Chapter Seven
Fall of the Elements
Captain Shining Armor was doing his daily routine. Giving orders to guards, watching the recruits train, keeping the stallions in line. An average day.
"Shining Armor!" He hears a familiar voice and turns around. Running towards was his little sister, Twilight Sparkle. A purple unicorn who was very adept in the use magic. With her were her five closest friends and his wife, Cadence.
Twilight runs up and hugs her beloved brother. "Hey everypony," He hugs her back. "What are you doing here?"
His wife walks up to him. "Have you forgotten what today was?" She already knew he did, but sometimes it was fun to make him feel a little embarrass at times.
He thinks back quickly and tries to remember why they were here. "Um, thursday? He asks sheepishly.
Cadence lets out a playful sigh. "No silly, today you promised us all to lunch."
"Oh that's right." It finally clicks in to him. "Sorry, Princess Celestia has asked me to increase guard prodoctivity, she's been a little edgy lately for some reason. Not even she knows why she's like this."
"Princess Clestia has been worried about something?" Twilight Sparkle asks just as worried. "She hasn't mentioned anything to me about this." Twilight Sparkle was not only the little sister to Canterlot's own Captain of the Royal Guard, but she was also Princess Celestia's faithful student. The two were very close. Twilight felt discouraged that she was left out of this.
"Aw cheer up Twilight." A pink earth pony slides up beside here and puts a foreleg around her friend's neck. "I'm sure that it can't be all that bad. I mean really, what's the worst that can happen." Just as the pink pony finished her sentence she began to shake violently up and down off the ground. But there was no indication of an earthquake or anything to cause her to do this.
Shining Armor and Princess Cadence were startled by this activity. The white unicorn rushed forward to try and calm the mare down. "Dear Celestia, she must be having some sort of attack!"
"No, wait!" His sister stops him knowing that he could possibly make things worse. "It's her Pinkie Sense, she's not hurt or anything."
"Pinkie Sense? Twi what are you talking about?"
"I don't know how it happens, but whenever something bad is about to happen Pinkie Pie's body begins act on it's own, warning everypony."
"What? Twi do you know how ridiculous that sounds." Shining Armor says in disbelief.
"I know, even I can't explain it, believe me I've tried. But whatever you do, don't try and stop it."
Pinkie Pie stops shaking. "Pinkie Pie, do you know what that was. I haven't seen you shake like that since I excepted your Pinkie Senses."
"No Twilight, but it is a doozy. A big doozy. A super-dooper-ultra-scary doozy." Her friends look all around them trying to find anything that may be the cause.
"Oh, well it can't be that bad. After all, there are a lot of things that could happen. An avalanche, dragon rampage..." A voice flies threw the air from every direction, but there was no pony around that owned that voices. But the six little ponies did not need to guess who the voice belonged to. They already knew.
"Or even me." A monster appears in front of them from thin air. A monster that is made up of several body parts from various creatures. A monster they once defeated in order to save Equestria.
"Discord!" Twilight was the first to respond. "What are you doing free?"
"Oh, is that how you greet an old friend Twilight? For shame."
Shining Armor stands in between one of Equestria's greatest threat and his family. "Twi, find the Princess and get the Elements, I'll hold him off." He knew he was no watch for a creature equivalent to that of a god, but as Captain of the Royal Guard he had to put duty first.
"Oh don't worry about that. I'll take care of things for you." Discord snaps his fingers. Beside the ponies appears two alicorns, taller than the rest. One had a pure white coat and a mane of four colors. The second was smaller than the first with a dark blue coat and a mane that glittered with stars. Their manes looked like they swayed in a wind that was not there.
The tall white alicorn noticed here surroundings first. "Discord!" Her voice was usually in a calm and peaceful tone, but when she said his name it was filled with fury and poison.
"Now why does everypony keep calling my name? Any way, for my next trick." He snaps his fingers again. The Elements of Harmony appeared on their corresponding bearers.
"Oh, what tragedy is this?" Discord starts acting dramatic. "Discord: the Lord of Chaos and Disharmony, defeated not once, not twice, but three times. Oh woe is me. Strike true Twilight Sparkle, and end my miserable and sorry life." He blindfolds himself and a target appears on the center of his chest.
An orange pony wearing a stetson hat looks to her friend for guidance. "What do we do Twi? These can't be the real Elements... can they?"
"No, these are the real Elements, but this doesn't make sense, even for Discord." She looks confused.
"I say we use them. He's practically giving himself to us." A blue pegasus with a rainbow mane says.
"Okay. I just hopes this works." It wasn't that Twilight Sparkle was uncertain about the Elements of Harmony, it was Discord. He was different than from their first encounter.
"Waitwaitwait." Pinkie Pie interrupted. "Think about this carefully Twilight. Chocolate. Rain."
The girls stared at their pink friend in disagreement.
"Okay." She says disappointed.
The six mares begin to float in the air as a white light starts emitting from them. Their eyes begin glowing a similar light and with a huge bang a rainbow explodes from them and targets Discord. As the rainbow swallows him he is coated in stone. The battle ends as soon as it starts.
"Well, is suppose this has been an eventful day." Twilight says expecting more of a challenge as the Elements lose their charge. Celestia, on the other hand was not so convinced.
As the ponies begin to walk away, they hear a voice behind them.
"You know, after all the centuries that I have spent in stone you would think that I would have gotten bored of it. But now it feels like a wonderful fluffy blanket." Discord was not defeated. He may have been turned to stone, but far from defeated.
"What? But-but-but- How where you able to resist the Elements of Harmony?" Twilight asks alarmed.
"Oh well it's quite easy really, just add a little sugar, some coco-beans, milk, and a little help from an yet-to-be-named friend, and voilà!" He rubs his stony fingers together making a clicking sound. "I know. I enjoy being stone so much, why don't you try it Sparkle." The stone begins to crumble off of Discord and turn into dust. The dust begins to fly towards Twilight Sparkle and shroud her. She begins to panic, trying to use magic and to get the dust away. Shining Armor soon joins her, but with futile efforts.
As the dust thickens and sticks to Twilight, she looks back to her brother with one helpless tear rolling down her cheek. And she was turned to stone.
"Twilight!" Her friends cry out in unison. As her friends and family watch in horror at a stone Twilight Sparkle, a demon who considers himself a god laughs at the sick humour.
"Discord..." Celestia says in a hush, tears in her eyes. She looks at him with more rage than she has ever felt. "What have you done? Luna!" Without so much as blink, the two sisters are side by side, horns glowing with strong magic. A stetson hat, vest, and two holsters appear on either side of Discord's hips. The sisters shoot their most powerful blasts of magic at him.
Discord reaches for the objects in his holsters, two mirrors are in Discords hands and deflect the blasts back at the sisters. The two alicorns are struck by their own magic and go down from the great impact. Discord spins the mirrors around his index fingers, blow the smoke off them, and place them back in their holsters.
Luna is out cold, she couldn't handle her own power. Celestia is barely able to keep conscious.
"How- how did you do that?" She asks weakly.
Discord leans in close to Celestia and whispers in her ear. "Sorry, my dear, but that tale must be saved for another day."
Shining Armor blasts a bolt of magic through Discord. Discord looks down at the gaping whole in him and dissloves into chocolate milk.
"Urg- Captain, take the girls, and order the guards to have the city evacuated. We may still have one hope left. It's a long shot, but if you're able to gather our allies, you may be able to subdue Discord long enough for us to free Twilight." Princess Celestia says with the last bit of strength.
"But, Princess-" Shining Armor protests.
"NO! As Princess and ruler of Equestria I order you to go." She cuts off.
Shining Armor stares at her for a second. His senses come back to him and he stands up and salutes. "Girls, Cadence, let's go!" The five mares run past him. Shining Armor turns around to see what was taking his wife so long. "Cadence!"
He sees her standing there. "Come on, we can't do anything now, we have to leave!"
"I can't." She says.
"What do you mean? We have to go now!"
Cadence looks down to her hooves. The ground under her was no longer solid, it was now a sticky substance that was stuck to her like gum.
She looks at her husband. "You have to leave."
"No, I can't- I won't leave you behind."
"Honey..." She looks at him. She looks at him with an expression that says everything will be fine.
Realizing that there truly is nothing that he can do he moves up to his wife. The two nuzzle each other, scared that the may never see each other.
Shining Armor and his sisters closest friends run for their lives. For once in his entire life, after all the wise advice Princess Celestia has given to him, he doubts her judgement this time.
"...And so I, a hoof-full of my soldiers, and most of the citizens escaped. Twilight's friends refused to leave her behind so they stayed and now I don't know if they're okay, Canterlot has been taken over and Discord's influence is spreading across Equestria, and pretty soon it will spread across the world." I sit there as he finishes his story as the sun begins to set.
That was a lot to take in. Seven Hells! Discord free and ruling, Twilight Sparkle turned to stone, The Elements of Harmony defeated, the Princesses captured. Hot damn that's a lot.
We sit there in silence. "You said that Princess Celestia told you to gather your allies. What did she mean? And what do you mean his influence."
"I've ordered my soldiers far out of Equestria and ask for help from other's. The mountains of the Griffin Kingdom, the rocky chasms of the Minotaur camps, and the dry plains of the Zebra tribes. The gyphons and zebra's have always been kind to us ponies, the minotaurs may be harder to persuade but I'm sure they'll come around eventually. I am off to the most dangerous one, the caves of the Diamond dogs. And his influence is his chaos. Chaos is slowly spreading and will soon cover the world, creatures are more dangerous, land is being reshaped, ponies are going crazy, and the environment is going hay wire. If you've noticed the sun and moon are acting odd, it's because of Discord."
Well that explains a lot. I look at him in surprise. "Why ask the Diamond Dogs for assistance? Aren't they dangerous?"
Shining Armor nods his head. "Yes. Ponies and Diamond Dogs have never truly gotten along with each other. Throughout history Diamond Dogs have kidnap, sold, enslaved, and sometimes eaten ponies. But centuries ago a pact was once made, if one species faces a crisis too great to stop then the other shall aid them. But those have been centuries, I'm not sure if they will be willing to comply.
"Some of my soldiers and I were on our way to the caves, then out of no where we were attacked by a dragon. We fought the beast with everything we had, but with no luck. Dragon's are very strong and have a short temper, not to mention that their scales are so strong that even magic has little effect. My soldiers fended him off while they told me to make my escape. I'm no fool and neither were they, they knew that if I stayed I would have died wth them, they knew the sacrifice they made by keeping me alive." He looks down in mourning as he mentions his fallen comrades. He looks at me "A day later I'm here talking to you."
"Well," he gets up, "I have a duty to carry out. It was an honour meeting you Jesse. I'll make sure not to tell anypony about you if you want to keep a low profile."
"That won't be necessary Captain." I stand up too. "I'm coming with you."
He and Flex let out a similar cry in surprise.
"Because from the sound of it you will be needing all the help you can get. And quite frankly, if something happens to Princess Celestia I may not be able to get home."
He stares at me in uncertanty.
"I know what you're thinking: Can I trust him? I don't know a thing about this guy. Well listen here, I have one hope of getting back home, and right now she is trapped in her own palace being held captive."
He keeps looking at me uncertainly.
"And I can tell you one more thing:" I pull my knife out. "You're being followed."
I turn around quickly and throw it into a tree. We hear a loud shriek.
I pull out my sword ready to fight whoever it was following Shining Armor.
"Wait!" We her a woman's voice from the trees, pleading us to stop.
Two figures drop from the tree I sent my knife into. "Please don't hurt us. We were just looking for help."
They were griffins. The girl who spoke up earlier was obviously older seeing as though there was a child griffin with here. "I'm sorry. We didn't mean to surprise you or anything, we just didn't know how to introduce ourselves."
She was a fairly mature griffin, late teens to early twenties by human standards. Her feathers were mainly white with a tint of red and a lot of red around her eyes. The feathers at the top of her head were long, going down past her shoulders. The white feather-hair turned a red color lower down and turned orange at the very tips. Over her was a huge double-edged battle axe.
The boy was young, about ten by human standards. His feathers were more or less similar but with a blue tint, same around his eyes. The feathers on his head were streaked back to a point with black feathers at the end.
"Who are you?" Shining Armor asks as he advances up to them casually. He didn't look like he was prepared to fight them, so I lowered my weapon, but not letting my guard down. Much like how Shining Armor did around me.
The female griffin spoke up. "My name is Sharla, and this is my little brother Shantze. We come from one of the colonies in the forest. But recently something has been spooking the creatures, they've become more aggressive, wondering closer to our town, and they're even attacking us in broad daylight now. But that's not even the worst of our problems. Even weirder things have been happening to the forest itself. It soon became too dangerous for us to live there, so we had to leave. My brother and I were separated from our family, when we saw you fighting the dragon we began to follow you. I'm sorry for not approaching you sooner, but we don't have any experience meeting ponies and were uncertain how to meet you. Then he appeared and we were too scared to do anything."
"Hey that's not true." Her little brother speaks up. "I said we should have just gone up and said hello, but you thought it was too dangerous."
"It's okay." Shining Armor says in a calming voice. "I don't blame you. But what exactly were you doing following me?"
Sharla looks down in embarrassment. "Well, we were hoping you could help us with our problem, but it sounds like things are bigger than we expected."
The little griffin runs up to me. "Wow! You're like, the coolest thing I've ever seen. Well except for maybe that one time I saw Sharla slice through a huge tree with one swing of her axe. That was so cool. Are you able to do something like that? Is that a real phoenix? Is it a he or a she? Can you fly? Do you like trees? How old are you? How come your fur is only on your head? What's your favourite colour?"
"Shantze!" Sharla yells at him, getting even more embarrassed.
"It's fine." I put my sword back in its sheathe and crouch down. I think hard on his questions. "Yes, yes, no, maybe, 17, because I was born like this, and red."
Sharla grabs his bird arm and pulls him beside her. "I'm sorry, he just likes asking questions when he gets interested in something."
"It's fine." I say again, "So Sharla, you said that you and your brother were separated from your colony right? And was it just the two of you? No one else?"
"Yes. Just the two of us."
"And did you meet anyone else? And you know how to use that thing right?" I ask her indicating to the huge axe on her back.
"No. And yes, I've been trained. Why do ask?"
"Well, if you two were supposed to be the only ones following Shining Armor," I pull out Silver Fang again and turn towards the path where they came from. "Then who are they?"
The others turn their attention to the direction that I'm facing. Nine figures appear in the shadows and slowly begin to move towards us.
Shantze runs behind his big sister for protection as she pulls her axe from over her shoulder. Shining Armor readies his horn to unleash a magic bolt. Flex flies above us, sparks coming from his wings.
As the nine creatures step out of the shadows, our expressions soon turn to horror as we see them in what little sunlight there is.
Whatever they are now is a mystery, but they were definitely ponies once. All their colour has been sucked away, leaving a dark ugly shade of brown left. That wasn't the only thing that has been sucked from them, it looked like they had such little blood left in their bodies. Their teeth are sharpened and ill-kept. Same thing with their hooves, they are chipped and sharp. Their manes are tattered and patches have fallen off leaving bald spots. Wings have had feathers torn off and horns have been sharpened to a deadly point. Their eyes are a solid green colour and cutie marks have become too indescribable to tell what they used to be.
I knew only two things at that moment. One: What ever these things are, they are not ponies, not any more. Two: This was going to be a loooong night.