I popped the final smokey glass panel into its frame, and step back to admire my work.
It was finally done. The project that I had spent a long while working on was finally done. It only took most weekends, Thirty two-liter coke bottles, and about fifteen interruptions, but I finally did it.
Yeah, I had just made a virtual reality simulation pod.
Don’t ask me how I did it, because I won’t tell ya (and I really don’t know myself). But, suffice to say, it wasn’t easy.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a very large, very loud groan. From the sound of it, the voice that made it belonged to Twilight.
I looked out the nearby window, and saw her tree-brary being launched into the sky, propelled by a magical explosion at its base.
I shrugged, and continued on with my day. You get used to this kind of stuff when you live in Ponyville.
As it turns out, though, I didn’t have to make plans for the rest of the day.
The buzzer to my apartment started to go off, signaling me that someone was at the door, trying to get me to answer.
I threw the oily rag that I was using to mop up my hands, and went to the buzzer, pushing in the button to the speaker.
“Yellow.” I said in greeting.
“Hello, Connor.” Came Rarity’s voice. “Could be so kind as to come down here with us? The gang and I were going to Canterlot, to help support Twilight on a test that she has to take, and I think that she can use all the help she can get.”
My eyebrows raised at that. “Is that what that explosion was about? Her getting stressed over the test.”
Rarity sighed. “Indeed. You know how she can be, sometimes.”
“Yeah.” I agreed. “I’ll be down in a minute. Just got to get cleaned up, and put a fresh shirt on.” My current one, for some reason, was covered in grease.
A couple minutes later, I was in front of my club, with my usual get up.
Rarity looked me up and down. “You know, now that I think about it, that look really does suit you. Are you ready to go?”
I smiled at her. “Thanks, S’mores. And yeah, lets get going. I take it that we’ll be meeting the others at the station?”
Rarity nodded. “Yes. The others just followed Twilight, when she went to leave, but I got the idea that you might want to come along.”
“Thanks. Don’t want to feel excluded, now do we?”
Rarity smiled. “Indeed not. Now, shall we?”
I nodded and we made our way to the train station.
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The train ride was, as expected, uneventful. Really, the only thing that happened was me getting caught up to speed on the situation. It didn’t take very long.
Twilight was contacted by Celestia, and told that she was to come to Canterlot and partake in a test. What kind of test, wasn’t stated, so Twilight proceeded to flip her shit, and pack as much study material as she could. Apparently, the explosion from earlier was from Spike say that it was ‘just a test’. Twilight, be who she is, lost her shit at that, and launched the library about a mile into the air.
Really, it was impressive. And a little scary.
“Look, all I’m saying is that you don’t have to be the only one to work your orchard.” I told Applejack.
We had been discussing her farm for most of the train, and I tried all that I could to point out any illogical points in her work ethics. Suffice to say, I found plenty.
“Darnit, Con! I don’t need no strangers help!” AJ defended. She was under the impression that hiring extra hands to help around the farm would make her a sellout, or something like that.
“If Ah can’t do it mahself, I don’t want no random passersby to try themselves at it! Even if they could, it’s mah orchard! Hirin’ others would ruin the ‘small town business’ Ah am! It would mean that I ain’t got any integrity!”
I gave her a look. “Your family has farms all around the entire nation, selling apple goods, and running out any competitors. When ever someone with an opposing product come along, you claim them to be a charlatan, and force them out of town with an angry mob. You’ve done it before. You don’t have a small town business. You have a fucking MONOPOLY. But that isn’t the issue. The issue is that you let your pride get in the way of your productivity. let me ask you something. Do you get to harvest all the apples that you grow?”
AJ shook her head. “Well, no.”
“Do you even harvest most of them?”
She rubbed a hoof to the back of her neck. “Uh, no.”
“Then think of all the extra money that you could make if you did get all those apples. You would probably quadruple the amount of money that you earned. It it wouldn’t be selling out. It would merely be giving jobs to those that have none.”
AJ shook her head, but didn’t contest me.
We had arrived at the station at the time that the argument had ended, and Twilight streaked off toward the castle, as soon as the train stopped.
“Welp,” I say, looking after her. “Now what?”
My friends shrugged, and Rarity said, “I suppose we wait for her to get back. That would seem to be the only thing that we can do.”
I scowled. “Well, that’s boring.”
Pinkie jumped up next to me. “Yup! So what do we do?”
I tilted my head. “Uh. make it fun?”
She beamed at me. “Exactly!” Her brows furrowed, and she frowned in thought. “But how do we do that?”
I smiled and left Pinkie to her thoughts.
I took a seat on the platform bench that was nearby, and started to think.
About ten minutes after I started to get comfortable, Twilight and Spike (who I hadn't noticed was gone) came up the steps to the platform.
“Uh,” Spike said, “prepared for what exactly?”
AJ ran up to Twilight. “Twilight! Uh, did you pass?”
Pinkie, who for some reason was back in the train car, pushed her party cannon out. She fired it, jumped into the air, and asked, “ Are we gonna celebrate your awesomeness with Princess Celestia?!”
Twilight shook her head. “ Not quite. We're going to the Crystal Empire!”
Pinkie fell back down to the ground, and the confetti that she fired for the cannon fell perfectly back into the muzzle. Something that wouldn’t be possible for a normal person. Granted, Pinkie wasn’t normal, but still.
“Crystal what?” Rainbow Dash asked.
We all got back on the train, as Twilight answered. “The Crystal Empire! It was an empire that is located to the north of Equestria. A long time ago, an evil unicorn named King Sombra had taken over and enslaved the empire. Eventually, he was defeated, turned to shadow, and banished beneath the ice that surrounds the city. Before he was banished, however, he cursed the empire to disappear. The Empire has only just showed up, and Princess Celestia has given me the task of ensuring that the Empire is protected! That’s my test!”
The others started to whisper to themselves, probably discussing the idea of this empire.
Me, I was more troubled by what Twilight had said that that unicorn was turned into. Smoke. A cloud of smoke.
My face went pale at the thought that had crossed my mind, and it didn’t go unnoticed by the others.
“Connor?” Twilight asked. “What’s the matter?”
“You, uh. You said he was banished into a the ice under the Empire, and turned into a cloud of smoke, right?”
She nodded. “That’s what the princess told me.”
I gulped. “Yeah. I was afraid of that.”
She furrowed her brows. “What do you mean? Afraid of what?”
I took a deep breath, and answered. “Do you remember the time when Cerberus had attacked Ponyville?”
She nodded, and I noticed the others had stopped their gossiping to listen in. “Yeah, he came in, destroyed some stuff, then you put your hand on his head and he stopped. How did you do that by the way?’
I ignored the question. “Well, at the time, Cerberus was under the influence of a sort of demonic being. When I went into Cerberus’ head, I found a dark cloud inside him. While it was inside him, it controlled his thoughts, and fed off his anger, making it stronger the longer it stayed in him.”
Fluttershy chimed in, “But Cerberus doesn’t hate anything! He’s just a cute little puppy.”
I looked at her. “He is one of the only things that prevents all the things banished to Tartarus from getting out, and destroying everything that they come across. He has to have a hate for those things, otherwise they would be able to just walk past him.”
“But they didn’t!” Pinkie offered. “Cerberus left, but nothing got out!”
I looked around the train car, and said, “That’s just it. I think something did get out. Something big. Something evil. And something that isn’t real.”
“Isn’t real?!” Twilight shouted. “That’s impossible. Nothing can’t not be real!”
I sighed. Cat’s out of the bag, at this point. Plus, I think they deserve to know.
“Girls, do you know why I’m here? In Equestria, I mean.”
They all looked confused.
Twilight answered me. “You said that Discord was retiring, and that he needed a replacement.”
I nodded. “Yes, but do you know what my actual job is?”
“I always thought that it was to spread chaos across the world. I mean, that’s what Discord did.” The other girls nodded their agreement.
“No, that’s not it. Not even close, really.”
I sat back in my seat, thinking about how I would explain it to them.
Finally, I said, “The universe is big. That really shouldn’t surprise you. I mean, the universe is constantly expanding, giving way to more and more opportunity for things to exist. The thing about that, though, is that this isn’t the only universe to exist. There are countless others, each with its own peoples, its own history. And every universe, every reality, has a Guardian.”
“A… Guardian?” Twilight asked. “What’s that?”
“A Guardian is a being that exists for the sole purpose of protecting the reality that they are given. They protect it from all sorts of things. Sometimes realities get too close to one another, and the Guardians of those realities are suppose to move them out of the way of each other. Other times, the fabric of reality gets a little weak, and a Guardian needs to reinforce it somehow. That’s what they do. They make sure that the reality they protect continues to exist.”
Twilight seemed to consider what I was saying, then her eyes widened. “That’s you. That’s what you do. You make sure that the universe doesn’t end?”
I nodded. “I’m this realities Guardian. Discord wanted to retire, and he passed the mantle off to me.”
The girls all traded skeptical looks.
AJ said, “Uh, Con? Do ya’ll know Discord? Because he was a right villain. Ah don’t think that he was protecting much o’ anythang.”
I shook my head. “Not in your life time, no. Not even in the princesses life times. But he was pretty old. Half a million years old, from what I heard. And the power that we Guardians have, it changes you. It influences your thoughts, makes you a contrast to the ambient energies in the universe. But that’s something for another time. My point is that I’m a Guardian. But we don’t only do universal maintenance.”
I took a deep breath. “There are things out there. Things that want nothing more than to destroy everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Their goal is to attain a state of nonexistence. They want to destroy all things, anything real, and they have the means to do so.”
I looked at Twilight. “When I say that something isn’t real, I mean that it doesn’t exist. Not in the same way that you and I do, at any rate. I don’t fully understand how it works, but they don’t belong to any given reality. They are spawned from the nothingness that is in between them. The emptiness that has yet to be filled by either space or time. They don’t exist, and they want everything to be like them.”
The girls all looked at me in startled silence.
Finally, Twilight said, “But, why? Why do they do that? What could they possibly want to destroy everything for?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I asked an associate of mine, and he didn’t know either. All that I do know, is that one of these abominations is here, in Equestria.”
Their mouths dropped open, and they were too stunned to ask the obvious question.
“When Cerberus invaded Ponyville, there was something in his head, like I said. It was a cloud that wanted nothing more than to destroy everything that crossed its path. It wanted everything dead, and it had the means to do so. But when I banished the thing from Cerberus’ mind, it left me a message. It said, ‘ Winter will come’.” I looked around. “And Twilight says that this Sombra guy was banished underneath a field of ice. Something that is heavily associated with winter.” I shrugged. “I might just be paranoid, but I get the feeling that this unicorn, isn’t real.”
The girls looked at me, still shocked.
“Girls?” I asked, worried. “You ok?”
They slowly came out of their stupor, and looked at me. When I saw their eyes, I saw the recognition in them. They have realised the fact that there are things out there, big things, that want nothing more than to destroy everything, simply for the sake of destroying everything. They realise that, while they are tough, these beings were bigger, stronger, and more terrifying than anything they have faced before. But I also saw something else.
I saw steel in their eyes.
They knew that they had little to no chance against these things, but I also saw that that didn’t matter. That even if they were big, they would do nothing to stop those that would harm others. Even if they have to give their live to do it, they would.
I found myself smiling at them. They might not realise that they have a fighting chance, but I did. They were the ones that weilded the fail-safe. They were the ones that were the next line of defense, should I fail. And seeing that they were prepare to fight those monsters, did my heart good.
“How do you girls feel?”
They all looked at each other.
“Scared.” Rarity said.
“But ready to do whatever it takes to make sure those meanies don’t hurt anyone!” Pinkie shouted. The rest of the girls nodded their agreement.
I smiled. “Good.”
We then lapsed into a contemplative silence, each of us thinking on the facts that we had just learned, as the train made its way north, to the Crystal Empire.
The girls were probably thinking about how they might have a chance against the eldritch abominations, or if they would ever see one. I even saw Twilight calculating the odds, in her head, of Sombra being one of these monsters.
They were thinking about the enemy. I was thinking how I might have just gotten my friends killed, drawing them into this fight.
Let’s hope they’re prepared.