//------------------------------// // (Present Chapter 25): Blood in the Water // Story: The Unique Properties of Dark Magic // by Shadestyle //------------------------------// While Weiss Noir battles the Storm King, a very different battle is taking place in Storm Country, as the Halberd's turrets twist and turn, gunning down airship after airship as it approaches the Storm King's Castle, looming over the city. A light on the Halberd blinks green, prompting the hedgehog to nod to his coworker. "We're in position. Fire." The Fizz Guards scramble around the helm, flipping levers and pressing buttons, causing the Halberd's bomb bay to creak open, dropping a gigantic capsule down onto the Storm King's mountain fortress. Moments before impact, the capsule is struck by lightning, causing it to rupture and explode in a bright white flash of magic, leaving nothing but a barren mountain and confused Storm Civilians scattered around on the mountain unharmed. "Target extracted. Good work team, let's head home," Driver says. The Halberd slowly turns, before its engines flare and the ship begins its long journey back to the Everfree. When Celestia spots the bright telltale flash of teleportation from her window, she rolls her eyes and sleepily walks over to check what annoying thing Weiss has done today. She takes a sip from her royal mug of tea as she spots the entirety of Storm Castle, propped like a little hat on top of one of the Everfree Mountains. Adding a small splash of something from a flask into her tea, Celestia drains the mug, before returning to bed. "Too early for this, I'm afraid," she mumbles to herself, snuggifying herself under layers of royal blankets. Celestia finds out hours later that the Storm King and most of his soldiers have been apprehended, and that apparently, Weiss had stolen the entire palace using some sort of teleporting bomb. Luna can't help but sigh when she sees Weiss spinning around in the Storm King's swiveling throne. "Please tell me you're joking," Luna asks. Weiss chuckles lightly. "Yeah, I am. I really did steal the Storm Palace, though. I'm thinking of rebranding it though. What do you think of... Olympus? "Oh it'll be great, I'll refit all this storm tech for manufacturing, get a big ol' golem army up and running, Ahh, I feel dizzy from excitement." He pauses, stopping the chair's spinning. "Or maybe it's this chair..." Luna stomps. "Weiss, be serious! You stole an entire mountain from a country we aren't openly at war with! What am I supposed to tell them?" "I've always been fond of the truth, personally," Weiss snarks, hand under his chin. "And what exactly are you considering the truth today?" Luna retorts. He flicks his hand towards a nearby crystal, causing it to light up with an enchantment that has it levitating a pile of folders over to the princess. "A full record of the Storm King's plans to steal the magic of Equestria's alicorn royalty using the Staff of Sacanas as a medium. In clear defiance of the World-Life agreement. You know, the one ensuring some knucklehead doesn't try to bring about Armageddon by taking control of the sun and moon?" Luna takes the papers silently, flipping through them. "And the staff?" Luna demands. "I've been studying it. I need it for my dudes since it generates so much storm magic." Weiss leers. "Don't worry my little monarch, my plan isn't regicide. This is so much more interesting," he quotes, prompting Luna to huff. "You idiot," Luna says, teleporting away the folders for review before turning around and making to leave. "Wait, before you go, I just wanted to say..." Weiss starts, holding up a hand. "I'm going to host a tournament, soon." Luna's eyes widen. "You don't mean..?" Weiss's smile tells her more than his words. "The second Dark Tournament." Luna swallows heavily. "I'll be sure to inform my sister." The former Storm King, Walker, sits on a cot in Equestrian custody of all places. 'I suppose they'll call me "Failer" after this mess,' he thinks to himself, scowling in the dark cell. He wasn't ready, and it's all because of that piece of scrap, Tempest Shadow. If he had just had more time, time to prepare, and time to obtain the power his staff needed, he would have been unstoppable. Now instead, he's waiting to go on trial in front of a bunch of pastel freaks. Decades of planning, decades of amassing power, down the drain in an afternoon because one little unicorn got greedy, and betrayed him at the first hint of getting their payment elsewhere. "I'm assuming that you're the Storm King? Sorry, former Storm King." a voice sounds out from the darkness. Walker snarls. "Go suck a lightning rod. Hard." "I don't believe I'll do that," the voice says, before walking closer, where Walker can see him. A stallion as black as can be. with a thick black mane, and piercing green eyes. "I have a proposal for you." "Why would I care about the proposal of some puny pony?" Walker retorts, crossing his arms with a huff. "I can give you enough reasons to make your head spin, Walker. Let's start with the most obvious one. I can give you the opportunity to fight Weiss again, and win," they state, smiling softly. Walker's eyes jerk over to the pony. "I'm listening." "Our intelligence suggests that he's throwing a second Dark Tournament. The last time he did this, your great grandfather hadn't been born yet. A competition unlike any other, brutal, primal, and as bloody as any tournament can get without somepony dying. "I would go myself, but I'm not as young as I used to be," they shrug lightly. "And the insurance that I'll win?" Walker demands, only for his jaw to drop when the pony pulls out a fragment of glowing blue metal. "Did you think the Staff of Sacanas contained the only surviving piece of Jupiter Bronze on the planet? The princesses threw many of those spears at the planet during their little scuffle with Discord." He holds out the shard, tempting Walker to reach for it. "You'll be given the Jupiter Bronze, a disguise, and paperwork allowing you entrance to the Tournament's Elder Division. I'll disable the safeties during your round with Weiss Noir, and then you murder him in cold blood." Walker's eyes narrow. "Who are you? How does this benefit you? Surely you read the publications on my plans. Those who seek World Domination do not abide by equals." They press the fragment of metal into Walker's hands, a serene light in their green eyes. "Just think of me as your guardian angel." "As for what I want..." Walker's hand bleeds slightly from direct contact with the magical metal shard, unfiltered storm magic already seeping into his bones. "I want to turn this world upside down. Turn it into a world where the strong battle ceaselessly, and the weak don't interfere." Walker's nose tickles as odd growths sprout out of his face, and his head throbs as a third eye opens sideways in the middle of his forehead. "I want every foot of ground to be covered in the scattered bloody teeth of a million bare-hoof brawls." Scales begin painfully jutting out of Walker's back, as his body's colors lighten, turning shades of white and blue. "And to have any of that, I need worthy opponents." By the time he snaps out of his trance, both the Jupiter Bronze and Black Angel are gone. But honestly, Storm Walker couldn't care less, as his body decays into a bolt of lightning in an instant, rushing through the metal of his cell, and out to freedom in an instant. "Thank you so much for keeping things casual, Twilight. I've truly needed this," Celestia sighs, taking a sip from a tall glass of iced tea, noticing the distinct lack of panicking and groveling in Sugarcube Corner. Something which no doubt took quite a bit of effort on the part of her student. "Well, Celestia, you did make it very, very clear that 'Casual means Casual'. I can only apologize that you had to, er, 'beat it into me', so to speak," Twilight claims, remembering the very frank discussions that the two had during their magical practice. Celestia smiles lightly. "Well, you've always been a fast learner, when encouraged properly." She watches with no small amount of amusement when Pinkie Pie shoves her head into a chocolate fountain, allowing the liquid to harden on her head before shattering and devouring it messily. Taking a sly glance around the room, Celestia levitates her cupcake over to the fountain, drenching it for a moment before carrying it back. "So, princess, did you hear about that dumb thing Weiss is setting up? He spent all day at the library yesterday complaining about how cutting a mesa into tiles doesn't work like it does in the movies. I wasn't able to get a bit of work done." Twilight groans slightly. "You'll have to specify. Weiss has done a great many dumb things." Celestia jokes, tittering lightly as she covertly swallows a cupcake whole. "But no, I have heard of it. I plan on participating, myself." Twilight balks at this. "Princess? The history books said that the last Dark Tournament was so bloody that the air itself was red, you can't seriously want to participate in something like that, right?" Celestia looks wistful. "I remember that, he set up red smoke machines for drama. There was one point where the tournament had to be halted to clean the floors, though. Ponies started slipping in the middle of fights!" she chuckles. "And he banned immortals from entering the first one," she grimaces, before speaking in falsetto while wiggling her wingtips for emphasis. "Oh, we should give the young fighters a chance to compete, I'll have a league for you long-lived folk next time, don't you worry!" she mocks. "What a tease, making me wait. Do you know how few serious competitions have a league in which an alicorn to compete? None of them. Not a single one," Celestia sulks slightly, leaving Twilight stunned. She cuts Twilight a look. "That's why it's called the Best Young Fliers competition, even though there isn't an age cut-off, you realize." "Ahh, I'm sorry, I'm rambling," Celestia claims, only for Twilight to shake her head. "No! Princess, you're fine, ramble on, please." Celestia smirks. "As you command. I'm very excited to participate in this Dark Tournament. What is there not to love about the idea? I receive my second chance to reduce Weiss to paste, get some exercise, and if I'm lucky, a few other immortals may pop up as well, for the older brackets. Oh, there are a few dragons I would love the chance to go a round with." Twilight swallows heavily, forced to reconsider the merit of Weiss's "Carnival of senseless violence", as she had previously called it. "You make it sound like fighting can be fun, Princess," she carefully ventures. Celestia almost coughs, straw in her mouth jerking as she sips at her tea. "Am I? How odd..." she says mischievously. She shakes her head, deciding that a bit of honestly might serve her well in this instance. "Violence on its own isn't enjoyable. But competition? Guzzling adrenaline, and putting your every physical, mental, and magical talent to the test in the most primal way? Among friends and rivals, a bit of combat can be made enjoyable. Something, if absolutely nothing else, the Shadow Realm had once refined to perfection. "And I do mean perfection," she insists. "The arena had been enchanted, the finest magic of its era, designed to immediately teleport any competitor out, using time magic to predict if a fatal or crippling blow was approaching them, moving them to safety without fail. "The doctors had been phenomenal. He had even gone so far as to have competitors agree to have their treatments documented and used to train further medical experts, and attracted the best of the best for post-combat recovery. Competitors could fight their absolute hardest, in the knowledge that their lives were not at risk. "And the prize, tantalizing even to the older members of our world. I can only imagine what the grand prize will be for the Second Dark Tournament. The only pony he enjoys trying to one-up more than me is himself, when it comes to extravagance." Nightmare revisits her battle, again and again in her dreams. Each time, her sleep deprivation turns them more twisted and confusing. Instead of a mostly ordinary pony, she stands against a twisted mass of burning oil, with eyes alight with a madness far brighter than the flames surrounding them. She fires off one last desperate bolt of energy, striking Weiss Noir directly with all the power she can muster. In moments, the mass shrinks and fades into a withered slimy black skeleton, coughing faintly as her powerful dream magic forces the specter to become harmless. The skeleton looks at itself, jaw dropping. In the space between moments, however, the dream resets, Weiss Noir returning to his hellish form in the Virtual Dream. "You idiot. Did you really think you could defeat me? I'm the god of this world, and you? You're hopeless. Hopeless and alone." The mass puts a finger to its chin in contemplation, before snapping its fingers loudly in mock realization. "Golly, that's right! Your worthless friends... Can't save you now! "Go ahead, cry out into the darkness! 'Luna, Nightmares! Somepony help!' See what good it does you." Nightmare hangs her head. "I'm sorry..." This causes the mass to halt for a moment, stunned as it leans in, cupping a hand to its ear. "What was that?" "I'm sorry... Luna," Nightmare admits to a party that isn't present. After several long moments, the mass grins, shaking their head with amusement. "But nobody came." The mass points a single, blazing finger at Nightmare. "Boy, what a shame, nobod-" The black void surrounding them cracks, making the mass slap its hands to its cheeks in shock. "No! That's impossible! This cannot be!" they wail, as the walls crack, revealing a wash of blue light, and the image of Luna, floating down. Nightmare sighs with relief as the Princess approaches, either for a rescue or an execution. Either one would be worthwhile. Instead of doing either one, however, the blue pony gives a forlorn smile. "This is all just a bad dream." Nightmare's breath hitches when the image of Luna glitches slightly. "And you're never waking up!" Weiss's laughter follows her until she jerks awake, back in the void, and back in the tiny body she had been trapped inside of. He can play his little games all he likes, but he doesn't know Luna as well as she does if he allowed the image of the Lunar Princess to enter a dream, virtual or not. She tries to keep from looking too relieved that he had fallen for her little trick, now that he's moved on to trying his hand at crafting nightmares, instead of simply denying her sleep outright. Even the mention of an alicorn's name is enough to cause a twinge of sorts under the right circumstances. Weiss using her image to taunt Nightmare? He might as well have told Luna himself what's going on. A mare learns all sorts of tricks like that, sharing her mind with a princess. Metal Dash OS 1.56 >Quick-boot: Exiting Sleep Mode >Collating Memory Data... >Good. Shadowcorp Dual Golem Core, Shadow Realm Year 262. Her eyes blink open sleepily, as Weiss Noir stares at her, calmly balancing on a gigantic soap bubble. "Good morning Dash. I've figured out a way for you to prove yourself to the others. I'm throwing a fighting tournament, and if you join it, you'll be able to fight the other one. Defeat them, and it should ruin their plans, one-hundred-percent. Twilight and the others know full well that Rainbow Dash is the pony with the most fight out of anyone in Equestria. When that other one gets their shit pushed in, they'll be sure to listen to what you have to say." Metal Dash releases a series of faint bleeps. "You're damn right it makes sense. Don't worry about it, that body I've given you is top of the line. You could take down an entire squad of royal guards with the firepower you're packing." They poke the cloud underneath them, eyelights narrowing as they unleash several long bleeps of complaint. Weiss's expression turns serious. "Hmm. The sensory suite must have some kind of error in it. You can still fly, right?" Weiss receives several obvious bleeps as they roll their eyes, engines already flaring up. He takes a few steps back, rolling backwards on his bubble to give her room to take off, before being blown back slightly as she rushes by, performing loop-de-loops and other impressive aerial feats. Her four engines twist suddenly, sending her into a rapid drill spin as she plows through a mess of clouds, eradicating them in an instant as her automated protocols transform the force into a sharpened barrier. The two engines on her barrel twitch by mere inches, sending her into a wide arc and canceling out her spin at the same time, while the other two engines angle backwards, preparing for their maximum force charge. Aimed directly at Weiss, her plating twitches in a way reminiscent of a grin as all four engines emit flames hot enough to leave her hull a cherry-red color underneath her holographic paint. At the last second, all four engines suddenly flare out, twisting backwards and pointing towards the sage, bleeding off her speed in less than a second, and allowing her to gently plop back down into the cloud she had been occupying. They beep out a smug rhetorical question, plopping their head onto their crossed hooves. Weiss smiles. "...Close enough." Discord is in a bit of a pickle. "Well, that's a bit redundant. I've been in a pickle. I'd rather be in a cucumber, to be honest. Fresher, you see." Discord has been in a bit of a pickle. "Can petrification really be considered a form of pickling though? I mean, salt is a mineral, but not all minerals are salts, you're just not going to get a good brine, I'm pretty sure whatever stone I'm made of doesn't even dissolve in water. I mean, do pickles even have a shelf life over a thousand years? it's a mess, really. Just use a different metaphor." Discord has been between a rock and a hard place. "Don't you sass me. I swear, I'll come down on you like a ton of bricks when I get out of here." He's been stuck in stone for over a thousand years. "Boring, but acceptable." Unfortunately for the world at large, something has been brewing in the land of Equestria for a while now. Only the fact that everything has been planned- "Watch your language, 'planned', what a foul word. Do you wash your mother with that soap?" Only the fact that the chaos thus far has been schemed down to the last detail has prevented Discord from escaping on the ambient chaos alone. The miasma of almost-chaos, paired with the Elements of Harmony going to new bearers has served to slowly weaken the chaos spirit's bindings, little by little. "And what delightful bearers they are! A supposed friendship student with more neuroses than you can shake a psyche at, a farmer with a fruit obsession, a glorified hobo with a cowering obsession, the distilled essence of jock in pony form, some sort of unicorn creature, and of course, the lovely Pinkie Pie." Of course, all of that is about to change. For some reason, Discord seems to know about the Dark Tournament, a festival of violence might not be Discord's cup of tea. "I've never been one for getting down and dirty in a scuffle. I might scuff up my marbling, and I just got finished polishing it..." But one thing that can't be doubted is one simple fact. A fight can be one of the most chaotic things imaginable. "I couldn't agree more, vaguely third-person internal monologue!" "Please don't be green, please don't be green please don't be green..." Weiss mumbles over and over, holding a hand over his face as he peeks at the arena he carved out, before sighing in relief. Tempest Shadow, who had been observing from a safe distance while Weiss used some sort of spell to carve apart a gigantic block of stone into tiles, sending them flying into place with resounding thuds using his flicking fingers, as if orchestrating a symphony. Shifts slightly from within her wheelchair, thick bandages covering her body from head to hoof "Why would it be green?" Tempest questions, while the Fizz Guards scramble around in the background setting up food stalls and other tourist traps. Weiss's eyes are entirely too shifty for him to be serious as he responds. "No reason. Don't worry about it." Tempest glances around, seeing the beginnings of a stadium slowly forming. "So why are we doing this, again?" Tempest asks, but Weiss doesn't respond immediately this time, as he slowly pushes pillars into the four corners of the arena, using gigantic hands made of blackened symbols. "Because I think it'll be fun. And it will give me more data. Techniques to steal, information on potential foes or allies, more data points on existing allies and enemies. "But mostly, I think it'll be fun. This era might be quieter, but I'm sure there are individuals buried in the woodworks just waiting for their chance to come out and strut their stuff. Plus, it will keep Celestia off my back for a little while. So that's important. I've got a lot of big plans coming up, and this tournament will let me transition into them nicely." His tongue pokes out as he squints an eye at his arena, nodding with a smile as he pulls out a gigantic round marble. "From the depths of the holy sea, I call on your power, 'Panic Attack'!" Weiss shouts, surrounding the arena in a glittering dome that slowly fades away. "There we go. Now if anyone would approach death in the arena, this spell will predict it, and teleport them out at the last possible moment, rescuing them even from the depths of mortality. Bloodsports made ethical!" Weiss cheers, giving his arena a thumbs up. Tempest raises an eyebrow. "Is it really going to be that violent?" Weiss chuckles slightly at that. "God, I hope so. You can't imagine how people are willing to give it their all, when they know they can. I've seen the depths of emotional power, observing matches in an arena just like this one. It's practically religious, seeing that moment when someone breaks through their limits, and grazes up against their true potential. "Although, with no Longma in the running, I don't fancy the chances of any ponies that enter." He then shrugs. "Eh, actually, maybe I'll be surprised. "The potential is always there. It just takes a rare emotional state to bring it out." Luna jerks awake, a terrible omen slicing through her sleep. In her dream, she had seen storms, slowly approaching from multiple sides, lightning flashing through the skies as the storms all converged, a battle in the sky between the opposing fronts, indiscernible to any onlooker which one was winning, or even where one began and another ended. Each bolt seemed to covey a split second of an image. A scowling griffon, the Storm King, even Celestia had appeared in one of the flashes. Other individuals appeared as well, ones who were less recognizable, ones whose only place in the dream had been to seemingly be stricken by these flashes from the forces above. One flash of lightning stuck in her mind, the image of Nightmare Moon, black flames licking at their hooves as they stared directly at Luna, glaring in the bright light. Then the flash had ended, and Luna awoke. What does it mean? She levitates a spellbook over, one that she had painstakingly restored from ashes upon her return. "Our Plan", the book's cover reads. She flips through it, the sight of Nightmare Moon sticking with her where the other parts of the dream had been hazy and indistinct. It wasn't Nightmare alone, nor was it the spectral smoke that Luna had seen as an avatar of the Nightmare while she was one with them. It was Nightmare Moon, specifically. Whether a vision of the future or a warning from the present, perhaps her answers lie in their collective work.