//------------------------------//
// Intermission - Another Side 
// Story: The Lords of Harmony 
// by Whinifree 
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Somewhere in a dark place...










In a dark room, a tall, pony-shaped figure stood upon soft grass and dirt. Surrounded by a ceiling and walls, all made of old and partially-decayed wood, the figure stared out the room's lone window at the ghostly-white sky above and the land blanketed in shadow below. All was silent in the space save for the occasional creaking of the wooden walls whenever the breeze blew. The figure, whose features were entirely hidden beneath its pitch-black cloak that covered it from head to tail, continued to stare out the window still as a statue, and uttering not a word.

    After a while, a tiny breeze blew for a quick second inside the room, but not from the air outside seeping in through the small cracks in the walls of the chamber. The tall figure knew what it was, but it remained unmoving.

    A globe of dark energy—nearly as tall as the figure itself—had formed between the figure and the door leading out of the chamber. A couple seconds after the globe formed, a dark figure walked out of it into the room, the globe hovering in place slightly off the grassy and dirt-covered floor. The new arrival was smaller than the one standing in front of the window, but it too had the shape of a pony and wore a black coat that completely concealed its physical appearance.

    “How's the view?” asked the small figure in a playful, haughty feminine voice. “Sorry... You're probably beyond sick and tired of that joke by now.”

    Several moments passed, but the tall figure did not respond.

    “One of few words again. No probs. I just wanted to let you know that he's finally revealed himself and the ponies have just stepped into his domain.”

    When the tall figure replied, it's voice, too, was feminine, but almost monotone in contrast to the voice of its company. “Then it is almost time. They will soon learn the part of their own history that was forgotten.”

    The small figure let out a chuckle. “He made certain it was forgotten in the first place like a true sneaky fiend. Anyway. I'll let you get back to your stuff. The anticipation is killing me!” Turning in place, the figure walked back into the globe of dark energy, disappearing along with the globe itself.

    All was quiet once again in the chamber. The tall figure continued to stare out the window, until finally it turned and made its way toward the door. The figure pushed on the door with its right foreleg and the door opened with a loud creak, revealing a long corridor whose other end was not visible within the shadows. The figure proceeded into the corridor and a white aura formed around the door, closing it as loudly as it had been opened.

    The figure walked steadily along in the dark, its steps muffled by the soft grass and dirt beneath its hooves. There were no windows, so the figure's gaze remained forward. After several minutes, it came to another door at the end of the hall, opening and closing it the same way as the first, and stepped into an open, round space like that of a clearing in a forest.

    With no ceiling, the space was bathed in the eerie light of the sky. Vegetation and shrubbery similar to the plant life of the Everfree Forest—large and small, healthy and sickly-looking—sat around the edge of the area, with towering wooden planks beyond them on the figure's right side forming a wall just before the edge of a cliff. Past the outer wall, a dark moon sat in the sky. More foliage sat around the left side, but instead of a wooden wall was the jagged, pointed peak of a mountaintop that rose up roughly thirty meters higher than the clearing.

    The figure moved along the clear path through the foliage into the very center of the area, coming to a circle of solitary plants that were unlike any other around. Each solitary plant resembled a bean stalk and was twice as tall as the dark figure. The stem and vines of each stalk was pitch-black and the leaves were all the same ghostly-white as the sky. Finally, each one had white smoke seeping up from the ground around it and also had something written in white letters in the base of the stem.

    Standing in the center of the circle of stalks, the figure turned to its left and stared up at the peak of the nearby mountain.

    “The next phase will begin soon, my little friend.”