//------------------------------// // Shattering Chaos // Story: Before and Beyond - Disharmony in an orb // by amastelaire //------------------------------// It was a seemingly calm afternoon in Poneyville, Spike was sleeping in the throne room before being awakened by a rumbling coming from the hall, intrigued and still a little sleepy he walked toward the doors and stretched his arm to open them. BLAM – the doors slammed right in the face of spike while Twilight rushed toward the library with a strange orb floating at her side. “What is happening?” asked spike as he stumbled back up. “I don’t have time to tell you Spike, just send a message to everyone, I need my friends here as quickly as possible,” shouted Twilight, visibly concerned. “I think I found something dangerous, and if my books are right, we need to act fast!” Spike tried to ask for more details, but Twilight had already locked herself up in the library to do more research. Having nothing else to do, he decided to do as Twilight said and started writing a message. Hello everypony, Twilight just came back and seemed worried about a strange orb she was holding. I was asked to send you this message to let you all know that equestrian might be in danger, and we need all of you here. Come to the Friendship Castle Throne Room as fast as you can. “It’s been half an hour, Spike,” cried Pinkie Pie. “I’m starting to get bored.” “I agree, I was promised an adventure against a threat to Equestria, but all I see is a closed door and six pony waiting in front of it!” Dash added, furious. “Sugarcube, are ya sure Twi asked for this message to be sent?” asked Applejack in a sweet tone. “Yes Spike, maybe Twilight was just stressed,” Rarity calmly said. “You know she didn’t leave Canterlot since we fought the Storm King!” Spike started to grow anxious, it has been multiple hours since he sent the message and Twilight did not leave the library since, he started counting each pony in the room, everypony was there. Having no other choice, Spike started to climb Twilight throne and started to speak. “I know everypony here is starting to grow bored or nervous, but I can assure you Twili – “ Twilight slammed the door, the sound messed with spike balance, stopping him in his speech. Twilight was frenetic, she took a deep breath and started speaking, “Finally, you are all here, I hope you don’t have anything important to do this week. A group of archeologists found this orb while digging in the altered hills, and I have been doing some research.” “We’ve seen that” Dash said while giggling. “Don’t cut me off!” Twilight shouted. “As I was saying, I was doing some research and I think i found out what this orb is. This is the alteration orb, it’s imbedded with a magic similar to that of Discord and, when activated, will change his surrounding by giving magic to the wielder in the way that will cause the most chaos.” Discord appeared in the room, interrupting Twilight. “I’m starting to love this artifact!” “Stop interrupting me!” Twilight shouted again with extreme violence. “It’s important.” She was on the edge of exploding, this was really not the time to joke and laugh, Equestria could be in danger if they didn’t act quick. Discord was startled by the anger of Twilight, but couldn’t help and responded, “I was just wondering why you didn’t invite me, again; it seems like each time something interesting happen, I’m just excluded of the party.” “If you had n’t stopped me you would have already known.” Twilight stepped back to sit on her throne. “As I was saying, this magic is similar to yours, Discord, so you can’t really do anything against it.” She opened an history book and placed it on the Cutie Map. “As shown here, this orb was first discovered by Clover the Clever, and was sealed in a cave. But it resurfaced during the Great Hills’ War, Where the ponies and the zebras fought the runefoxes.” “The runefoxes, what are those?” asked Starlight, intrigued. “I’ve never heard about them.” Twilight, pleased by the question, quickly answered, “runefoxes came to Equestria some generations after the three ponies’ tribes united, they came with the zebra and the three species lived in harmony for a while, but some decades later, the runefoxes’ society started to grow unstable as they started to lose territories to the dragons. Vulpina Wild, the queen of the runefoxes –” “Wait, wait, wait,” Dash shouted, stopping Twilight in her story again, “so you’re telling us that zebras and ponies lived together, and runefoxes, another whole species no ones know about are the ones that introduced them? Why does nobody know about them? Where did the zebras go?” Fluttershy continued, even thought her voice was considerably lower. “Your story doesn’t answer any questions, but just make us even more lost.” She turned to her left and looked at Discord. “Did you know about that?” Discord looked back and, taking a defensive tone, replied, “to be fair, Equestria’s founding had stopped so much chaos that I decided to exile myself and cause chaos somewhere else, and I think we all know what happened when I came back.” “Can I go back to explaining why I am holding one of the most dangerous artifacts of Equestria?” Twilight started to lose patience, and before going back to her presentation, she took several breaths, trying to calm herself. “Anyway, Vulpina Wild knew that the runefoxes’ magic wasn’t enough to defeat the ponies and the zebras, so when she found the alteration orb, she decided to use it for its raw magical power, after activation, the orb started to weaken the creatures around them, alternating almost all of the zebra army. The rare zebras who were left unchanged after the ambush fled to the west of the continent, the chaos erupting from the orb had left an oppening and one unicorn took the opportunity and took it down, and as Vulpina and most of the runefoxes were arrested and imprisoned, some of them fled and disappeared with the orb.” Twilight closed the book and stood up; the orb started to glow as Twilight made it float above her hooves. “This orb reappearing at the same place where it was lost mean that the runefoxes didn’t run away with it, but it can and will cause chaos if not purified because it has now been activated again, so that’s why I needed all of you here, I need everypony to start researching a way to drain the magic of this dangerous artifact.” “And how did it not blow up already?” asked starlight. “How did I forgot to talk about that,” responded twilight, a little embarrassed. “I casted a spell creating a temporary shield around it, stopping magical leaks for roughtly the next twenty-four hours.” “So we gotta un-magic this magical sphere in less time than it took me to gather an harvest of zap-apples?” retorqued Applejack. “Ya sure this here thing is even possible?” “That’s why you all need to start working, Sunburst is on his way, he put his hooves on an old magic manual that might be useful” Finished Twilight, visibly relieved. As each pony drifted in different direction across the castle, Twilight returned to the library and got back to her favorite pastime, reading. It started to darken outside as Luna elevated the moon in the sky, Sunburst had left the castle to search in the archives and reports of the archeologist and had to take the last train, Twilight was the only one still awake in the castle, only seeing with the small light shimmering from her horn. She just finished Tales of unenchanted artifacts, but still hadn’t found a way to purify the strange orb floating above the Cutie Map. She closed the book and put it back on the shelves, but a small breeze lifted a rogue page and carried it to the ground, it was a timeline of the event of old Equestria, Twilight took it and started reading, “why didn’t I think about it before?” She fought to herself, of course Starswirl would know something about this orb. As Twilight was thinking, a shadowy figure entered the castle through the library door and snuck past her, slowly walking toward the throne room, and weaving through the piles of books on the floor. As the figure arrived in front of the doors, Twilight had already moved and was now blocking the doorway. “What do you think you’re doing, intruder?” But the intruder did not answer, and instead pushed one of the piles of books on Twilight, giving them just enough time to jump over her and approach the orb. The eyes of the intruder started to glow purple as the orb glowed the same color and was snatched from its original position, slowly descending toward the one trying to steal it. Twilight realizing what had happened, flew toward the mysterious figure to stop it from stealing the dangerous artifact. As the two collided, the intruder lost their focus on the orb, making it fall immediately. The impact broke twilight protection spell and shattered the orb into six pieces, launching white rays of pure chaos magic across the room. The intruder fled as chaos started to ensue and Twilight tried to contain the orb explosion, but knowing she couldn’t do it alone, she sent a magic message to every pillars, hoping to wake them up and get some help. Equestria needed Starswirl's magic, and it needed it now. Chaos continued to erupt in the throne room, walls changing colors and texture, chickens appearing out of nowhere, books floating and small tornadoes flying around the castle. Twilight couldn’t contain this much magic and started to get tired, but three other unicorns joined her. While Mistmane and Starlight holded the fragments in place, Starswirl started to annulate the chaos spells produced by it, giving Twilight time to cast multiple shields around the fragments, the magic of the broken orb was still more powerful than the four of them, but they were able to slow it enough for Twilight plan to work. “Did you take the element with you?” Twilight used all her energy on containing the orb, unable to look back. “You are the only one to not have them on,” replied Rarity. Somnambula flew toward Twilight, putting her crown on her head. “Here it is, Twilight!” Everyone was ready and positioned themselves around the fragments while Starlight tried to hold them back together, each element was activated by each of their respective pony conterpart, supported by the pillars who made it; the elements started producing multicolored rays toward each fragment, calming them until they finnaly stopped moving, the chaos magic stopped flowing everywhere as each of the fragment were struck by one of the elements of harmony. Everything seemed to be going as planned until Twilight noticed that her crown was losing colors. The orb wasn’t being purified by the elements, but was stealing their magic. The element started to see their magic and colors drained more and more quickly, until they finaly all faded to a tone of grey, falling to the ground as they were left totally magic-less. Meanwhile, each fragments of the orb, now colored by the element’s magic, flew outside of the castle, swiftly going toward the horizon, each in a different direction. As everypony looked through the window, each of their Cutie Mark started to glow. They were all being called by the Cutie Map.