(Throne Room, Present)
"Luna!" Celestia exclaimed, mind momentarily unable to do anything else from the shock.
"Tch! I followed his trail, only to find a spell!" She stomped her hoof, huffing.
"He left a fake trail to trick you into breaking the spell." Celestia scolded her, but Luna was too focused on her hunt to care, or notice.
The ponies hadn't seen Luna since her release, and thus her increased stature took them by surprise.
"What did he mean with 'mistakes'?" Pinkie, ever so quick to adapt to new situations, asked the princess.
Celestia was about to answer, but Luna interrupted.
"He is sly and manipulative; he is attempting to break apart our trust." She said, thankfully in 'command' mode, not in the Royal Canterlot Voice. "Because of the danger he represents, you shall all be under watch of the royal guard."
"Wrong." Celestia said, a small twitching of her mouth being the only signal of how much she was cursing herself for not telling Luna the whole story before. "I have made mistakes when handling his situations."
"Inconsequential." Luna waved her off.
"No, Luna, my mistakes have caused much grief." Celestia forced out the words. The six were confused, but didn't dare interrupt the angry Luna nor the explanations.
"'Tis not thine fault thou could not stop him from killing Wind Whistler, sister."
"He didn't. She was standing next to him when my spell misfired."
*****
(Typhon)
I shook my head and gave my neck a gentle roll.
I was standing in the dead center of an array that had been carved into the floor in stone with enough preservation spells to keep an orange fresh for a thousand years.
The orange would have been rendered inedible from being the target of that much magic, but it wouldn't grow mold, go soft, nor smell funny.
To prevent interference from the preservation spells, the actual medium for the array was the ink that my brushes produced. The ink stabilized the spell without allowing the the safeguard spells to seep into the array and mess it up.
This was a special chamber in Starswirl's secret lab - well, it was his lab, back in the day. He was decent, and very open-minded, too; he was actually one of the few that could even think about the possibility of Celestia being wrong about something. He studied my situation, and made the array from it; I could go in and out of the Everfree castle at my leisure.
Speaking of which. The reason the castle hadn't been reclaimed to date, or had its treasures plundered, was simple.
The dark magic that transformed Luna was stenching up the place something fierce.
The main chamber (where the Elements were kept) and the outer towers were fine, but the library, dungeons, and the like? A thousand years, and the place still wasn't safe for a regular pony... you'd need to bring in a master of dark magic, and one of those that wasn't evil or insane to begin with was hard to come by. The attitude of most towards dark magic was difficult enough to overcome... so many possible candidates for dark wizards preferred to do other things, or shunned the darkness thinking it was 'evil' by default.
A master of LIGHT magic could possibly do it, provided they were good enough, but I would bet that he or she would whine all the time. Ponies were that type.
An adept of both... sheesh. Twilight could do it, but she'd need training that Celestia simply couldn't (and wouldn't) give her (out of her misconceptions), artifacts that the precious 'princess of light' would mistakenly believe to be evil (or at the least attempt to lock up like she did the freakin' ELEMENTS), and training that the unnecessarily cautious princess would deem too dangerous. Well, of course it would be dangerous! But, wasn't it dangerous to let Twilight go against Nightmare Moon, even if doing so was entirely of her own initiative and the original plan was for her to wait before doing anything?
Twilight could handle it, for sure, but Celestia would rather erase a risk than take it.
The lab was protected enough, the Four helped, the Elements' use on Nightmare cleared a bit of it, and my little romp through the in-between gave me what I called 'forced enlightenment', the combination of all made me immune to the whispers and most of the sickness that came from the tainted air. My little trip forcibly tore through all illusions I held - well, it would be more proper to say 'delusions', including those that were brought about by the so-called 'general knowledge'.
Essentially, I had been pushed off the deep end, but I knew how to swim and built a boat out of the stuff I found, so it was OK.
Now, swimming/sailing so far one lost sight of the shore... I would gladly admit to that, but hey! My personal belief was that 'things man was not meant to know' was quitter talk - one of those 'delusions of general knowledge' I talked about (granted, not just anyone actually had the mental fortitude to even accept the fact). I knew where the shore was well enough, I just had a different way of thinking from what others considered 'sane' (when they actually meant 'average').
So had Starswirl, but the guy really did have a couple of squirrels in his attic. Both metaphorical and literal.
In case it wasn't obvious, I was still mad that he ignored my warnings and got himself killed with his last work because he kept misinterpreting what I tried to teach him about friendship.
Meh, at the least the array could-
Wait a second. I was in the middle of the active array, that meant that the Four were each on a specific circle on it, which meant that I wasn't wearing them. To retrieve them I had to break the array, but the array protected me just like wearing them did. If I broke the protection, I would change (not that I cared), but I would also be exposed to magic fueled by jealousy and despair, which felt rancid and bitter to my Wind Control.
...
I hate my life.
*****
(Typhon, Arrival era)
"That... that is quite the tale." The mare said, and I was suddenly reminded of the fact that I didn't know her name.
"I know. If I hadn't seen all of that with my own eyes... alright, I probably wouldn't have acted much different, but I am still waiting for disaster to strike." I shook my head, 'eating' a clump of cloud for moisture. "I am sorry, I didn't introduce myself-"
"Will you assume the identity of the fictional character you were pretending to be?" She asked, much more comfortable with the idea of me being an interdimensional traveler than I would have thought.
"I... don't think so. Should I use my name? Or make up a new one?" Having said so, a prompt appeared in front of me.
'Assign Alias?'
"Now that's convenient." I said, turning to her. "User's interface is asking me for an alias. The made-up powers from that story I told you about? It seems they are real now."
"Perhaps something of significance?" She asked, and then I knew.
"Typhon." I knew a thing or two about mythology, and let me tell you, it fit. The naming box solidified and turned into metal, I took out my wallet and pulled out an empty card, placing the Placronym into it.
I was grinning like a madman through the whole thing.
Then I put my palm to my face.
"Aww... I should have dressed as Berserker Lancelot, then I would have even cooler powers." I said with a chuckle, while the mare just looked at me strangely.
"What manner of powers?"
"Well, I would have a power that, anything I got my hands on would, so long as I could recognize it as a weapon and I wished to wield it, then become my 'Noble Phantasm'. Essentially, a solidified mystery of the imagination of people. The embodiment of the ultimate mysteries of a hero that symbolizes his existence through historical facts and anecdotes. Take a twig, swing it like a club, and now it's capable of facing legendary magical artifacts because it, too, would be one."
She looked at me with wide eyes.
"See? Cool."
"I do not see how such an awe-inspiring ability would relate to the temperature, save for wielding objects carved from ice."
"Hmm? That was slang... wait a second, you are taking all of this with too calm an attitude."
"The reign of Discord implicated-" She began, but I interrupted her in a mild panic.
"Whoa, whoa WHOA! The reign of Discord?!" My panic seemed to make her tense, and only nodded softly. It was a good thing I was already sitting, I only had to lean backwards to end on the ground. "I am so far into the past, I am probably going to end up in the history books and screw everything up."
"The past?" Oh, so now she was doubtful!
"The way this multiverse works, I was able to see the events happening in the future. Me being here? I pray that the timelines are resistant to changes, because if I cannot prevent certain disasters, then I hope I won't interfere with their solutions." I ran a hand through my hair, shaking.
The pony cantered over to me, and... nuzzled me.
"I am certain everything shall turn out for the better; you are a good man." She told me, laying besides me.
"How can you be so sure?" I asked as I held her a little closer, glad that she would comfort me like that.
"Because a bad pony would not be worried about mistakes." She said, smiling at me.
"Thank you... say, I never asked for your name." She blushed adorably, and looked away in embarrassment.
"My name is Wind Whistler."