... I haven't seen you before...” Emerald bit out, struggling a bit to sit up. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why?” At this, the breeze-like voice of Curse took an almost amused tone. “Why, you'll find that you brought this on yourself.” Then Curse looked to Oskar. “I need not remind you what shall happen if you kill her?”
“Like it matters...” Oskar muttered and Emerald couldn't help but notice the aura of emotion that surrounded him via her changeling senses. There was a confusing, broiling soup of emotions, anger, uncertainty, exhaustion and Emerald wasn't sure what to make of it at the moment.
Curse then floated away and he waved his lantern. Suddenly the air seemed to crack like it was a pane of glass and broke away to reveal a near empty realm of infinite blackness. Sitting some distance away in this realm was a large, scaly, bipedal, horned, winged being sitting upon a throne before a glowing, cloudy pool.
“Curse, the time is nigh,” the seated being boomed. “Cease thy lingering and return.”
“But of course. Come, Oskar.” Curse waved with a hand before floating quickly towards the throne.
“See you soon,” Oskar said blandly with a point of his sword at Emerald before strolling over to the hole in reality.
Emerald rose unsteadily onto her feet, clutching the gaping wounds in her chest. Her vision swirled and blurred with the pain she felt throbbing agonizingly through her torso. Looking up at the hole in reality, she saw two more people walk into view. One was human sized wearing what seemed to be white robes. The other was incredibly tall, Emerald could only see their lower half until they bent over to peer through the portal. Her vision hadn't recovered and she still struggled to maintain balance just standing so Emerald wasn't able to make out much in the way of details. The tall person appeared to be wearing some kind of fur cloak that covered their entire body and something long and white was waving around their upper half.
Then, quite abruptly and with the sound of breaking glass, the hole closed and Emerald was left standing alone. Emerald stood there, trying to catch her breath and simply heaving like she was fresh off a marathon. Eventually she forced herself to stand upright and gingerly began to probe her wounds.
They were deep, clear through in some areas but the flesh seemed to have been petrified in such a way that hindered her regeneration greatly. The pain was very familiar and Emerald intimately knew her soul had been wounded. Strangely though, the petrification helped here, keeping the magic from spilling out.
'Wha-what the fuck was that?!' Emerald thought as she grimaced and clutched at her wounds. 'Fucking hell... this day is just one disaster after another! I... I barely understand what's going on anymore...'
Emerald was very tempted to just sit there for a while and just let herself rest and heal as best as she could before getting trying to get a handle on the situation but through the thick stone walls of the vault she could make out an alarm blaring.
Up on the surface of the Enclave, a siren very much like the ones used during bombing raids filled the air with its piercing wail. The air was practically broiling with tracer fire and missiles exploding in mid air, the sky churned and thundered with countless windigos swirling and screaming downwards, the bullets and explosions only serving to disrupt their nigh incorporeal bodies but doing no real damage as they merely reformed a short while later in the cloud banks.
“Oh, oh well this is fantastic!” Wheatley groused loudly. “Now all we need to make this a lovely tea party is for the other three types of spirits to show up! Mm, nothing like an enemy you can't even beat!”
“Complaining will solve nothing,” Belvedere stated with an aura of calm as he leaned over the tabletop tactical map. However, even he was feeling some anxiety as an idly bouncing foot betrayed. “All we can do is continue to fire into the skies and be thankful that for some reason the Jotuns haven't shown up or buried the city.”
“Well since there is nothing I can do but shoot helplessly into the sky, then there is no bloody problem with me complaining now is there, mate?” Wheatley shot back. “Just as well we made an absolutely obscene amount of ammunition, now I've got a whole lotta nothing to blow off.”
Just then the earth started to shake and for a moment Wheatley thought Belvedere spoke too soon and the Jotuns had arrived... as it turned out, that was completely true.
A great storm of roots burst forth from the earth and snatched up hundreds of lesser spirits in an instant with many more getting snatched up by further roots. As their smaller, lesser brethren were dragged screaming into the earth, the greater spirits managed to either avoid the roots or simply break free.
“Once you all feared to even approach this canopy for the threat of my ravenous hunger...” Sovereign's voice boomed and filled the air. “I SHALL TEACH YOU FEAR ONCE MORE!!!”
That was about the time Emerald arrived.
Appearing with an exceedingly blight flash of light, Emerald shot through the air at the nearest spirit, claws alight with the spirit strike but she was an instant too late and her blades found only air. Looking around quickly with panting breath, she also saw all other spirits in the area had left as well. It was clear they knew full well that they couldn't fight her and simply took advantage of the fact they could retreat any time they wanted.
'That ability is going to make attrition especially deadly,' Emerald thought and clutched at her chest again. She then turned her attention to the writhing, monstrous tree roots waving through the air. 'Well, looks like Sovereign is getting in touch with his cannibalistic roots... wait that's a pu-'
“EMERALD!” Wheatley shouted over the radio.
“I-I'm reading you loud... and clear,” Emerald panted.
“Okay, I have never in my life heard you sound like that and I've gotta admit, it scares me,” Wheatley stated bluntly before quickly adding, “But whatever is wrong, you have to put it aside for now! There are more of those spirits attacking the whole kingdom and I'm seeing similar assaults around the world from the spy satellites.”
“T-the whole world?” Emerald questioned with a sinking feeling.
“Yes, I'm noticing signs of geological disruptions that can't be natural across the planet!” Wheatley replied. “Whatever is going on, the League of Nations members aren't the only targets.”
“... Give me coordinates for all attacks in Equestria.” Emerald steeled herself and forced her breath to steady. “I'll get back to you about attacks in LoN territories.”
“Righto, sending data packet,” Wheatley replied. He hadn't missed the fact Emerald ignored the fact nations beyond the borders of the League were being attacked, but accepted it for what it was; prioritizing saving what was important.
Emerald got a long line of numbers and picked one semi randomly and teleported away. An instant later, she found herself in the air over Manehattan. The city was horribly flooded, some buildings were leaning against its neighbor perilously, some were already a pile of rubble, but all were damaged in some way. The water flooding the streets churned and moved with a life of its own, unnaturally rising against gravity to flood upwards and engulf whole skyscrapers. Emerald saw Hippocampi of immense size striding between the towers immediately fall apart at her arrival, but it was only they that managed to do so.
A leopard of foam and water extracted a pony from a window when suddenly a streak of pink blasted through its midsection, trailing ethereal lights. The hippocampi gave a shriek of utter agony as its upper half was sent flying before it suddenly stopped mid air. The water that made up its body seemed to boil and lose its form before suddenly exploding in a shower of stagnant water.
That hippocampi wasn't the only one to die. Emerald was a blur of death, whole body wreathed in the power of the soul strike, simply using her entire form as a weapon as she blasted through spirit after spirit, killing dozens before the teeming hundreds realized her presence and disappeared in a collective splash of water. Seeing this, Emerald slowed to a stop... but fumbled.
“Aggggh!” Emerald gave a shout as her concentration slipped and she started flipping head over heels before sinking into the flooded waters of the streets with a great crash and spray of water. Emerald lost control of her pegasi magic that hid her true weight and she sunk like a stone and even buried into the street shallowly because of it. Emerald lay there for a moment before she groaned, causing a stream of bubbles to broil up from her mouth and quickly got herself out of the street and up to the water surface.
“F-fuck...” Emerald thought as she called upon her water channeling to make the very surface of the water solid enough for her to stand on. Like an exhausted climber scaling over a cliff edge, she rolled her body up atop the water and lay there, her chest heaving. “Come on... c-come on! Get up!”
And so Emerald did, not with her usual grace and fluidity but like one whose whole body ached and was stiff with exertion.
'Okay... I have to slow down, there is no choice...' Emerald thought to herself as she stood up straight and once more clutched at her petrified wound. 'This “leak” isn't as plugged up as I hoped, but it's not getting worse, either. I need time to heal on my own before I can go at one hundred ten percent again. I just need a moment to-'
“Emerald!” Wheatley shouted.
“Of course...” Emerald sighed before activating the reply on her radio. “Please tell me it can wait even a few minutes, Wheatley...”
“Depends on where you rate Fluttershy as a friend, I suppose!” Wheatley quickly shot out. “Priority detection of immense magical energies around her cottage!”
Emerald didn't waste another second. The moment Wheatley stopped talking was the moment she teleported once more.
DELTA
“O-oh my...” Fluttershy gasped softly as she beheld the skies above her home. They were a ghostly cauldron of churning black and gray with the persistent distant rumble of thunder. “Why would anyone want weather like this? I better go make sure all of the animals are safely in their shelters!”
With that, the demure pegasus quickly trotted towards her front door. She was about to push it open when something happened. Her vision began to shake and it was as if the air, the earth and just everything started to vibrate. There was a sudden blast of icy air from just outside she could feel bone deep even with the door shielding her. And just as sudden as it started, it ended.
Suddenly feeling rather afraid, Fluttershy hesitated before the door fearfully. After a moment, she shook her head clear. Filled with concern for her many animals inhabiting the grounds of her property, she steeled her heart and opened the door.
The pegasus was meet with the sight of a hole in reality closing much like the aperture of a camera. Before this rapidly closing hole were two ponies laying on the ground, soaked with water and covered in bloody wounds.
“Oh my goodness!” Fluttershy exclaimed before she quickly darted to the side of the ponies and looked them over. One of the ponies wore a cloak and was elderly looking unicorn stallion with a beard and the other was a younger looking pegasus mare wearing lacey clothes, a silken headdress and golden jewelry. Both were covered in lacerations and suffering from severe hypothermia. It was a fairly warm day but Fluttershy was actually concerned they would suffer from warming too quickly.
Fluttershy was about to carry the old unicorn into her cottage to warm up in a more controllable manner when there was a pop and quick gust of wind. She turned her head and gasped at the sight that met her.
At first glance she could have mistaken the being before her for Discord, but only in body shape alone. While the serpentine shape was very familiar, the rest of the being wasn't; skin like a marble statue, eyes a light gray, scales a glittering cobalt and claws like gold. Finally from the softness of the features, Fluttershy had a near whimsical thought this being was female.
The Discord look alike growled, a noise that seemed to rattle the very air as she turned her head this way and that looking for something. Suddenly she sniffed the air and looked down at Fluttershy. Almost immediately she was in Fluttershy's face with narrowed eyes, and the pegasus could only freeze with wide eyes. The being stared with wondering eyes for a long moment at Fluttershy before she hummed and then quite abruptly she was gone.
“Huh?!” Fluttershy blinked and started looking around, but the strange being was gone. Just as she was about to direct her attention back to the two ponies on the ground, there was a bright flash of light.
“Fluttershy!” Emerald called out as she arrived. “Are you okay?!”
“I-I'm fine. Something strange is going on, but more importantly, these two ponies are badly hurt!” Fluttershy replied and quickly gasped. “Emerald, your hospital! You can take these two there and help them!”
Emerald for her part was looking around trying to spot something but failing. She then looked down at the two ponies. The pegasus mare didn't warrant a reaction but the old unicorn definitely did.
“Wait... isn't that-” Emerald began as she kneeled down at the unicorn's side to look at his face closer when suddenly she reached up to her ear with a hand. “...God damn it.”
Emerald moved to rise when she suddenly gasped and dropped back into a knee while clutching at her chest.
“Emerald!” Fluttershy exclaimed worriedly. “Are you okay? How are you hurt, w-what's going on?”
“A lot is going on right now...” Emerald sighed and forced herself up onto her feet. “Fluttershy where is that dragon freeloader of yours? If he isn't around, you need to go somewhere safe.”
“Bulto left to stretch his wings but I'm sure he'll be back soon,” Fluttershy replied as Emerald gathered her magic around the two ponies and they vanished with a flash of light. “But Emerald, I still don't understand! What's going on???”
“I can't… I have to keep moving.” Emerald shook her head and began gathering her magic. “Fluttershy, I need you to send a message to Twilight to investigate those two ponies at my hospital. Stay safe!”
“Ohhhh...” Fluttershy shuffled in place as she watched Emerald disappear before looking up; the sky was still an ugly, dark overcast. Taking a breath, she set about making sure her animals were safe first before going to find Twilight.
EPSILON
Starlight Glimmer panted as she ran through the singular street of “Our Town” as a beautiful swan song filled the air, drowning out the screams of terrified ponies.
It had been just another ordinary day in the town of Our Town up until it wasn't. A heat wave like something out of the depths of the world's hottest deserts blasted over the town. It was a palpable force with the wind blowing and the trees creaking and cracking. The air dried out in mere moments. It was such an intense, dry heat you couldn't help but feel thirsty and parched like you had been on long trek through a desert. All the clouds in the sky had blown away in the scorching breeze in mere moments, leaving only the sun blazing down upon the town mercilessly.
The mayor of the most boring - and so ordinary it was extraordinary - town on the face of Equestria had secretly been an incredibly adept unicorn of amazing magical skill. And so when Starlight had bore witness to this freak weather patterns she didn't think it was the weather teams of Equestria failing again, but the sign of something dangerous.
Unfortunately, Starlight Glimmer had no time at all to begin warning people at all when a fire bird of incredible size exploded into being just on the outskirts of town. It was of such immense size that had it not been a miniature sun of blinding heat and light it would have shadowed the town. It was the shape of a swan with the tips of its wing and tail feathers a cobalt blue and its beak a white hot blinding point.
It had begun to circle the town when it first appeared, singing a beautiful and honestly captivating song that would have beguiled the town with its tones had it not been for the heat. The searing temperature had been bad before, but with the fiery swan overhead it had become a literal oven. Ripples of heat filled the air and people's eyes watered and turned red with irritation as the skin beneath their coats started to redden and blister.
Galloping out from town, Starlight would have half cooked her lungs if it weren't for the shield spell she had cast around herself. Halfway to a nearby hill she had looked over her shoulder to see how many people were behind her only to witness a horrifying sight.
There was no one... they were still in the town being cooked alive.
Starlight could only watch in horror as the people she had taken into her care struggled to move with any great pace. They cried out in agony, they screamed and even begged the firebird cooking them with its mere presence but they could not move to save themselves.
“Ahh, what is this~” the swan crooned with a preening tone. “You refuse to run away? Does the beauty of my song captivate you so? But of course, how could mere mortals resist its wonder! I shall sing to your exit on my stage! Bear witness to my eulogy to you all~”
The swan then flew over and landed before the entire population of the town, blocking the way they had been struggling to run. With it now so close, the sheer heat was so great that the ponies closest to the great firebird had simply burst into flame. They were so heat exhausted they could only stagger before falling to the earth and be silently consumed in the agonizing fires of their own flesh. The rest turned to try to get away but they could not. One by one, young and old, mare and stallion succumbed to the heat, their lungs seared by the air and suffocating them, the heat of the very air smoldered their coats and cooked their brains. They all collapsed to the earth as the firebird serenaded their end.
“NOOOO!” Starlight screamed at the brutality of it all.
“Ahh, almost missed one!” The swan tutted to himself in a chiding tone, glancing over his shoulder at Starlight. “Ahh! Fret not, fret not! I, Sanctity of the Pure Flame, shall see you and your home off with a BLAZE OF GLORY!!!”
The flaming swan suddenly flew into the air above the now ablaze town with a spinning corkscrew motion. Starlight only had a moment to cast a shield spell with all her might as the swan flared his wings and became a small sun. Suddenly all Starlight could see was white and she felt unbearably hot. She could feel the shield sap her of her strength incredibly fast. She was blind and all she could hear was the roar of flames as her reservoir of magic drained away to nothing.
Starlight Glimmer screamed in fear as the last drops of her magic drained away and her shield collapsed. The last thing she felt was a great impact and a searing pain along the side of her face.
“Ahhh...” Sanctity sighed in satisfaction as he beheld the incinerated pile of ash that was formerly the town of Our Town. When suddenly he noticed something out of place, a certain unicorn lying on the smoldering earth with a small flame dancing on the side of her face but clutching to life still as his senses told him. “ALIVE?!? WHAT AN INSULT! I-”
Suddenly Sanctity's head whipped around and he only tsk’ed in a put upon tone before he was gone in a swirl of guttering flame. The instant he had done that, there was a flash of pink light and Emerald appeared in mid air. She whipped around to take in her surroundings, but after a moment relaxed and sighed; she was clearly too late. With another teleport, the virus appeared next to the still form of Starlight Glimmer.
Emerald quickly put out the fire before frowning at the horrifying melted state that was half of Starlight's face. She quickly undid the damage and looked the unicorn over again when she suddenly whipped a hand up to press against her ear. After a moment, she sighed and waved at Starlight, teleporting the unicorn to the international hospital before teleporting herself away as well.
And suddenly all there was to mark that there had ever been a town called Our Town was the indents in the ground from the basements of the incinerated buildings.
ZETA
In the land of the Heron Republic, the Capital City of Shangri La was under attack.
The city was under attack from all angles. From the skies the Windigo screamed to the earth, their ripping, whistling wings tore at the towers of the city. From below the Jotun rose from the earth, crashing down streets and shaking buildings to their very foundations. From within, the Ifrit burst to life from the hearths and torches and every home, setting much of the city alight within moments of their collective arrival. From without, the Hippocampi exploded out of the aqueducts that supplied the city, rapidly becoming an inland flood. But unlike the spirit invasions of other cities, this one wasn't in favor of the spirits' sudden assault...
“HA!” Swift Gale cried out as she slashed through the air with her katana, bisecting a dirt jotun the size of a grand carriage and it crumpled into its composite earth. “That's the third time I dealt with that one!”
“Maintain your focus,” Gyatso reminded lightly as he swatted a crab hippocampi with a wing glowing with ethereal light. The crab gave a cry of great pain before it retreated of its own volition to the spiritual realm. “This is only the beginning and so few of us can cause actual pain to these spirits.”
“I know, Master Gyatso,” Swift Gale grumbled as she took position to meet a mixed charge of all four spirits. “I'll set them up, you knock them down.”
Swift Gale rapidly gathered her focus and drew her secondary smaller blade strapped to her hind leg via wind channeling very rapidly. Then without really giving it the necessary force for penetration power, she sent it spinning towards the hound windigo. Of course, the first thing it did was reclaim the winds propelling the spinning blade and it fell to the earth. That was okay, because it did the job of distracting it.
Master Gyatso came blasting forth like a bullet feet first. Lower limbs glowing with ethereal light, instead of passing through the sentient swirling winds as he should have, the master channeler impacted the spirit like it was a flesh and blood being and it gave a cry of pain. The Ifrit in the group surged upwards, hissing and rattling like the blazing rattlesnake it was. With the windigo briefly out of commission, Swift was able to freely use her wind channeling and dashed forward with her katana held out in her mouth, its blade encircled by a violently swirling tiny cyclone of wind. She slashed along the body of the ifrit, the actual blade didn't seem to do much but the wind sent the flames scattering and the ifrit disappeared with an angered hiss. A tiger made of vines and flowers leapt at her, but she paid it no attention as a moment later Gyatso redirected his flight and bolted towards the tiger.
Gyatso impacted the jotun like a cannonball, hitting hard enough an actual tiger would have had its spine broken instantly. The jotun shrieked in agony as its physical form crumpled and it quickly abandoned the material world for the safety of the spiritual realm. Swift Gale and Gyatso turned about face towards the windigo, but they needn't have bothered.
The windigo gave a piercing howl of pain as it was throttled by a small monkey wearing a white haori with red lining and a conical hat with the kanji for fire on the front. After another moment it faded away to lick its wounds in the spiritual realm.
“Grand Master Onoki!” Gyatso exclaimed. “I take it the assault upon the monastery has been repelled?”
“Mostly,” Onoki huffed as he gently lowered himself onto the ground with jets of flame. “If it weren't for the fact the Senators are losing their minds I'd be back there in the thick of things where I belong. Bah, enough of my whingeing. I take it from the fact neither of you are hurt to assume you have done well?”
“We have, Grand Master,” Gyatso replied with a nod of his head. “The fighting has actually started to slow around the capital.”
“You'll have to train your attunement with spiritual energies more in the coming days, then,” Onoki stated with crossed arms. “The fighting has stopped... for now.”
“Haaa... thank Celestia,” Swift Gale muttered with a sigh as she checked over her weapons before sheathing them. “I don't know how much longer I could have taken being the distraction.”
“My apprentice brings up a good point,” Gyatso stated. “The only meaningful damage we can inflict can only be done with the spirit strike and far too few of us know it. So many Channelers served merely as distractions today while the lucky few who studied an art with little modern applications did work.”
“That changes today,” Onoki growled with a burst of flame from his mouth. “We will be pushing everyone we can spare through training of the spirit strike. The more who know, the more we can actually hurt the enemy.”
“There will be consequences for rushing training, Grand Master,” Gyatso cautioned.
“The consequence of not rushing out people who know spirit strike will be countless thousands,” Onoki retorted firmly. “We'll just have to bare with it until we have enough Channelers who can spirit strike around, then we can reinforce whatever spotty training we were forced to give.”
“I take it from your tone this is already decided with the full consensus of the Council,” Gyatso said deferentially with a bow of his head. “I shall follow your lead, Grand Master.”
“You better, now is not the time for nit picking,” Onoki muttered before stalking off. “... much as I could use the snack right about now.”
“Should we get in contact with the Enclave?” Gyatso asked as he fell into step behind the diminutive Grand Master. “Surely Emerald Gleaner is busy with her own issues at home but I have a feeling her strengths will be put in constant use before long.”
“Eventually,” Onoki replied as the earth began to rumble. “Let's try to get things under control here before we worry about lands across the sea.”
With another rumble that shook everyone to the bones, there was an explosion of earth from the center of the capital and a massive hooded cobra towered above the tallest buildings of the capital. A Greater Spirit in the form of a king cobra and materials of raw copper. With a hiss that was more of a deafening roar, the Greater Spirit spat out a stream of molten copper that immediately caught several blocks of buildings on fire.
“COME ON! LET'S HAVE AT IT!!!” Onoki roared out and, with a trail of flame, leapt high into the air to leap across rooftops towards the spirit.
“Stay near me!” Gyatso ordered his apprentice before taking flight.
“Yes!” Swift nodded before leaping into the air after her master.
While the battle for the Capital of the Heron Republic raged, another battle was well underway countless miles away.
Far, far away from the humid and temperate climates of the Heron Republic, in the arid deserts and savannah of the Bast Dynasty a far more one sided battle between the cats of the Dynasty and the desert spirits was happening.
In the city on the borders of the great dune sea, an army desperately fought against marauding spirits, however the warriors of the Dynasty did not possess as strong a mystical history as the Channelers of the Heron Republic. Indeed, the magic of the cats of the Bast Dynasty was less a physical force and more a presence, a magic that focused on fortune and beating the odds. It could be powerful in its own way, but in this exact case the only thing it was doing was keeping the death count low despite the spirits practically rolling over every attempt to repulse them.
As a monstrous jotun shark made of sand crashed through a block of adobe homes there was a howl of utter agony echoing from the distance that seemed to interrupt everyone with its piercing wail. On the horizon a sickly green light approached with great speed and before long a shape could be seen bounding across the dunes and leaving a black trail in its wake.
“AH! AH! AUGH! IT BURNS! IT BURNS! IT BURNS!” a voice screamed into the heads of everyone. Neither mortal nor spirit were spared from its piteous, maddened howling. “IT HURTS! WHYWHYWHY!?! HOW DOES IT BURN?!?”
An elk hippocampus that was in the process of drowning out several homes turned to see a blazing green hound leap atop the walls of the city. It whined in pain as it whipped its head around this way and that, looking for something. Finally its wild eyes stopped on the hippocampus and with a happy howl it leapt at it. With a loud, careening wail, the hippocampus thrashed against the mad ifrit as it crashed atop it and its body began to sizzle. After mere moments the hippocampus burst into flames and it weakly thrashed a moment longer before both its body and very being exploded in a shower of nuclear flame.
“MUST SMOTHER, MUST SMOTHER, MUST SMOTHER!!!” the green ifrit repeated manically as it proceeded to drop down and roll over into the block of houses the hippocampus had been attacking. Immediately the buildings crumpled and rapidly burned away in the sickly green flames as it then leapt to its feet and stumbled in place. “GO OUT! GO OUT! IT BURNS! IT MANGLES AND TWISTS! UNNATURAL! UNNATURAL!”
Spotting another spirit, this time the sand shark jotun, the mad ifrit bolted towards it. It impacted the other spirit with a great crash and rolling wave of green flame and sand. The jotun was left behind in a heap as the mad ifrit continued to roll and flip over through houses and streets. The shark jotun began to thrash wildly as the green flames started to spread over its body, covering every exposed part. After a while it was fully covered and it seemed like it was about to suffer the same fate as the hippocampus, but then the flames receded.
In place of a proud, mighty shark was a piteous thing, burned and melted to a lesser state. It looked less a shark and more a mudskipper now. Its former sand body was now made of misshapen hunks of cloudy glass and sludge that glowed green beneath an oily film. With an agonized gargle that sent glowing ooze flying out of its mouth, the jotun flopped forward, seeking everything and anything that could ease its current ceaseless torment.
Seeing this transformation, the rest of the raiding spirits left in an instant, their physical forms collapsing in their respective elements. Leaving only a devastated city and two radiation maddened spirits behind.
The mad ifrit twisted its head about looking for anything that could catch its manic attention, but nothing did, not even its fellow, now demented, spirit. The ifrit took to a sprint with a pain filled howl, taking off away from the deserts and into the heartlands of the Bast Dynasty. Meanwhile its new fellow radiated spirit flopped through the city miserably, aimlessly smashing aside anything in its way as it picked a random direction to move in.
A relief force of warrior cats would arrive to find this city full of blackened ruins and hairless, growth covered corpses covered with horrifically cooked flesh.
ETA
“We are going to need to completely retool our industry,” Emerald stated as she walked down the halls of the international hospital.
“Err, one moment. Right'o, I've activated all the spare factory lines I've been making,” Wheatley replied. “We could start equipping and supplying million strong armies within hours.”
“Good, we are going to need to,” Emerald replied with grim certainly as she paused and clutched at her chest briefly before looking around.
The hospital was very busy. It had been busy since it had opened, but the sheer size of the building made sure it could accommodate people coming from across the known world. But with an actual war on, hurt and dead ponies had been pouring in by the hundreds and that number had been spiking into the thousands every now and then. It was very telling that despite the fact the hospital only needed ten minutes at most to fully heal a patient that the halls remained almost too crowded.
“Also, get some construction teams up here and throw up some rough additions to the hospital,” Emerald added as she continued on, forcing a grimace and discomfort down. “Don't bother with making it look pretty, we are way past that. Just make sure it's completely functional.”
“It'll be started on within the hour,” Wheatley complied.
“What's the progress on the new satellites?” Emerald asked as she made way for one patient room in particular. “As much as I'd like to just focus on defending and securing the homefront, I get the feeling I'll be given some firm words about ‘solidarity’ and helping one's neighbor if we don't look beyond the borders eventually.”
“I've just put the finishing touches on the design,” the organic AI answered. “I've got some factory lines queued up to start building them.”
“Okay, good,” Emerald said and paused to lean against the wall as casually as possible. She honestly should have still been “working” as there were a ton of alerts yet, and still more on the way all the time. The virus, however, was beginning to feel the onset of magical fatigue setting in. The constant running around after having a hole torn in her soul wasn't conductive to staying active in the long term. She honestly needed a break but the constant stream of alerts was doing nothing for the broiling anxiety that was steadily growing.
With a deep breath, Emerald pushed off the wall and made for the door. Once she reached it, she opened it and walked in.
This room was no different from any other room one could find in a patient ward of a major hospital. Though truth be told, in a hospital with the abilities this one held, the patient rooms were more a luxury for the families to rest with their recovered loved ones for a time before they were discharged to make room for other patients. This room was especially luxurious as it held only one bed with a large, flat screen television.
In the bed was an old unicorn stallion confirmed by Twilight as Starswirl the Bearded himself. Emerald had her suspicions but hardly had the time to really confirm it for herself and simply sent the old unicorn off for treatment and hoped Twilight would confirm it for her. Said new alicorn was in this room as well.
“So, how is he?” Emerald asked as she walked over to her wife.
“He is sleeping right now, the machine said that's all it was and I honestly want to wake him up, but...” Twilight was a bundle of nervous energy, caught between terrible concern for what was going on and excitement that her historical idol was before her in the flesh. After a moment she shook her head and decided on which was more important right now. “How are things going out there?”
“Bad.” Emerald shook her head with a deeply tired sigh. She proceeded to cover her eyes with one hand and lean her head back before continuing. “Everyone was caught completely by surprise save for the Enclave and even that was only thanks to Wheatley's reaction time. And even in places where people are trying to give some kind of resistance, they just can't! The destruction of a spirit's physical body is all anyone can do and that only delays them for a short time before they come right back. Besides Sovereign, I am the only one in the entire Kingdom who can actually hurt and kill any of the spirits. But the spirits know this. The instant I arrive to fight, all the big ones immediately leave and I can only catch a few of the smaller ones before they leave too. This is... fucking frustrating. I am making progress against them but it's SO slow and there are always more attacks I have to try to stop, then I have to turn right around to clear an area I just left and...”
“It's okay, Emerald,” Twilight soothed as she pulled Emerald down into a kneel so she could hug her. “We'll figure something out. You, the princesses and I. Once we combine our minds, we'll-”
“What is it you do to hurt the spirits?” interrupted another voice. “What is the spell?”
“Huh?” Emerald blinked and looked at the bed to see Starswirl wide awake and gazing at her intently. “It's not really a spell in the traditional unicorn sense. More of a technique that anyone can learn with time and training from a far off land.”
“Even so, show me,” Starswirl insisted with a stare that was fast approaching a glare.
Emerald stared back a moment but relented with an encouraging nudge from Twilight. She held out her hand and presented the palm to Starswirl, after a moment her hand was engulfed in ethereal light. She kept it up for several long moment as Starswirl stared at her hand with the most intense studying expression she had ever seen even after living with Twilight for several years. After yet more moments of silence, Starswirl suddenly brought up a hoof from underneath the bed covers and presented it to Emerald.
“Oh my gosh...” Twilight said in tone of wonderment. Emerald had to agree with.
Starswirl's hoof was alight with the same ethereal energy as Emerald's hand, the Master of Magic had learned the spirit strike after just a few moments of looking at it with no direction at all. That was a feat easily admittedly beyond both her and Twilight within the same time frame he just had.
“It is an interesting technique,” Starswirl commented with a hum as he examined his hoof further. “I can see this would have been very helpful to have known some time ago. Maybe then my compatriots would have... in any case, I can also see the issue of this spell. Namely its high skill requirements.”
“Yes, there is quite a large Order far to the east who could train hundreds if not thousands in the use of the spirit strike, but...” Emerald began with a frown. “With the scale of the current conflict, those kinds of numbers just aren't practical.”
“I've already fixed it!” Starswirl announced as he tossed the bed covers off of himself and leapt off the bed. “I trust you are aware of runes? I already have an equation in mind to translate the spell to a tool to be used by a laypony.”
“A tool?” Emerald said with wide eyes, already beginning to realize just why no one had fully understood Starswirl's magics despite having a thousand years to study them. “But surely there would be issues with potency?”
“Of course, of course!” Starswirl waved off as he opened the door to the room and began to leave. “We clearly don't have the time to solve the question of quality, so we merely have to settle for quantity for the time being.”
“... Wow.” Emerald blinked as she stood up and looked down at Twilight. “Okay... I am honestly beginning to think things aren't going to be as bad as I thought they were.”
“EEEEEeeee!!!” Twilight couldn't help herself. As serious as circumstances were, she just had to squeal with fangirlish delight. “This! Is! So! AWESOME!!!”
“... Uhhhhh.” A moment later, Starswirl poked his head back in the room. “I just realized I have no idea where I'm going.”
Emerald chuckled at that. She already felt much better. Perhaps things really weren't going to be as bad as she thought?
One could only hope...
-TBC-