//------------------------------// // Who? // Story: Where Are The Ponies? // by Warmaisach //------------------------------// The soldiers and the captain were silent as they looked down at the shivering pile of a pony. She was a small light blue unicorn with a purple mane. Her horn was glowing in a pink light, and she had some kind of butterfly wings on her back. The captain looked down on the unicorn and poked her horn with the back side of his spear. The glow around her horn suddenly stopped, and the butterfly wings on her back vanished. This was the little thing that made every soldier in the cave run around like a madman. Celestia was happy to have thought of that plan. Changing your own body is a hard spell, but with enough practice, anyone can cast it. Changelings and emotion-eaters in general can perform this spell out of instinct, but it is also possible to learn this spell. Celestia saw how useful the spell was in fights, and learned it over the past 1,000 years. While she was still invisible, she changed her form into a normal unicorn. On top of that, she casted the butterfly-wing-spell on herself to give her enemies the illusion that those were the wings she was flying with. The captain buzzed some commands to his soldiers, and most of them went back to what they were doing before they got interrupted by the intruder. Some of them stayed and waited for the captain’s orders. The captain slowly bent down and looked at the shivering pony on the floor. The unicorn was only clutching her head with her hooves and looked shivering at the floor. “Pony, what is your name?” He asked with a buzzy but deep voice. Celestia had to play this role perfectly. If she seemed too confident or too afraid, they might suspect something. Slowly she answered. “Je-Jetty. Jetty Estia,” she lied to him. Not daring to look up, she waited for his answer. What will he do? Will he execute her? Will he put her in prison? Will he enslave her? “From now on, your new name is Slave-6256. What is your name?” He asked her again with a serious voice. Jetty slowly looked up at him, and one single tear came to her eyes. Her eyes began to tear slowly, and she started sobbing. Suddenly, the captain stomped on the ground with his spear. “What is your name, slave?” He bellowed. Jetty flinched at the sudden outburst, and quickly answered. “S-Slave 62-6256.” The captain took hold of her mane and turned his claw, so Jetty was pulled up by her mane. Jetty screamed a lot of ow’s and closed her eyes, holding her hooves sprawled in front of her face in a gesture that showed that she didn’t want to get hit. “Good.” He told her slowly. Making one clap with both of his left arms, one of the soldiers walked to Jetty and took out a ring. The ring was black, and it looked like it was made out of chitin. He pushed the ring over Jetty’s horn and slid it down. Suddenly, there was a burning pain in Jetty’s horn. She started screaming like a leg would get slowly cut off. Some kind of blue juice slowly flowed down her horn and over her face. With tears in her eyes, Jetty flailed around in a useless attempt to make the pain stop, but it didn’t help anything. The captain let go of her mane, and Jetty fell to the ground. She instantly put her hooves to her horn, and realized that the ring carved itself into her horn, making it impossible to remove, except by ridiculously damaging it. On top of that, it perfectly blocked the moon-flow that normally flowed through her horn. Unicorn magic works different than normal magic. A normal pony would think that multiversal magic and unicorn magic were the same thing, but the opposite is true. Unicorn magic is an organ that creates something similar to true magic. When the moon goes over the world, the moonshine of it drops on top of the earth, the air, and the plants and so on. In order to perform unicorn magic, a unicorn needs to use the reserves in their body. Controversially to the belief of unicorn scientists, the inner reserves of magic of unicorns can only be refilled by absorbing moonshine. The concentration of moonshine on the planet is ridiculously high, so no scientist noticed it till today. In order to clear one square inch of grass off moonshine, one would need ten unicorns that cast spells for ten minutes and refill only on that grass patch. Since the ring blocks the flow of moonshine, no unicorn was able to refill their magical resources anymore. The captain put his hand on the horn of Jetty, and she tried to push him off, but his grip was firm. After a while, Celestia felt a pulling sensation and all her unicorn magic was sucked out of her being. When Jetty felt utterly drained, the captain let go of her, and she slumped to the floor. He sucked every last bit of unicornal magic out of her. Before Celestia drifted into unconsciousness, she had a little smirk inwards. “Too bad, I don’t use unicornal magic.” That thought, she lost consciousness. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aren ran towards his enemy. Holding his sword up, he used his free hand to shoot different kinds of blue lightning and blue fire at his enemy. His enemy easily sidestepped every attack and waited for Aren to be close enough. He lifted his white glowing sword up, in order to block the swing of Aren. Dispelling the fifteen debuffs that wanted to go over the sword to his body, he pushed Aren’s sword away and used his palm to create a furious white vortex. Aren barely evaded the attack and answered with his own attack. Exploding into a giant column of blue fire, he forced his opponent to jump back. Looking up, Aren saw that his opponent was still healthy while Aren already had multiple cuts and injuries of any kind. They already fought for 30 minutes, and he wasn’t even able to scratch his opponent even once. Even if Aren was now being considered the third strongest fighter in the multiverse, the levels between him and his opponent were still not even on the same planet. He was probably the only being that was able to fight with Oran on nearly equal terms. The fights between those two were legendary. It is said that one of them took over four days to finish. He looked like some kind of deity with a human shape, but nothing human like could be seen. His whole body was covered with whitely glowing armor of unknown material. He was nearly 2.50 meters big and had two pairs of white feathery wings on his back. His sword was large enough to be considered a two-handed sword, even for someone of his stature. The sword had a silvery hilt while the whole blade had a look like it was made of eternally white dragon scales. The most fascinating part about his appearance was his head. There was a helmet hovering over the place where his head should be, but instead of a normal head, there was something that could not be seen due to the exceedingly white shine. The white shine itself was this strong that one would think that this was the head itself. It was impossible to see any kind of facial expression on this being. Aren looked at him and breathed hastily. His power was at an end while his opponent hasn’t actually begun taping into his own. Aren was able to get Oran to use everything of his magical power because he was able to surprise him with his new Element. Sadly, this opponent knew of it long beforehand. It took his opponent merely 300 years to learn how to absorb soul-fire and soul-lightning. “Don’t you think, you had enough already?” The white being asked Aren, but instead of answering, Aren only charged at his opponent again. “So you want to end it. So it shall be.” The white deity bellowed. Aren stormed at his opponent, but before he could make any kind of attack, his opponent moved to his side at an unreal speed and simply cut Aren in two. “Next time, kid.” He said, and the two halves of Aren fell to the ground. With a last “damn” on his mind, he died. Suddenly, Aren woke up. Putting his hand at his head, he shook it. Looking at the white being standing in front of him, he sighed. “Seems like I lose again. Best out of 13?” Aren asked sheepishly. The being only crossed his arms and tapped his foot. “You know, I really like fighting with you, since you are one of the few who can fight without dying in the first five seconds, but I can’t do this the whole day.” He stated in an annoyed tone. “I have work to do, you know?” Aren only scratched the backside of his head while grinning sheepishly. “Oh come on Beary. One more!” He put his hand together to gesture a pleading pose. “Please!” He added like a child. The white man turned around and started walking to his castle, but not before answering. “Tomorrow, OK? I can’t let my cluster rule itself.” With that said, The Bearer walked back into his castle, being followed by his 50 councilors. Aren sighed in annoyance. Now what? This planet’s rotation is so slow that one day on this planet equals 67 equestrian days. Aren had a lot of time to kill. Out of boredom, he looked around the training area. It couldn’t be considered a training area, since it only was a simple plane of grass. A vast meadow two kilometers away of the castle of The Bearer. There were a lot of healthy trees around, and animals and plants were living in harmony with each other. The life is so harmonious, due to the whole planet absorbing magical power and acting according to the kinds of power it absorbs. Since The Bearer lives here the whole time, the planet absorbs mostly his power, and since he is a peaceful, yet powerful being, the planet acts in total harmony. There are no predators and the herbivores only eat small parts of the plants so that they don’t die. The sky was a comforting cyan with some stray pure white clouds. An ocean could be seen on one horizon, and on the other ones were mountains with heights of over 30 kilometer. The castle of The Bearer could only be described as gigantic. Its height rivaled the highest mountains of the planet with 50 kilometer. 500,000 workers from every spot in the multiverse had worked for over 100 years to build this insane structure. It had to look impressive in order to have the impression of the capital of multiple thousand dimensions, and its perfectly white look made it seem majestic. This was the place where Aren trained Celestia the most of the time in the last 1,500 years. The sole nature of the planet gives all the beings on it a power increase and makes wounds heal at an incredible rate. Extremely rich families in the multiverse can buy a ticket for one ill person. The person would live for two days in a spa on this planet and not even once did someone leave with an illness. Of course, it was still possible to die from injury, but the word “illness” alone was a foreign word here. Aren snickered a little to himself. “It’s incredible how this dimension can heal itself. It looks like we never fought at all.” He exclaimed while looking at the perfectly healthy plane of grass. The Bearer and Aren didn’t hold back and destroyed a lot of things, but the planet somehow always managed to heal itself. Slowly, Aren walked into the enormous castle of The Bearer, and sighed to himself. “I bet Celestia has the best time of her life right now.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Celestia felt something soft beneath her. Well, it couldn’t actually be called soft since it felt more like hay. Hay… a material that the ponies of Equestria often used for multiple reason, yet a material Celestia hadn’t seen for several centuries. Every dimension she traveled to in the last 1,500 years was an included dimension. Included dimensions are dimensions that already are able to travel the multiverse. Those dimensions all have ridiculously advanced societies where they don’t need something like hay anymore. Their animals get a synthetic mix of food and the farms are constructed with unique materials. Hay was never needed. Yet, Celestia still knew the feeling of hay. She knew it from her old memories, which never vanish. Once you have slept for multiple years on hay, you never forget the feeling of it. Slowly, she also regained her sense of smell, but she instantly wished this didn’t happen. The air around her smelled dirty and filthy. Like somepony crapped in the corner and died over it, several days ago. If she wouldn’t have had her fair share of brutal sceneries and smells, she would puke right now. All her other senses returned one after another, and finally she was able to open her eyes. She was in a dimly lit cell. Some black chitin like bars blocked the only exit of the prison, and the round walls were made of the same stuff, black chitin. She frowned when she realized where she was. This was one of the standard cells of the Nargians. These were the cells where they would put their prisoners, which are incapable of escape. The chitin was an incredibly hard and durable material. It was nearly impossible to break it with only one element. One would usually need to switch between two or three elements every second to counter the automatic immunity creation system. Celestia, or Jetty how she is called right now due to her disguise, sighed once when she realized that she could get out of this cell without any problems. “Oh, you’re awake.” Jetty heard from her left and turned her head quickly to the voice. At one of the round walls sat a purple pegasus with a black and blue mane. Celestia was shocked. For some seconds she thought that her old general Purple Edge sat there at the walls, the soldier that ultimately brought Oran down. His looks were nearly identical with some slight differences. The wings and the tail weren’t as long as Purple Edge’s, and the body and the look in his eyes spoke of a young age and inexperience. Jetty wanted to answer, but she noticed something else. Beside the purple pegasus sat a green unicorn mare. She had a grass-green coat and a light blue mane. There was a red and a dark blue streak going through it. Her tail and horn looked normally sized, and she looked careful and reluctant at Jetty. Jetty shook her head to get it clear again, and she couldn’t suppress a happy smile on her face. Ponies. She finally found some ponies. Well she found them while being unconscious, but that still counted. She wanted to introduce herself, but she caught herself before she did it. Some nargians were able to transform into different shapes. It was not a rarity for them to send one of their soldiers to the prisoners to spy on them for possible escape plans. On top of that, she didn’t know what else happened in the last 1,500 years. The ponies could have waged a war against immortals and she wouldn’t know it happened. It would be foolish to reveal her true self to them, right now. She decided to play the nothing-knowing foreign pony. She moved her legs with panic and backed up to the opposite wall, in order to look like she was in panic. “Wh-Who are you?!” She asked this pretty loudly. The others looked a little startled by the sudden action, and the purple pegasus stood protecting before the green unicorn behind him. After a short while, he slowly walked to Jetty. Celestia deciding to play the victim covered under her hooves and didn’t look up at him. After a while where nothing seemed to happen from Jetty’s perspective, she looked out of her hooves again and saw how the purple pegasus lowered himself before her, to be on her height. “Calm down. We are not going to hurt you.” He slowly and warmly told her. Even if, Celestia was multiple thousand years old, the pegasus was able to pronounce those words that good that he would have been able to calm her down, even if she was in a fit of rage in her true body. This was a remarkable talent to have. Slowly, she lowered her hooves and looked at him more closely. “You are not?” She asked with a hesitant voice. The pegasus slowly shook his head. “Would you care to give us your name?” He asked with a soothing tone, and Celestia decided to answer him. “Slave-6256.” She answered slowly, and the pegasus shook his head disapprovingly. “I mean your real name.” He told her. Celestia was happy to see that ponies still talked to each other with their real names while being imprisoned by the nargians. This was a sign that hope wasn’t utterly lost. If the captured species started calling each other with the assigned numbers, they would have given up and starting a revolution or something alike would get nearly impossible. “My name is Jetty Estia.” The pegasus crooked an eyebrow. “That is a strange name, missy.” He told her in a tone someone would use while having pointless small-talk. Celestia quickly made up a lie. “I’m from germaneigh.” Suddenly, she heard a gasp from the green unicorn. “That’s terrible. How did you survive the blast?” She asked with a shocked voice. Blast? What blast? She had no time to ask herself this. “I was fishing in the ocean when the blast hit us. I was extremely lucky.” Celestia hoped that this lie was fool-proof. Apparently, the two ponies sighed in relief, and they also accepted the lie. “That’s good. It seemed like you had a lot of luck there.” Suddenly, the green unicorn coughed. “Oh, excuse me for my rude manners. My name is Twinky Green. I’m from Metro Ponyville.” Metro Ponyville? She never heard of that location. “Ehm, sorry if this question sounds strange, but where is Metro Ponyville. I never heard of that city.” Jetty asked while scratching the backside of her head with one hoof. Both of the other ponies raised an eyebrow. The purple pegasus asked her a question. “You never heard of our capital?” He asked, and Celestia gulped inwards. She had to invent another lie, quickly. “After the blast, I lived in a cave on a vacant island. I didn’t really hear anything from outside until I decided to explore the world a little.” The two ponies looked at each other with a confused look. The green unicorn shrugged, and they turned their gazes back to Jetty. “Metro Ponyville was the capitol city of the ponies since ten years. Five years after the blast. It’s the biggest city that still stands with over 700 inhabitants.” Celestia couldn’t suppress a gasp coming out of her. 700? What happened to her ponies? Canterlot alone had over 5,000 inhabitants, and that still was nothing compared to Trottingham and Manehatten. She noticed that the two ponies were surprised at her gasp. “Eh, 700? That many?” She asked sheepishly, and the purple pegasus only shook his head. “Yeah, I know. We are not numerous, but we still stand. You will see, one day we will get up again, and we will win against the insect-people.” He told Jetty with emotion, and she was a little impressed by the motivation that this obvious guard still had, even in this seemingly impossible scenario. “I hope so, ehm mister?” The purple pegasus stopped his heroic pose and coughed in his hoof. “It seems like I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Purple Tip, 67th descent of Purple Edge.” So he was related to Purple Edge. No wonder he looked strangely similar to him. “Excuse me, but who is Purple Edge?” Jetty asked with an innocent voice, and Purple Tip gasped. He turned to her and looked in her face with a frown. “You don’t know Purple Edge? Have you ever been in school? He was the hero that played an essential role in the Disaster That Shall Not Be Named.” He told her with enthusiasm. Yes, he may look like Purple Edge, but he definitely didn’t act like him. Celestia needed to know more. “Disaster That Shall Not Be Named?” She asked with a curious voice. Purple Tip only facehooved. He stayed in this position for multiple seconds until the green unicorn placed a comforting hoof on his shoulder. He looked at her, and only sighed. “There once was a danger that attacked Equestria. Everypony knows of this, but nopony ever knew what the danger was and what actually happened there. The involving parties swore secrecy and nopony ever knew what happened to this day, except for the goddess and the princess. Hence, the Disaster That Shall Not Be Named.” He explained to Celestia, and among the lines her temper picked up. Princess? Was this Luna? “With Princess, do you mean Princess Luna?” The purple pegasus nodded. “Of course, who else? There is no other princess.” He told her like she just asked if water was wet. Celestia felt huge relief wash over her. Her sister was alive. At least one piece of positive news. Now she had the chance to ask something she wanted to know. “Oh, right. In my time in the cave, I seem to have lost much of my previous knowledge. Tell me, were there other princesses except for Princess Luna?” The purple pegasus crooked one eyebrow. “No, I would know of any other princess.” He simply explained, and Celestia felt a lump in her stomach. No, it was impossible for them to have forgotten her. “Well, it was just that I remember a pony’s tale my mother used to tell me. It was a story about a vanished princess called Celestia.” Purple Tip only raised one of his eyebrows. „Who?“ Purple Tip asked with a confused voice. Celestia felt a sting in her heart. Her ponies didn’t remember her anymore. It was obvious for her that they won’t remember the details, but even her name? Celestia was crestfallen, but she didn’t show it outwards. “Could you tell us this pony’s tale? It sounds really intriguing.” Jetty turned her head to the green unicorn, who just talked. Celestia was good in making up lies on the spot, but a whole story that seems like she wouldn’t know everything yet would still have a certain amount of truth, was something hard to come up with. “Well, I don’t remember it exactly, and I don’t know if I should waste your time.” Jetty exclaimed while rubbing the back of her neck with a hoof. “Pff. It’s not like we have anything urgent to do right now,” Purple Tip explained with an ironic voice. “A short story would kill some time.” After walking towards one wall, the Pegasus let himself slump down, and lay in a comfortable manner. Jetty sighed. Let’s hope this goes well. Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, two alicorns ruled over the land. Princess Luna controlled the night and day while her daughter Princess Celestia ruled over plants and animals. The ponies were happy under the guidance of their immortal rulers and lived in harmony. Yet, they didn’t know of the evil that lurked in the shadows. One fateful day, the younger princess played in the Gardens of Eden while her mother was busy ruling the kingdom. Due to the inexperience of the young Princess Celestia, the forces of evil were able to corrupt her. Possessed by the powers of evil, she went to her mother and betrayed her. Her mother tried to reason with her, but the bitterness in the young ones hard was just too strong. With one swipe of her holy and powerful magic, she was able to free the young princess of the evil curse, but the evil demons wouldn’t leave without one last fiendish act. Using the last remains of their power, they took the young Princess Celestia with them to someplace unknown. Princess Luna searched for her daughter for multiple millennia but never found her. Princess Celestia has not been seen since. Celestia was not comfortable with that lie. She took the old pony’s tale about Luna’s banishment and mixed it with their first fight with Oran. With a little fantasy added, this strange kind of lie/legend was born. As she silently gulped, she only hoped that they fell for it. The two ponies looked at her with different expressions. An expression of disbelief and amusement was plastered on Purple Tip’s face while the green unicorn had an expression like she was investigating a case where Jetty would be the main suspect. In short, she looked investigative and distrusting towards Jetty. Jetty only grinned nervously in the hope that they believed it. Suddenly, Purple Tip began to chuckle. With a slowly shaking head, he addressed Jetty. “Well, this certainly is some kind of story, but I think I would know of a daughter of Princess Luna. This Celestia would have needed to be the elder sister of Prince Arias if your story would hold truth.” Celestia remembered that name. Arias was the name, they gave Oran after they defeated him and he transformed himself into a foal. So he was still alive. She wondered how strong he has gotten over the past 1,500 years. The green unicorn slowly stepped forward. As she came closer, Jetty slowly backpedaled a little. After a while, she couldn’t back up any longer due to the wall, and the green unicorn looked sternly into Jetty’s eyes. “You know,” she slowly exclaimed. “Your story in itself sounds ridiculous, but it had strange familiarities with some ancient legends no one knows anymore, except for the princess, the goddess, and their librarians. As one of the princess’ librarians, I would know of them.” Jetty slowly started sweating in nervousness. “The question is why does your pony’s tail sound so similar to the legends?” “Eeehh, ancient books?” This sounded more like a question than a statement. The unicorn continued looking into her eyes, and she gulped, but after a certain amount of time, she let up and walked back to her old spot. “Well coincidences happen, but if we ever get out of here, I want to hear more about this legend,” the green mare “ordered” Jetty. It actually sounded like an order, but for the time being, Celestia was happy that her identity was safe. The purple pegasus only seemed to have watched this from afar. He obviously didn’t want to get involved. Suddenly, Celestia realized what the unicorn just said. “Getting out of here? Do you mean you have a way to escape?” She asked with a hopeful voice. Celestia could easily escape alone since her multiversal magic wasn’t blocked, but if they had an escape plan for multiple ponies, then she would gladly help. Who knows, maybe she could even help them in escaping. The two ponies looked at each other with an unsure gaze, and some kind of silent conversation happened between the two. After some time, Purple Tip walked over to Jetty. “Yes, but you must promise us to tell nopony about this. We want to help the other ponies, but in order to do that, we first need to get out ourselves, understood?” Celestia heard that line terribly often in her journey. Those were the lines that those prisoners said, who wanted to escape just to save their own flanks. Yet, this pegasus looked strangely honest. Also, he was a descent of Purple Edge. If he was so proud of being a descent of one of the greatest soldiers ever, then he would probably be loyal to the ponydom. She decided to trust them for now. “I promise.” She stated, but the pegasus wasn’t satisfied. “Do you Pinkie Promise?” He asked seriously, and Celestia was baffled that they still knew the Pinkie Promise. They forgot their immortal leader that ruled over the country for 3,000 years, but they remember the silly promise of a pink mare? Even long after her death, Pinkie still seemed to surprise Celestia. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” She recited and made the appropriate motions to this. She was happy that she saw the group of six friends perform this ridiculous act multiple times in her castle while they were training, else she wouldn’t be able to remember that. The reactions of the two ponies were way different from what she thought. The purple pegasus only looked in disbelief and confusion. “Well, that’s no Pinkie Promise, but I think that’s enough for now,” he slowly exclaimed while going back to the green mare with a shaking head, but this reaction wasn’t the one she was worried about. On the other side of the cell, the green unicorn looked at Jetty with wide eyes. She had an expression like Jetty just transformed into a kurmiar. Celestia shuddered when she remembered those things. She still had nightmares from the 24 hours, she had to spend in those impossibly dark caves, with all of those things. The green unicorn slowly began to speak, her shocked expression not changing. “How do you know the Holy Sacrificially Oath?“ The green unicorn asked, and this time, Jetty wasn’t able to hide her gulp.