My first apprentice hates my guts. And to be frank, that also makes them my best one.
"Fuck!" I hiss as Doctor A.R Homeopathy pokes me with another crystal needle.
He frowns condescendingly. "Don't be such a baby. You weren't complaining when you walked in here covered in dragonfire burns, you really should be unconscious right now, after that."
I grit my teeth. "That's adrenaline for you. I didn't even realize I was hurt."
They shake their head. "Flaws of the pony adrenal system. Always making fools act like heroes. You are quite lucky that a guard had been here to cut that ridiculous armor off you."
I blush, and then hiss again when another needle pokes me. "I swear I designed that armor to come off."
Dr. Real just shakes their head again, before jabbing yet another needle into my aching side. "Then perhaps next time, you should design it to come off more easily. Or even better, not challenge a dragon in some meat-headed direct confrontation."
"Now hold still. If those crystals come out, we'll have to do this all over again. Injuries like yours are not something a pony easily recovers from."
I force myself to smirk. "Will I be able to play the piano anymore?"
"Yes? Your injuries will not inhibit the movement of your limbs, or your magic," The doctor responds with confusion.
"Well that's strange, because I couldn't before!" I joke.
"Oh yes, very funny. Keep your humor up, then. You'll need it to aid in your recovery," The doctor says, exiting the room.
After a long time just laying there, boredom easily more painful than the admittedly aching patches of recovering skin, I'm freed of my boring torment by the sound of a door opening. Oh god, it's Drop Kick. Hopefully she isn't as... Boisterous... With hospitalized ponies like myself. I continue to wait patiently while she drags in a giant glass keg of some sort of sloshing liquid.
"I'm here with the good stuff hero," The burgundy coated, curly-haired giant of a mare drawls, taking the mugs and a pair of straws off the top of the barrel.
"Erm, I'm not much of a drinker, M'am," I respond nervously as she pours out a mug of the glittering liquid.
She gives me a stink-eye that tells me as much as her words do, as she sips at the mug herself. "So what would you call last week, then? I'd love to find out what kind of pony you consider a drinker, having seen that."
I groan at the memory of the celebration Glitter Bomb talked me into going to, and the copious alcohol consumption that followed. "I'd call it peer pressure and say that my behavior spoke for itself."
She laughs at this, stomping the floor uproariously. "Alright colt, I wouldn't pass up some pain-relief looking like you do, but if you want to act tough, I won't stop you."
I try not to pout at that.
As soon as doc says I'm good to walk around, I beeline my way to the dungeon that I had carved out to house our new resident, and begin a long winded explanation of just why we can't trade our secrecy for this dragon's freedom, ending with something a bit like;
"So, in short, my green, scaly friend, I quite literally cannot let you go free, since you'll just lead Sombra back here, one way or another. With that said, I have no intentions of mistreating you during your time here. I'll just need to know your dietary requirements and anything which might contribute to your health, and we can begin increasing the comfort of your accommodations," I explain to the extremely displeased dragon currently chained up in Cell Two's Dungeon.
"Frack that, I'm not about to be a prisoner for a bunch of dumb ponies who can't even fight fair," Redhot retorts, trying yet again to spray fire intense enough to let them break out.
The yawning fifty-meter void dug out in front of their face, however, prevents the flames from actually touching anything before they dissipate, while the royal cloth padded manacle around their neck prevents them turning it around to aim their fire breath elsewhere.
I decide that some stick is worth applying in this situation, before the carrot will take, and attempt to make the application accordingly. "If we fought you fairly, you'd be dead instead of waiting to be pampered. I'm certain that's not the alternative you were hoping for, though."
I then offer the aforementioned carrot in a manner of my choosing. "I'm more than happy to wait a while to start giving you a healthy chunk of our gems to eat, though, if you want to get miserable and hungry before your silly pride stops holding you back from accepting basic amenities."
Redhot snarls at this, but that doesn't dissuade me from continuing to speak. "So, diamonds or smoky quartz? We have an abundance of both, and not much use for them."
Their bitter face twitches at the mention of diamonds.
I keep talking aimlessly. "Also, do you prefer cushions or just a bed of gemstones? I'm... Fairly certain that crystal cloth is up to the task of dragon bedding. It's stronger than my armor, at least, and I only got lightly roasted by you wearing that stuff."
The dragon grins at this. "Then why weren't you wearing that instead, dumb pony? Not that I'm unhappy to hear that I got you."
This is my turn to be unhappy and defensive over my vestments. How dare he shit on my beloved and perfect designs. "Because I like my armor better. I made it myself and it's my favorite color."
Redhot doesn't respond for several seconds.
"I don't like cushions. My scales rip through them."
I hum at that. "Have you ever heard of a beanbag chair?"
At the dragon's negative response, I go on to explain. "You just stuff a tough sack, the "bag", full of materials, the "beans". I'm sure I can get some prototypes to you to test soon enough."
I stand awkwardly, and still vaguely in pain. "At any rate, I'll have some quartz and diamonds sent over shortly. Avoid harming my dudes, and you will receive privileges."
"Endanger their lives, and you die where you lay," I finish plainly, with no particularly strong emotions in my tone, after which, I limp out of the room and towards my office to handle the matters that my people have started putting together for me to attend to.
A young crystal filly with a mane comprised of red and yellow stripes and a dark grey coat sits on a cushion in her room, schoolwork on the table in front of her ignored as her thoughts roll around in her head like a cat nearly as angry as she herself is.
'Why won't anybody listen to me when I tell them that he's evil?' Her internal monologue questions as she looks to the shelves of books she managed to bring with her when her family moved here.
'Every legend, every story explains it perfectly! Ponies have a problem, and then some sly villainous figure tempts them with an easy solution, and then...' She dares not mentally voice the endings to those stories, so as to not imagine what Weiss Noir has planned. She just knows she has to find some way to stop him before it's too late.
She looks to a different section of her tiny, filly-sized personal library. 'I don't get it, he's using dark magic, and the magic tomes on that subject indicate he should be acting crazy and selfish, and yet he's somehow tricked everypony into making him their leader. If he were using mind control, there would be signs, indicators.'
She groans and thumps her head onto the table, before the hint of an idea appears in her mind.
"Wait... Wait!" She scrambles to her bookshelf, scanning through books to try and find a specific one.
"He's been forcing everypony to wear light amplifying goggles to see down here, instead of just using crystal torches, and his explanation that somepony could detect the torches is a bunch of nonsense..."
"It's got to be the goggles. Where is it... There!" She yanks out a yellow, gem studded tome labeled "Arcanogram Slim's Lens of Untruth: User Manual and Troubleshooting."
Flipping through the pages, she keeps speaking aloud. "Momma said that Weiss Noir seemed "Especially weak for a unicorn", but that can't be right, he just got finished trouncing a dragon! But if she only ever saw him through a carefully designed Lens of Untruth, instead of a violent, powerful dark magic using jerk-"
She flips to a page illustrating a pony looking through a spyglass, which displays a smiling red pony as being a frowning blue one instead through its perception-altering screen.
"She'd see a well-mannered, but weak-looking good-samaritan!" Her eyes light up at the revelation she had undergone.
Slowly, her excitement is tempered by the facts, however.
"Now I just need proof of my theory, and the only one here who hasn't potentially been influenced by a Lens of Untruth is..."
She feels her hair stand on end at the thought of interrogating a dragon, but clamps down on the feeling.
She's got a plan now. She'll expose Weiss Noir, or her name isn't Eclipse Flash!
As I listen to the well-dressed, official looking fellow explain in extremely verbose detail the exact nature of his request, on behalf of several ponies. I'm a bit shocked that they're even bothering to ask my permission for this sort of thing, but I'm not going to complain.
"So in short, sir, we're requesting that with the construction of Cell Three nearing completion, the various cells be given actual names," The individual in my office says, leafing through stacks of papers.
I mentally groan at this. "You do remember that the reason things are divided into cells is because we may need to abandon and evacuate one at any time, right?"
"Naming them might encourage attachment that would make an evacuation especially bitter."
He hums at this, looking through his notes. "Then an alternate proposal. Give the cells distinct names, and increase the amount of evacuation drills. The two will counterbalance one another, and-" He is interrupted as I stop him with a raised hoof.
"Alright," I say, admitting defeat when I realize his proposal must be a fairly popular one if he's grasping at straws just to convince me to implement it.
"I'll get to work on some names. There's no need to stress everyone with more drills just for that. Instead, I'd like you to relay my intent to push for more general and practical education for youths, and institute mandatory education for adults who fail a simple test on re-homing protocols. I'll leave the details of how this is handled to the teachers," I say.
"If they're going to grow more attached to their place of residence, they'll simply need that much more knowledge on how to smoothen the transition to a new one in the event of a cell exposure," I finish.
The stallion processes my words, before nodding and taking his leave after restacking his papers.
'This is a really bad way of handling things.' I think to myself.
I need a better way of figuring out what these ponies want, and then giving them the things that are reasonable. Right now, I'm basically just giving commands and then having to manually go from cell to cell to check whether ponies are satisfied with their implementation. It seems this is also similar to how they're used to handling governance, but I possess neither immortality, nor the time to play Sim-City micromanaging them 24-7.
Maybe some kind of voting and survey system? I mean, just because it sucks back home doesn't mean I can't take a few cues from it. As long as I just use votes to guide my decisions instead of making them for me.
A mare enters shortly after the previous stallion left. One with a larger pile of papers.
I think I preferred fighting the dragon.
Hours later, I'm finally done with today's proposals and requests, and can get to my real job. Trying to make my magic use so potent and terrifying that I can deal with threats. That is to say, I'm fruitlessly trying to figure out how to use levitation, supposedly one of the most basic unicorn spells period. I have no idea what I'm doing.
I've tried focusing really hard, imagining invisible hands, and even meditation, but nothing seems to crack it, eventually, my frustration reaches a boiling point, and the small rock I was using for practice is flung into a wall by a shaky kick as I hiss in anger. This is so dumb. I've been just randomly stumbling into dark magic spells for over a month now, and I can't manage to pick up a rock?
Frustrated and defeated, I decide to make my rounds and check on the Black Flame firepit, to make sure it's still somehow burning. When I reach it, I see the usual gathering, with one major exception. One pony has taken charge of the venting circle, and is ranting to the crowd about how Sombra will one day pay for his crimes. I tune out the speech when it makes me realize something far more interesting, and finally makes me understand why the Black Flame hadn't needed me to refuel it this entire time.
It was somehow being fueled by the ponies themselves. I could feel it, something in the nature of the fire had changed since I had created it, if my black flames were a jug of apple juice, then what I now saw had slowly, over the course of the last few weeks, been turned into fruit punch, that is to say, there was now more of other ponies hatred in it than my own, feeding it without garbage or magic expenditure on my part.
Realizing how the flame had changed made me feel...
Huh. That's not a human emotion.
As I realized in this moment that yes, it would be logical to assume that I indeed have a physically different brain now, one whose similarities to human neurochemestry are probably coincidental at best, the unnatural emotion became stronger.
I received a few funny looks as I walked back to my room, but at the time, I didn't care much, and for a few hours, I just laid down and tried not to think too hard about how I assumed that my inhuman transformation didn't also affect my mind. Even if I hadn't cast a single spell, the chunk of me that I considered "Me" would still have been running on the wrong wetware.
Eventually, I managed to untangle and unpack most of the mental strain that my little moment of enlightenment had cost me, and I decided in a similar manner to the fox who couldn't get the grapes that I was better off not having to deal with the cavalcade of evolutionary fuckups that went into the human brain anyway, and that's the story I'm sticking with.
Having gotten my mental alibi for not having a psychotic break in place, I move onto trying to explore this mysterious new feeling.
None of the books I've managed to read so far refer to it at all, but I have my suspicions as to what it could be, when in a book about magic unique to crystal ponies, I find constant references to a "natural" sensation, and the way the book explains it describes it as a feeling that a crystal pony has when they're observing something in nature that is acting the way they predicted it would. This feeling is described as an integral part of nearly all of the higher order spells for growing food.
So, evidence in mind, I decide to create and test my hypothesis. Crystal Ponies have an emotion which emerges from observing the natural world, and is required to cast their unique magics.
And the emotion that I felt came when I realized that my Black Flame had changed, and that emotion became stronger when I realized that I had changed.
So I focus on the things that have changed, both to me, and around me, aim my horn at the training rock and...
My horn flickers a little bit in a white aura, and the rock wiggles with a few sparkles, before a hint of excitement ruins the entire thing, dropping it to the ground.
"Oh fuck me," I say, frustration boiling up in my mind at this, the latest of my failures, and the rock is flung out of the room in a flash of purple energy as the frustration mixes with the awareness of change I had already been feeling.
Normally, I would be excited to discover a new dark magic, but instead, I'm even more frustrated.
"Oh come on! This makes like four dark spells I've somehow stumbled on in the past month, and I still can't manage the one normal spell that babies figure out?!"
I sigh with disappointment. "Whatever, this is horseshit."
Considering my already frustrated mood, I decide to spend the rest of my free time channeling it constructively to practice this new spell.
I'll work on figuring out levitation when my mood improves.
Eclipse Flash decides that she's done enough preparing, strapped up with pots and pans for protection, and her book and quill ready to take notes, she slowly sneaks down the tunnel to the dungeon.
When she spots the two guards preventing ponies from entering the massive double-doors, she thinks for a moment that there might not be a way in. Luckily for her, though, she spots it. Two large carts, one filled with jewels and one filled with... Sacks?
'Now's my chance!' The filly thinks to herself when she sees the carts stop in front of the doors. Running as fast and quietly as she can, she scrabbles up the cart and under one of the sacks before anyone can notice.
She holds her breath and waits, before, after some chatter between the guards and the ponies towing the carts, the doors groan open, and she feels herself being moved inside. When the cart stops, Eclipse waits a few more minutes, just in case. Her waiting is interrupted when she feels the sack she was hiding under get pulled up and out of the cart suddenly, startling her.
She turns quickly to see who uncovered her hiding spot, before her face pales and her pupils shrink.
"Oh... Um, hi!" She says to the large, toothy, and absolutely massive green dragon.
The dragon's eyes narrow. "You know they said I could eat anything in these carts, right?" Redhot lies, making Eclipse's pots-and-pans armor rattle as she shudders.
"Please don't! I'm just here to... Ask you a few questions?" She hastily pulls out her book and quill.
The dragon does something that, in his mind is probably a non-threatening smile, as he puts his hand under his chin. "Well go on then."
Eclipse shakes her head to rid it of lingering fears. "Right! I need you to tell me how powerful and cruel Weiss Noir is! The safety of the Crystal Empire may depend on it!"
The dragon's forehead scrunches up in confusion. "That scrawny whelp? He's a coward and a weakling, trying to buy me off or something. Not exactly strong or cruel."
Eclipse's own face turns confused at that, before she realizes he must be under threat to keep Weiss's secret!
"That's a lie, I need the truth!" She demands.
The dragon smirks at this. "And just what would you be willing to get the truth, then?"
"Maybe... Get me out of these chains?" Redhot suggests, rattling the thick glittering cables holding him down.
The filly looks nervous at this. "You... Won't hurt anypony?" She ventures.
The dragon's smile widens. "I just want out of this dump. I've got a horde back home waiting for me, and this whole thing has been a bust. I'll tell you the truth if you help me get out of here."
"Mmm," She whines.
"Unless you don't want to know how "powerful and cruel" that whelp really is..?" They bait in response to that.
Eclipse Flash pulls out a pair of gem-clippers that she brought along just in case. "Ok, but only because you probably hate Weiss too."
It takes an extremely long period of time for one small filly to clip through dragon-sized cables, enchanted clippers or no, but she eventually snips the last part free, releasing their right claw so he can go on to rip off the rest of the shiny restraints.
Redhot rubs their neck to get the kinks out of it. "That's better."
He then turns his gaze down to the excited filly waiting for his answer. "So you want to know how mean and strong he is, right?"
She nods rapidly, making him nod as well.
"Well, it's really very simple."
"He's not nearly as mean and strong... As an angry dragon," Redhot says, grabbing the filly in one giant claw, prompting her to shriek and thrash.
At the sound of that, the doors open up wide enough for a troupe of guards to peek in, preparing to attack the monster.
Redhot holds out the screaming filly, "I've got one of your little pony whelps in here! Open the door and let me through, or I'll find out if crystal ponies crunch like their namesake."
His bluff works out marvelously for him, as the door opens up the rest of the way, and the guards back up with hateful glares.
"Yeah, that's more like it."
As Redhot slowly thumps through the tunnels, he slowly grows incensed at how his hostage has devolved into crying.
A few minutes later, when he finally reaches the exit, his mood is far from improved by the sight of that bastard, Weiss, standing in front of him like he can do anything about this.
"Well, if it isn't Weiss Noir. That's what this one called you, right?" He gently wiggles the sobbing filly around like a bobble head.
Weiss says nothing for a few moments, before chuckling.
"I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse," Weiss says.
Redhot just raises a scaled eyebrow.
"Let her go, and I'll tell you how to safely rob Sombra, and then let you go on your merry way," He continues.
The dragon responds. "And if I don't?"
Weiss shrugs. "I can't spare the ponies for an expedition or risk exposure to chase you down and rescue her, and fighting you head on will just prompt you to kill her to free up your claw for combat. So if you don't let her go, I'm going to kill all three of us by detonating the explosives in this tunnel."
Redhot, against all the reason he can muster up, almost sweats at that. "You're not that dumb. You even said it would kill you too, and the pony!" He retorts.
Weiss shakes his head. "You don't get it. If you walk out of this tunnel with that pony, then she's not coming back. By all definitions worth mentioning, she's dead."
"If I fight you and she dies, then that's that. And I might not even win. It's an unacceptable risk, since you might defeat me, and go on to expose the Shadow Realm, and I'll be unable to protect it, since I'll be dead or captured by you. Even if I won, I'd be ruined. Not a single pony in this place would trust me ever again, and I would no longer meet my own standards for leadership, I'll have effectively gambled away my soul for the chance of coming out on top."
"But if I kill all three of us right here and now, then you can't expose the Shadow Realm, and I can't be captured and forced to reveal any key information via torture or magic."
"The Shadow Realm might survive the third option, and the second option risks total defeat."
"So go ahead and pick. Do you choose to live, or do you choose to die?" Weiss says simply.
The two stare at each other for what feels like hours, slitted reptilian eyes into blank, purple crystal.
Redhot can practically feel the exact moment his resolve cracks.
With a snarl, he holds his claw out to the side, and drops the pony held within, who scrambles into the dark tunnels behind them crying.
Weiss smiles underneath his helmet, and ignores the sweat matting his face as he stands aside to let Redhot through. "You chose wisely."
As the dragon slowly stalks past him, glaring back at the unicorn, Weiss continues. "Sombra's arrays can't detect dark magic. He probably had to see you with his own two eyes to catch you. As long as you're using some form of dark magic, you're invisible in the Crystal empire."
That said, Weiss pulls a black crystal out of a pocket on his side with the faint glow of levitation, tossing it to the dragon who catches it.
"That gem will unleash about three hours of dark flames if cracked or scratched."
"Have a nice day, Redhot the dragon. I hope we can do business on more amicable terms in the future," Weiss finishes as the dragon gives him an indecipherable look before flapping their wings and taking off into the distance.
After the dragon is completely gone, I pull my helmet off and through force of will, hold myself back from vomiting all over the floor as I wipe the sweat off my face and return my breathing back to normal.
'Note to self, rig the entrances with actual explosives instead of just lying about it,' I think to myself.
After a while getting everything prepared and everypony together, the Shadow Realm experiences its first evacuation. The ponies look miserable to be abandoning their homes to return to Cell One, and eventually move to the newly completed Cell Three, but Cell Two is a writeoff, now that the only dragon who knows about it is free to expose it.
Of course, telling the dragon that he risked exposing the entire Shadow Realm was a necessary part of my bluff. He probably wouldn't have bought it if he knew I could just collapse the entire section he discovered and move all the ponies elsewhere within a few hours if needed.
I collapse the railway tunnel between the Cells myself, flipping the switch that activates rupture drops in the ceiling, dropping massive stone after stone into the tunnel, in such a way that any invaders inside would be crushed if they were in it.
A few hours after that, the filly responsible for this mess is in my office, along with her parents, who look suitably ashamed of their daughter.
After hearing the whole story, I purse my lips and look the filly in the eye.
Her fucking name follows the exact same convention as every plot-relevant magic user in the show. Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer.
And now here's a filly named Eclipse Flash, who just snuck past my guards, released a dragon, and nearly got herself killed because she thinks I'm some cackling dark lord.
Well, I mean, by some definitions, she's right, but she also seems to think that's a strictly bad thing.
"So, then. Eclipse Flash. I'd like for you to speak honestly. Your honesty right now will decide your fate," I say dramatically to set the mood.
Her parents look suitably afraid, but I give them a sly wink that they pick up on immediately.
"You think I'm a villain, that I'm evil, right?" I question her, my glare piercing into her wide eyes.
She looks terrified, before she musters up all the bravery she can.
"Yes. I do. You're just hiding it from everypony until you can turn on us!"
I nod at that. "And nothing I say or do will convince you otherwise?" I ask, just to be sure, before moving forward with my plan.
"Nothing at all, I wont let you trick me like you did everypony else," She demands firmly, making her parents extremely embarrassed at her behavior.
I nod again. "Then I'm afraid you won't like what I'm going to do in response to that."
She looks a bit more afraid.
"I'm going to make you my apprentice. With your parents' permission," The parents in question look shocked at this, but nod in agreement when I turn to look at them.
They don't look nearly as shocked as Eclipse does, however. "No way! I'm not joining you, I just said I know that you're evil!" She shouts at me.
"Exactly. If I'm evil, you need to know every trick I have so you can beat me. And, more importantly, so when you do expose me as the devilish monster I really am, you'll be ready to protect your fellow ponies from anything that comes after me." I explain.
"So I'm prescribing to you this. Once a week, I'll call you to my office, and I'll personally tutor you on the functionality of every component of the Shadow Realm. And between those weeks, I'd like you to periodically write me reports on anything you learn from observing ponies who are enemies, bullies, friendly rivals or even just downright mean to one another. It is my belief that by studying the magic of... foeship..." I grin to myself.
"By studying the magic of foeship, you'll be able to easily dethrone me as the dark lord of this foul realm, without putting anypony in danger, like you did today when you tried to pit one of my enemies against me."
Her parents are trying not to laugh at this, while Eclipse herself finds her wide eyes igniting with inner fire.
"Fine," She belts out, crossing her forelegs.
"But when I grow up and figure out how to beat all your dumb tricks, I'll show everypony exactly who you really are," She glares.
I just smile at this. "I wouldn't have it any other way, my traitorous student."