I got spit out on someone, and I sat up, groaning.
Nothing on my body hurt – which would be a considerable feat when one remembered I was made out of sentient stone – but I was still lying face-first in the dirt, something I remedied as soon as I realized it was the case.
I also realized I hadn’t just ended someone’s existence, as what I landed on was solid rock.
How that felt soft to me, I had not the faintest clue.
Oh, and I was quadruped.
Around that moment, I realized that I was alone. The other three just… vanished.
I tried to walk, only to stumble and fall over a second later.
That was going to take some time.
I eventually got rid of the wings – as it was quite annoying when I landed on them – then started to wander around. I hoped to find some sentient beings to talk to.
But my body was still made out of magma and obsidian, and my mane and tail were still replaced by fire. I could draw them in by limiting the flow of my magic, but that just made them disappear, and, for some reason, it also increased the temperature of my body.
Since it would be both a stupid and a useless endeavor, I just let them be as they were.
Something worried me, though: Everywhere I stepped foo- err, hoof, I left a burnt imprint.
“A golem?” I heard a voice to my right, and I noticed a unicorn standing there, looking at me in worry.
“Oy, I’m sentient,” I responded, noticing that my voice sounded incredibly dry.
What in the world did I expect?
“Apologies. I’ve seen where you are headed, and I’d like to ask you not to go there.”
“It’s a settlement, is it not?” I asked, getting a nod from him.
“If it is agreeable with you, I’d get some to visit you so that you don’t get too lonely.”
Shrugging, I continued.
“I won’t enter, but I’ll try and build a residence for me,” I said, and he shrugged.
After a while, I came close to the village and decided to build a residence nearby.
Eventually, I spotted a good area, and I started to smoothen out the earth, but after a while, I had no idea how to continue. Then, I remembered that I was essentially living lava.
The result was a small cabin, with a landscape created from obsidian, basalt, and other materials around it that appeared when lava is cooled off rapidly.
Everything that was still emitting heat was placed away from the paths so that my house could still be reached by normal beings.
After that was done, I started to dig searching for some ‘soft’ feeling rocks I found in my surroundings and made a bed out of them. With me having no spine, there was probably no need for that, but meh.
Eventually starting to meditate. I tried to lower my body temperature and I somewhat succeeded. The flames that were on my body started to dull slightly, turning to a darker, red tone, while the yellow glowing cracks on my body also stopped glowing so brightly.
However, my hooves mostly stayed the same, and my horn did not change at all, staying in its red, ominous glowing form.
“Okay, who in their right mind constructs a lava fountain?”
Surprised that I already had a visitor, I made my way outside, spotting a pegasus that was staying in front of the area I changed.
“Helps that my brain is a molten mess,” I commented, getting a snort from him when he saw me.
“Yeah, I can tell why Violet didn’t want you in the city. Nearly everything in there is made from wood.”
I shrugged.
“Well, I’d like to visit, but I cannot easily control the heat my body gives off.”
“That’s indeed a problem, but I think he already started asking around for something to help with that. I’m actually here to list your name as a temporary citizen of the town.”
“Does ‘this town’ also have a name?” I quipped, and he shook his head.
“Nope. By now, the debate around the name of the town caused it to be known as ‘nowhere’, as we just can’t find a name for this ‘where’. In short, a ‘nowhere’,” he said, and I blinked.
“Seriously?”
“Yep. Your name?”
“Ah, sorry. Solar Flare,” I responded, having already determined that my name would not give me many problems, were I to reveal it.
There were no princesses, no Sombra, nothing. I was either in the far past or far future, but I wanted to meet the main six, dammit!
“That’s an interesting name. Are you part of the unicorns that raise the sun?”
Technically… “No.”
“Ah. Well, could have been. Anyways, I think that you could be of great help to us if you could help us constructing builds from stone, but you would either have to work from here, or find a way to not burn everything around you.”
I shrugged.
“I’m working on it.”
“Then I wish you good luck with that.”
“Thanks,” I responded, and he nodded, then excused himself and flew off.
Remembering that I had wings myself, I made them reappear from my mass, then took to the skies, careful not to come close to anyone else that was flying.
To my surprise, there weren’t many pegasi here, and when I flew higher, I could see only ‘normal’ clouds.
Nobody had started forming anything out of them. I noticed a pegasus lying on a cloud, taking a nap, and another moving a cloud over to a farm, but nobody was seriously shaping the clouds.
That also meant that I couldn’t do that without having a good explanation for both how I got wings and how I came up with that idea.
I looked a bit around, then decided to land on a high-altitude cloud. It was quite peaceful but keeping myself aloft was tiring for me.
As soon as I hit the cloud, I only wondered why I hadn’t done this sooner. The cloud was perfect bedding, and I rolled around for a moment, amazed by how fluffy the clouds were. This had nothing on normal beds!
I laid my head down, and I then fell quickly asleep, unaware of the sizzling sound the cloud started emitting when I laid down on it.
That was when Star pulled me in a dream, explaining that she wanted us to meet in Equestria near Canterlot. However, she flickered for a moment and then told me to find (our) Celestia, instead.
What woke me up ultimately wasn’t time or someone calling out to me, but an abrupt, violent hit to my side. Blinking, I sat up, groaning. It hadn’t hurt that much, but I could tell that there was a considerable amount of force behind that impact.
When I looked around, I realized I was no more on the cloud, but back on the ground. Looking up, I could see a cloud with a hole in the middle of it.
Realizing what had happened, I resisted the urge to facehoof. I fell asleep on the cloud. So far, nothing unusual.
However, since I was now made from lava with a bit of magic in it holding it together, I started evaporating the cloud and plummeted, eventually to the ground.
Standing up, I started to walk back to my ‘house’. I was still a bit dizzy, but I could walk without falling over.
Eventually, I drew closer to my house, and noticing the pegasus from earlier, I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to have wings. I quickly tapped the ring atop my horn, watching as my body turned into that of a black-furred mare with no wings and a cracked sun as a cutie mark. All flames turned into bright orange and red hair, falling down instead of hovering slightly above my body.
Taking a few steps closer to my house, I then realized that I no longer burnt the earth below my hooves.
Seriously? That’s all it took?
I groaned.
“I so don’t want to deal with this right now,” I said, then walked up to the pegasus.
“Miss Flare?”
“Yep, that’s me. I managed to get a hold of my magic. What’s up?”
“I was nearby, and I heard a loud, cracking sound. You seem okay, but do you know what happened?”
“Not exactly, but I think it’s nothing dangerous. It was the backlash from a mistake of mine when I tried something.”
“Ah. I see, then. But now that you seem to have your flames under control, would you like to visit the town?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
He started to fly in the direction of the town, and I started following him - on the ground.
“You seem powerful. How strong are you?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I have not yet found anything that exhausted my magic reserves. There are very few ponies who can beat me when it comes to the amount of mana they can call upon.”
He chuckled.
“Too bad you’re not born a pegasus,” he said, and I scrunched my nose.
“Well, to be exact, there are spells for unicorns that can give them wings and that can control the weather, at least to some degree. I cannot stand on clouds, but that’s about it.”
“No, I meant that you would be able to fly at incredible speeds if your claims are true.”
“Teleportation,” I countered, and he shrugged.
“If you can use it for long-distance travel. Most unicorns can’t teleport further than a few hundred meters.”
“Touché,” I said, and then we fell silent for the rest of our short walk.
When entering the village, I immediately noticed how basic everything looked.
None of the houses had a second story, and while there was a wall, it was little better than a sturdy fence.
“Hey, Velvet!”
Looking up ahead, I spotted the unicorn that originally greeted me.
“Flare, I presume? You found a way to tone down your magic, I see.”
“It’s not really pleasant melting all the time, so yeah, that was a given. I’m surprised unicorns and pegasi live here together, though.”
He let out a loose laugh.
“Heh, there are still some that are surprised by that?”
I shrugged.
“I mostly lived alone, so yeah.”
I then realized something peculiar.
“Ah, right. What currency do you use here?”
“Hours of work. Since there is no authority higher than a major that really holds anything, each town has to set its own currency. This is what we choose here.”
That wasn’t as stupid as some other real currencies I knew of.
(Brazil, hint hint. Fake money became a real currency there, and I had NO idea how they made it work.)
“Though, with your abilities, you can demand more work than you actually give.”
“Oh?” I asked, tilting my head.
“You are one of the few who could create structures out of stone without putting in a huge amount of effort, I’d presume. It takes us days to even build a normal house. I’m not stupid, I can tell that strength-wise, your magic is above my own.”
“How about it?” the pegasus that I followed in the town then asked.
“Stay for a while, then decide if it is fit for settling down.”
I chuckled.
“I’ll only stay here temporarily. I am trying to find my sisters.”
“You lost your family? That’s unusual, how did it happen?” Velvet asked, tilting his head.
In response, the pegasus whapped him in the head with a wing.
“Velvet! That’s not something you ask a stranger!”
I held up a hoof.
“No, it’s fine. It was caused by our own stupidity in the first place. A teleportation accident, so to speak,” I responded, getting a nod from them.
After that, Velvet told me he set up a job offering for me and explained no one in the town could go above one hundred hours of work ‘saved up’. That was probably to prevent someone from working all week and then having others work for them all week.
The first job I took was replacing the wall of the village with stone. Not particularly hard, but time-consuming, and it was what I worked on until the evening.
After sleeping in the next day, I decided to head to the market.
Most of the things did not interest me. Food was unnecessary, and clothes would get soon enough get destroyed were I to wear them.
However, there were also some weird oddities and some things of interest in the market.
I found out that the ‘smallest’ unit of currency was fifteen minutes of work, and therefore many things were priced with fifteen minutes of work.
A good idea considering what was possible, if all prices would be allowed.
Right now, I was standing in front of someone selling gems, amongst other things.
It was clear that the mare who collected those things was not working much herself, and that she was still quite young.
Picking up one of the bigger gems, I then inspected it with my magic.
To my surprise, it started sucking in my magic, bypassing the ring I wore to disguise my true form and to hold back my magic, absorbing roughly a tenth of my energy before stopping.
After leaving a note that I bought the stone from her, I then returned to my home, noticing that the lava in the fountain has become solid.
Maybe the spell failed when I took on my disguise? Well, whatever.
Placing the gem on the table, I tried numerous things.
The first was cast a levitation spell while at the same time already holding the gem. Thanks to the ring, my magic was cool enough not to melt the gem or the rock that I was holding, but there was no reaction.
After that, I tried casting magic through the gem, but I found my power repelled. It seemed that it was saturated with my power, not accepting any more. As I said before, I could still hold it, though.
Shrugging, I dropped the gem and the rock, but then I heard a very small sound I would have missed if not for my pegasus hearing and alicorn magic.
It was a crack.
A small wave of heat washed over me, then the crack widened, and the heat increased, quickly. Essentially, the gem had become a bomb.
And I just pushed the trigger. The explosion ripped my (albeit not very stable) home to shreds, leaving a crater and a groaning pony (AKA me) behind. The damage was as expected from the amount of magic absorbed, but I really should not have been surprised how easily my magic had become destructive. The crater was not very big, though, about five to six meters in diameter.
Luckily, my disguise was unaffected.
“Solar! Are you okay?”
Turning to Velvet, I smirked.
“Have you forgotten what I am? You can’t rip me apart that easy,” I responded, climbing out of the crater and stretching.
“But yeah… that could have gotten better.”
“Maybe,” he commented with a completely straight face, using his magic to pull me up.
Before we could exchange further pleasantries, though, a pegasus came rushing in, nearly crashing into me.
“Velvet! Big problem!”
“Bolt? What in the world happened?”
“An army appeared to the south! It’s spearheaded by a blue goat!”
I froze.
“WHAT?!”
Shocked and half-deaf by the outburst, the pegasus next to me jumped up, looking at me.
“Do you know him?”
“Not personally. However, Grogar is known as the ‘father of monsters’, and not someone even I would like to face alone.”
“Can you defeat him?”
I tilted my head.
“I am not sure. I’ll try, though.”
My gaze turned upwards.
“Who controls the sun?”
Ending up in the town hall, I was looking at a scroll describing a very simple spell that could be cast without a drawback.
Usually, unicorns within the MLP-fandom were only able to move the sun when they gave up part of their magic to do it.
In this case, if enough unicorns cast this spell, the sun would move for a day, and from what Velvet told me, after a case of corruption, the original spell was rewritten by a unicorn to make it impossible for a small number of creatures, unicorn or otherwise, to seize power over the life-giving, yet dangerous star. I made a copy of the spell, just in case. Something told me that it would become lost to the ages.
Interestingly, it seemed like unicorns could choose to push any amount of energy into the spell. Thanks to that, there were unicorns that used almost all of their magic to keep the sun moving and were treated appropriately. At least that explained the question from earlier.
Then, I grabbed a map, after which the pegasus informing us of Grogar pointed to his approximate location. He appeared out of nowhere in the south and is marching up the western coast, and he is only three days away from a big, spread-out area where many earth ponies live and farm.
Luckily, the map also showed me where big villages and cities were. That gave us an edge, as it allowed us to plan the order in which we would inform them. The village I was in was near the eastern coast, and the army of Grogar was about one point five thousand kilometers to the south. I doubted that Grogar had a complete map of the continent, at least, not yet.
(Bolt spent the last few hours flying up here, and after telling us of this, went to sleep.)
Upon realizing what had to be done, pegasi were sent out to warn the other towns and to provide communication, while we as one of the closest would have to decide if we wanted to flee or fight back.
I, meanwhile, had flown back to where my house stood, and cast a tenth of my maximal mana in a single point before releasing it, creating an explosion of the same size as the crystal did.
My horn arched a little, but I could still stand it.
After that, I cast an ‘explosion’ spell with the same amount of mana, easily quadrupling the affected area. I was surprised that it was not bigger, and slightly shocked when Velvet told me he had seen unicorns creating similarly sized explosions.
That information meant that even though I was an alicorn, my strength here seemed not to be too terribly high above average.
But my mindset was completely different than that of the ponies, also, I probably was effectively immortal. So, I started scheming.
After buying another gem, I could verify that my spells could be stored in them, as long as they did not exceed ten percent of my mana capacity in the amount of mana poured into them. There seemed to be no limit in their complexity.
I collected as many of those as I could, placing them with a book about destructive spells in the subspace the ring on my horn generated.
I had no idea how it worked, but I was not looking a gift horse in the mouth right now.
“Velvet, how many ponies could we get rallied up against Grogar?”
“Not too many, I fear. Each of them will think that somepony else will do it.”
“Gryphons? Dragons?”
“Neither of them will help.”
“Curses… I will do my best to slow him down. You try to get a resistance set up. We’re a small number of ponies playing war, and this will become far bigger than any of us could expect in a very short time,” I said, my horn powering up.
“Stay alive,” he said, and I snorted.
“I planned on doing that.”
With that, I left, deactivating the magic from the ring as soon as I was far enough away from the town. I grew in statue and cracks opened up along my body.
After that, I recreated the wings I absorbed the other day. A flap brought me some dozen meters above the ground, another flap higher than the lowest clouds. Soon, I could see only clouds, but still knew where I needed to go.
Since my wings were so enormous, I had not much trouble staying in the air. I stumbled a lot, but I still had an incredible speed.
Eventually, night fell, and I stopped when I could see the army in the distance. Settling down for the night, I decided to face them the next morning when I was back at my full strength.
“GROGAR!”
The goat looked up, spotting a black pegasus with yellow accents hovering above his army of creatures from other worlds. There were monsters, demons, and everything in between, like undead or golems.
“Bold of you to face me,” he said, looking up.
“What can a single pony do to an army like this? Even if you call down lightning, my archers will kill you, and the foes you have slain will rise again,” he said, amused by the pony that thought it stood a chance against him.
“Well, for starters, I can blow you up.”
He had barely time to blink before a crystal landed in front of his hooves, cracked, then exploded.
His reflexes saved him as he threw up a shield, blocking the blast in his direction, but the troops surrounding him were not so lucky. They were obliterated in the blast, not even bones remained. The same happened at numerous other locations, he could tell.
This made it impossible to raise them as undead. He realized that he grossly misjudged the situation. If the mare hovering up there knew what she was doing, she could cause quite a lot of damage to his plans.
However, there came no other bombs. He tilted his head. Was this the only attack the pony had?
Deciding not to take any chances, he charged up his horns, a sickly looking, yellow and black glow appearing around them, then he released a bolt of magic, striking the mare and blowing about half of her head away. She started falling, and she landed in the crater she herself had created.
“And this once again shows why I reign supreme,” he said, turning around and starting to walk away.
Unbeknownst to him, though, the pony was looking at him with the one eye she had left, burning with emotion. Not with fury, but still with considerable anger.
And the reason he could not sense her was that she, too, technically was not alive – and her magic got covered by the residue of the explosion. As such, Grogar assumed her to be gone in the same way his troops were, turning away.