The Elements of Magic

by alarajrogers


The Spirit of Nature and the Alicorn of Storms

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Queen Twilight said. Her long, flowing mane, usually smooth and fluid, had frazzled parts sticking out of it, particularly on top of her head. Celestia hadn’t even known Queen Twilight’s mane could do that.

Discord bowed, holding a rose that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “We are at your service, Your Majesty,” he said, practically purring it.

“It’s no problem, Your Majesty, we wanna stop this craziness with the plants as much as you do!” Greenie declared.

“King Thorax wanted me to tell you that the Badlands are being affected as well; there’s a huge hurricane-like storm system above our hive, and massive overgrowth of plants everywhere,” Chrysalis said.

Queen Twilight nodded. “I thought that might be the case. I’m expecting that everywhere in Equestria will be affected, but the closer to the Everfree, the more intense the effects become. At least, the nature effects. I strongly expect that the storms will appear over places where storms of that type almost never appear, because she’ll be showing off her power and seeking out challenges.”

“She?” Sombra and Tirek said at the same time, while Celestia herself said, “Queen Twilight, you know who’s doing this?”

“Sadly, yes, I do,” she said. “There are two of them, actually. Nowadays they call themselves Sylvan, the Spirit of Nature, and the Storm Queen, alicorn of weather.”

“Two of them?” Greenie scowled. “That’s darn surprising.”

“Yes,” Luna said. “We’re learning in Ancient History that most opponents of Equestria have typically not known the magic of friendship. Even Queen Rarity as the Diamond Queen had a consort, and she was mind-controlling him to make him obey her… not exactly friendly.”

“I know,” Twilight said. “One of the reasons Sylvan and the Storm Queen are so very dangerous is that they are best friends. They’re not evil, either of them. Not even to the degree of the Diamond Queen; the Diamond Queen was Rarity’s greatest desires, corrupted and turned cruel. Sylvan doesn’t want to harm ponies, but she wants us to exist in harmony with nature—”

“But don’t we exist in harmony with nature already?” Celestia asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, last I checked, farmers like my family are all about nature,” Greenie said.

“No,” Tirek said. “You only know nature as it appears in Equestria and its nearest environs. Outside the range of pony influence… in my homeland, and many other places, storms rage wild, and it’s all we can do to predict them. Controlling them? Out of the question. Fierce animals who prey on any creature they can find roam everywhere, not just one single forest. Prey animals will just as soon gore or trample or bite you, for they consider every creature that’s not one of their own kind to be a potential danger.”

Sombra nodded. “And the Umbra come from the lands around the Crystal Empire, outside the range of their magic. Up there, it’s cold and vicious. Every animal is for itself. I was surprised when I came down to Equestria that you ponies have to manage nature itself – help birds find food in the springtime, wake animals from hibernation, that sort of thing. Nothing like that happens in my homeland.”

“Just like the Everfree,” Discord said. “Somehow I always suspected that Equestria’s harmony was an aberration and the natural state of the world is chaos.” He stuck his tongue out at Sombra.

Sombra rolled his eyes. “Yes, of course the natural state of the world is chaos. The natural state of everything is chaos. Order is all about imposing structures that allow people to survive and thrive, eliminating the natural chaos to create law and civilization.”

“And Sylvan’s belief is that we ponies have gone far too far in the direction of order,” Queen Twilight said. “That what we have is not harmony, but rigid control. She was banished to the Everfree a few hundred years ago—”

“Oh!” Starswirl practically bounced in place, his favorite floppy hat flopping over his eyes. “I get it! So that’s why the Everfree is always wild and you can’t control it!”

“Right,” Queen Twilight said, smiling down at him. “The Everfree storms are under the control of the Storm Queen, and while she delights in creating terrifying weather systems that only she can control, she generally follows Sylvan’s lead and lets nature create the weather. Ordinary pegasi don’t have nearly enough magic to push back against her.”

“The Everfree seems a strange place to banish someone, though,” Luna said. “Because we can just walk into the Everfree when we want, so why couldn’t they just walk out? And why has no one seen them?”

”I used to live there,” Discord said. “I never saw a couple of alicorns running around.”

“Sylvan is not… exactly… an alicorn. Nature magic is chaotic. She’s not quite as unusual in appearance as a draconequus, but she definitely shows aspects of being a chaos mage.”

“Hmm,” Discord said, rubbing his hands together. “That sounds very interesting.”

“She is an enemy of Equestria. Not a potential girlfriend,” Tirek sneered.

“I’ll bet she’s better looking than you,” Discord retorted.

“That’s not what you used to say.”

“Before you betrayed me, you mean?”

Celestia magicked both their snouts closed with her telekinesis. It didn’t last – Tirek consumed the magic and Discord used chaos to dispel it – but it lasted long enough for her to say, “Enough, both of you. Queen Twilight is briefing us.”

“How did they get out of their banishment, then?” Sombra asked.

“I banished them originally with… different tools. Not the Elements of Magic. At one point we had a different set of magical tools, the Elements of Harmony. But… for reasons… banishing them with the Elements of Harmony broke the Elements of Harmony. Possibly forever.” Queen Twilight sighed. “So I have been working for a very long time on creating the Elements of Magic, because I knew we would need something when the Diamond Queen reappeared. And as soon as you purged the corruption and turned her into Queen Rarity again… the bindings holding Sylvan and the Storm Queen in the Everfree began to fail.”

“So this was inevitable,” Luna said somberly.

“If it was inevitable, how come you’re just telling us about it now? No offense, Your Majesty, but it’d have been durned helpful for my family to know this might happen,” Greenie said.

“I was hoping that they would come to me first, to negotiate,” Queen Twilight said. “They knew I never wanted to banish them; they knew I wanted to try to negotiate with them, to find some compromise where we can all get some of what we want.” She sighed. “We were friends once,” she said, and it was almost a whisper. “I thought maybe that would mean something.”

“You were friends?” Celestia asked, gently. She knew what it was like to lose friends. It was terrible.

Queen Twilight drew a deep breath. “That was a long time ago. Let’s focus on right now.” She strode over to a vault door, and placed her horn in the lock. “I’m sorry to say that we may have to banish them again, if they insist on destroying Equestria as it is without any regard for the lives and livelihoods of ponies.” The door slid open. “I’d rather not, if we can talk to them, but it if comes to it, I’m sure you can use these to banish them back—”

She stared into her vault. An absurdly large number of rats stared back.

Greenie shrieked, and Luna took to the air. Celestia shielded herself instinctively, and Starswirl jumped onto her back with a cry of his own. Tirek backed up frantically. The rats squeaked in equal fear, and streamed out of the vault, some of them stuffing themselves rapidly through a hole in the wall at the bottom of the vault, the others racing forward and escaping into Queen Twilight’s audience room.

Discord snapped his fingers, and turned one rat into a balloon, but before he could do it to any others, Queen Twilight shook her head. “No. We won’t harm them. They’re innocent animals.” Sombra pulled back his own attack, where he’d been about to fire crystals into them. The Queen lifted rats in her telekinesis. There must have been dozens of them. She strode out of the audience room, dozens of rats squeaking around her head, including the one who had been a balloon until Discord undid his spell. She put them all back in the vault and closed the door.

“What happened to the Elements?” Chryssy demanded.

“Sylvan has them, almost certainly,” Queen Twilight said grimly. “She can control animals to do her bidding, as easily as she can force plants to grow.”

“I prefer to think of it as ‘persuading’ them,” a beautiful soft voice said.

Queen Twilight took a step back. “How – we were teleport-shielded!”

“You always relied too much on magic to solve your problems, Twilight,” the… being… in the doorway said. “I came in on your stargazing and sun-raising balcony. None of your pegasus guards are currently airborne, and the ones in the hallway were… persuadable.”

She wasn’t, exactly, an alicorn. It was honestly impossible to tell what she was. In face and in the front, she was clearly an alicorn pony, of similar age and strength to Queen Twilight – she was taller, but also thinner and more delicate-seeming. She had a golden, shimmering coat and a mane like Queen Twilight, that flowed and moved of its own accord. It was pink, but greenery grew in it – occasional vines, some flowers, sometimes a branch covered with leaves. As she walked forward and the rest of her body came out of the doorway’s shadow, though, her strangeness became apparent.

To begin with, she had three pairs of wings – delicate butterfly wings in many colors, pink pegasus wings, and bat wings in a dark pink that was almost purple. Her body was much longer than a pony’s, to accommodate the extra wings; her barrel was as thick as the Queen’s, relatively speaking and accounting for the fact that she was overall thinner, but somewhat snaky and reminiscent of Discord’s. Like any other pony, she had four hooves. Unlike any other pony, she had a lion tail. When she spoke, they could see that in her mouth there were small fangs, not large imposing ones like Discord’s one snaggletooth.

She should have looked freakish, but despite her strange body, she was incredibly graceful. Her steps were soft, as if her hooves were sinking into forest loam instead of clopping against the polished stone floor. Air flowed around her as her butterfly wings beat gently, even as the other two pairs lay still on her back.

“Whoa,” Discord whispered, maybe just a little too loudly. Hearts glittered in his eyes, and his pupils were suddenly ridiculously large, like a Neighponese artistic depiction of a teenage filly seeing a handsome stallion.

Celestia stepped on his foot. The dragon foot – it was more resistant to pain and also bigger and easier to step on. “Discord! This is our opponent!” she hissed. “Be professional!”

Queen Twilight started to say, “Fl—”

“Sylvan,” the strange pony-like mare corrected her. “No other name. Not anymore.”

“Sylvan,” the Queen repeated. “Why did you attack out of nowhere? Why not come to me and discuss things first?”

Sylvan wound her way around Queen Twilight, pacing in circles. Her lion tail swished, making her look like a predator. “Discuss what? Didn’t we discuss everything there was to discuss the last time? Before you locked Storm and me into the trees and the winds of the forest?” She tilted her head, looking into the Queen’s eyes with her own large, sad pools of blue. “I didn’t like not having a body anymore,” she said softly. “Not to eat, to breathe, to touch my animals unless they choose to climb me…”

“You used to say a long time ago that you’d like to be a tree,” the Queen said. “I never wanted to banish you and seal you away in the first place, but if I had to do it, I thought sealing you into the trees would be the most… kind thing to do.”

As the Queen spoke, Sombra and Tirek looked at each other, and nodded solemnly. Celestia caught it, and nudged Luna, who tapped Greenie with a wing, and Discord, who was not paying attention, his eyes fixated on the Spirit of Nature. Chrysalis met Celestia’s eyes and did a slow blink, a trick she’d picked up from impersonating cats, to the best of Celestia’s knowledge.

Without any further warning, Sombra and Celestia both fired at the Spirit of Nature, Sombra’s horn emitting a beam of darkness that solidified into black crystals when it struck a target, and Celestia’s firing a beam of raw solar energy. Both struck… a thick green vine that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Luna got above Sylvan and dove, while Greenie slammed a hoof down on the crystal floor of the palace, making it shake and tremble.

Sylvan reared, her elongated body bending backward like no equine body ever should, causing Luna to overshoot her. Grimly Luna climbed again. The floor trembled again, but this time it wasn’t Greenie’s work; more vines burst through the floor, reaching to twine around Greenie and Sombra. Sombra fired his crystals faster than Celestia had ever seen before, but to no effect; the vines caught the crystals, withered, and were replaced by more vines bursting up from below the damaged part.

As soon as the fight started, Discord grabbed his younger brother and disappeared, Starswirl’s cry of “Dis-“ fading as they vanished.

Tirek fired a blast at the equine-like creature. She ducked, going almost completely flat. Luna divebombed her again, but this time, she caught Luna in her mane, which moved like one of the vines she was controlling and flung Celestia’s sister at Chrysalis, who’d been preparing an attack spell. Both of them went down in a tangle, and the vines got them both and tied them down.

“Stop it!” Queen Twilight yelled. “Back down, students! You can’t beat her!

So far Celestia saw no evidence of that. She used her solar magic to burn away the vines holding Luna and Chrysalis down, freeing them both, and Chrysalis cast her spell, trapping Sylvan in sticky green goo. Tirek fired another of his magic blasts at her, grinning broadly. Obviously he thought he had her on the ropes – she’d either have to use her horn to shield, and then he could eat her magic, or the blast would hit her since she couldn’t dodge.

However, she bent her head and folded her pony wings over it, like a shield, and Tirek’s magic just… fizzled against her wings. And then Celestia heard a strange sound, like a rustling, and looked down.

The entire floor of the room was covered with cockroaches and ants.

Horrified, she screamed, creating a shield to serve as a scoop to run through the bugs and push them aside. They were swarming around Sylvan’s trapped hooves, devouring the goop Chrysalis had trapped her in. Tirek fired at the floor, smashing a large number of them. Discord re-appeared, hovering over the floor in a lounging position, but did nothing. Celestia was beginning to wonder if his obvious aesthetic appreciation of the Spirit of Nature was going to prevent him from participating in the battle at all.

“That wasn’t nice,” Sylvan said sharply, lifting into the air and staring Tirek directly in the eyes. “You are being a very, very bad centaur.”

To Celestia’s horror, Tirek stammered, and then began to sob. Self-possessed, strong-willed Tirek had dropped to all four of his knees. “I’m sorry!” he blubbered. “I’m sorry, please don’t tell Scorpan or Mother or Father, please, I’m sorry…”

Queen Twilight had cut Greenie and Sombra free of the vines as soon as the ants and cockroaches looked as if they were approaching the two too closely. “Hey, nature lady, two can play your game!” Greenie yelled, both hooves pressed hard against the floor and sweat beading all over her body, as slowly Sylvan’s vines started to show signs of withering.

“All of us together!” Celestia shouted, watching as Luna reached the ceiling far above. She, Sombra, Chrysalis, Greenie and Luna concentrated attacks at the same time, Greenie withering Sylvan’s vines, Luna diving at her, and Chrysalis, Sombra and Celestia herself firing spells at her—

--and then the air was full of hornets, and Celestia screamed at the stinging pains in her flank and her neck, beating at the insects with her magic, hearing her friends shrieking in pain as well—

“ENOUGH!” Discord yelled, and all of the hornets dropped out of the air as larvae, squirming on the ground. The vines turned into silly string, easy to pull free of, and the ants and cockroaches became leaves and twigs, that blew away in a sudden wind. He was still in the air, but now upright, eyes glowing. “Thank you for the excellent chaos, dear lady, this feels great! But I draw the line at you attacking my friends with hornets.

Sylvan’s eyes narrowed. Vines burst through the ground again, reaching upward for Discord – and crumbled, turning to sand. A flock of bats squealed as they descended on him – and veered away, enticed by the appearance of a giant pile of apples over by Queen Twilight’s throne. Discord smirked. “Your magic’s based in chaos,” he said, “and chaos is my element. I can do this all day!”

And then a bolt of lightning struck him, hard, making all his fur and feathers stand on end, and he toppled over, falling to the floor.

“DISCORD!” Celestia yelled, and started toward him, but was blown back by a gust of fierce wind. She looked up, and saw who must have attacked Discord – an alicorn with wings larger than Queen Twilight’s, though her body was slightly smaller, hovering in the air behind Discord. She was grinning arrogantly.

“All day, huh? Maybe you need to look behind you more often!” the alicorn said boastfully. She was deep, dark blue, the color of a stormy sky, her eyes a shade of purple that was almost magenta, and her cutie mark was a thundercloud firing a rainbow-colored lightning bolt. Her mane was much shorter than the two alicorns, rainbow-colored and spiky. It, too, blew in the imaginary breeze that Queen Twilight and Sylvan’s manes moved in, but hers moved with almost violent speed, as if the imaginary breeze was in fact a tornado or a hurricane. A thundercloud floated above her as she hovered, despite the fact that they were all inside Queen Twilight’s throne room.

“Stop it!” Queen Twilight shouted. “Students, stand down!

Chrysalis’ horn lit up – and then vines burst out of the ground again and wrapped tight around all of them, except for Luna – who’d narrowly avoided the vines, just in time to be caught in a miniature cyclone. The dark blue alicorn smirked at her. “Nice moves, kid, but you gotta get up real early in the morning to beat the Storm Queen!”

“Let my sister go!” Celestia shouted, struggling against the vines.

“Oh, yeah, sure, no problem,” the Storm Queen said. The cyclone stopped, and a thoroughly dizzy Luna pitched to the ground, where the vines grabbed her as well.

Queen Twilight glared at the alicorn and the… whatever Sylvan was. “I don’t appreciate you attacking my students.”

“Your students attacked Sylvan! What, didja think she was just going to sit there and wave her hooves and beg them to stop?” the Storm Queen sneered.

“I told them to stop fighting… and I know perfectly well that Sylvan could have immobilized them at any time. They’re not alicorns; they can’t defend against the Stare.”

“That would be cruel,” Sylvan said softly. “I used it against the centaur because he was killing my creatures, but it’s far too brutal to use it for my own defense.” She gestured with a hoof at the crystal floor. “I do apologize for your floor, though, Twilight.”

“Don’t apologize for something you’re not sorry for,” the Queen said tightly. “You’ll do the same as this to every building in Equestria.”

“Oh, no, this high up on the mountain the vines don’t naturally want to grow so much,” Sylvan said. “I only asked them to because your students were attacking me.”

“But you’re still gonna… ugh… do this to all the buildings in Equestria?” Greenie snapped, panting with the effort to breathe as the vines constricted her, keeping her from breaking them with her earth pony strength. “Why? If you’re gonna ruin our livelihoods and our homes, seems to me you owe us an explanation!”

“Nature owes you nothing,” Sylvan said sharply. “You ponies feel you have the right to control all of nature, to bend it to your will. Plants and animals thrive only in the places ponies have decreed they should be, and only under pony care. My creatures have forgotten how to live for themselves, without ponies tending them as if they were pets. Ponies do not have the right to control nature even if you have the power.”

“We Changelings live in a desert,” Chrysalis snarled. “Nothing grows there! Why did you attack us?

“I didn’t,” Sylvan said. “I infused all of Equestria with the magic of nature, as it should be, going everywhere, not limited only to the places earth ponies have concentrated it. Why do you think nothing grows in your homeland, Chrysalis? Sombra, why do you think the home of the Umbra is so barren and rocky, with food so hard to grow and to come by?”

“Because the ground is frozen nine out of twelve months,” Sombra growled. “It’s hardly a mystery!”

Sylvan shook her head. “Life finds a way. It adapts. There would be life all over the realm you call home, if the ponies hadn’t pulled the nature magic out of the ground all around the borders of Equestria and sucked it into their farms and orchards.” She glared at Greenie. “The apple trees certainly grow strong and healthy… but all around the borders of Equestria, desolation encroaches.”

Discord had squirmed out of the vines that held him, or possibly teleported. “If you’re responsible for the Everfree, then do that to the desolations. I can see perfectly well that ponies can’t pull any of the natural magic of the Everfree out; why would you have to destroy all of Equestria just to make the Badlands and the Umbral Territories thrive?”

“I’m surprised it doesn’t disturb you as well,” Sylvan said. “You wield chaos and you claim it for your element, but you’re comfortable with the encroachment of ponies’ ideas of harmony – which are nothing more than control – on the chaos of nature?”

Discord shrugged. “I didn’t say I was comfortable with it, but I don’t think it’s worth hurting millions of ponies over.” He snapped his talon, and the vines that bound them all turned to paper. Celestia broke free of her bindings easily. “I also don’t appreciate you tying up my friends.”

“Well, we don’t appreciate you guys attacking us!” the Storm Queen blustered.

Sylvan held out a hoof in a gesture symbolic of holding the Storm Queen back. “No, Storm, they were defending their nation, and they’re children. We can hardly hold it against them.”

“You don’t even remember, do you,” Queen Twilight whispered. “Storm… don’t you remember when that was us? Sylvan, don’t you?”

“Nope! Not a thing!” the Storm Queen said dismissively. “Don’t care, either!”

Sylvan said, “Perhaps you might have worried about that before committing acts of magic dark and unnatural,” in a lecturing tone of voice. “We certainly do remember where you took us from, and we know well what you must have done.”

Queen Twilight shook her head. “We’ve been over this. It wasn’t like you think it was. And I’ve told you this before. I’d already lost both of you… I couldn’t bear to lose any more. I didn’t know it would draw the two of you back when I did it. And I certainly didn’t know you’d remember nothing of our friendship, or that you’d be dedicated to destroying Equestria when you spent so many years protecting it, by my side.”

Celestia turned, shocked. “Queen Twilight, what happened?”

“At another time, when we don’t have adult business, you might want to ask Twilight about necromancy, and why you shouldn’t do it,” Sylvan said.

“It wasn’t—

“It doesn’t matter.” Sylvan cut Queen Twilight’s outraged rebuttal off. “I’ve actually come to make you an offer, since you seem to think we can ‘negotiate’ the differences in our beliefs and come to a compromise.”

Queen Twilight’s eyes narrowed and her ears set back. “I’m listening,” she said guardedly.

“I am willing to withdraw my influence, in exchange for two things. My first demand is for concessions. You will create more parks and more wilderness reserves, and you will allow me to exert my energies there, to make them more like the Everfree – truly wild, free of pony control. Earth ponies will withdraw from the borders of Equestria, to allow the lands in the desolate places the opportunity to regenerate their nature magic.”

“I can agree to the first. To the second – I will not tear ponies from their homes, but I am willing to encourage earth ponies to settle in your desolate places, to draw nature magic into the places they may have pulled the magic away from.”

“I will consider that possibility. But I have a second demand.”

“I thought that was your second demand.”

“No, the two things I want are unrelated to each other. All of what I’ve already asked is my first demand.”

“Hey,” the Storm Queen said. “You’ve got everything under control here, so I’m gonna take off, okay?”

Sylvan smiled. “Go on, Storm. I know this part doesn’t interest you.”

From the face the Storm Queen was making, Celestia didn’t think “didn’t interest” would be as accurate a description as “was disgusted by” or “was unhappy with”, but Sylvan either didn’t notice or didn’t want to acknowledge. “Sure thing,” the Storm Queen said, the insouciant grin back on her face as if she had never grimaced at all. And then she was gone, flying so fast she looked like a streak of darkness on the air.

Queen Twilight rubbed the top of her snout with her hoof as if she was wearing glasses and trying to ease where they pinched her. “Very well, Sylvan. What’s your second demand?”

Sylvan looked over at the seven Elements of Magic, examining each one of them, looking them up and down before moving on to the next. Finally her gaze returned to Queen Twilight. “One of them. As my mate.”