//------------------------------// // Fanning the flames // Story: Land of Friendship and Magic // by Archmage Ansrit //------------------------------// (Typhon) Alright. I... I didn't know what to do. Yeah, I agreed to tutor Dinky and Sparkler - regardless of conditions, they were still part of the family - but I was still... lost. Just a little. I knew what I had to do, what I wanted to do, but that drive of mine... was feeling a little cold. When I appeared here in Equestria, I didn't have much of a direction - ironic, for a Breath player. Then Wind Whistler came in. Sure, most of the ideas, plans, and goals I had were precisely that - born of my own initiative. Heck, Wind Whistler wasn't going to fight off the idea of joining Storm Chaser's herd forever... maybe they could have found common ground, or slowly grow into each other in the sort of way those that are somewhat opposites do. I was the guy with the plans. But they didn't revolve around myself - they rarely did, save for the cases where said goal/plan would help me further another. I was just content with helping them, or interested in magic for its own sake, or getting the constructs from foreign realities away from the ponies... normally, in situations like this, I would mostly practice or simply study magic. It was the easiest course of action, in theory. I had done it for centuries, so what was one more day? I knew the answer, though. It was in the form of a quote. "Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire." Well, guess who was the wind there? I was on fire, and I was content on simply taking a rest... I couldn't let myself do that, thought. Sleep was one of the greatest enemies of the immortal - what, did anyone think that dragons took centuries-long naps because they needed them? No! When life grew tedious, they napped to dream and escape reality! I slept a lot, yes, and, once I figured out how to synchronize both of my selves, I could even use it to temporally visit other places! Kinda what I had done with Twilight's dream. I met so many people, found so many useful things, learned so much... Right now, I just wanted a regular dream, letting my subconscious drift and build something out of woven memories and errant thoughts. Instead, I should occupy myself by means of... shoot, I didn't have any ideas. Base! I should totally make a base. I'd love a cloud castle, but I'd pretty much have to make it entirely outside of Equestria... preferably by the sea, over that big honking leyline that - legend has it - was actually the remains of this world's equivalent of my namesake fused to/blending with/bleeding into the world's leyline system; it would allow me to make it the size of an entire country and solid to non-pegasi permanently thanks to eternally-fed runes, which sounded pretty sweet - after all, I've been talking to mayors and wizards and captains for over a thousand years, so I wasn't suffering from a lack of information and skills. That Tiamat's own tomb (or would it be a simple grave?) wasn't that far and an additional source of free-floating magical energies (and of so many different alignments) was just a bonus. But no. For now, an underground base would have to do. The game was really messed up, but I could still build things pretty easily... that was one need down. I could build all by myself. See if I could find some pony to re-make the Essence Distillers into machines, instead of using only carved runes on stones, metal and flasks. Yeah, until the Crystal Empire came back and/or I found replacements to the sources, a lot of them would be useless, but now that I didn't have to worry about messing up future events I had much more freedom. Man, when I heard 'thousand years' I thought that it would be a little closer to Nightmare Moon's rise and fall! My plans to prevent Luna's madness fell flat (mostly) because of the gap. And Sombra was such a nice colt, too... and also, not actually named Sombra. I still couldn't believe that he would actually kill his father for his power over darkness and do all of that. That was the biggest loop I was thrown for during the whole Crystal Empire fiasco, not counting the physical loops the ponies around me literally threw me for. Alright. Onward! Or... downward. Look at that, I really could use my Breath mind-healing powers on myself after all. ***** (Prosperity, at the Library) "Oh, hello Ditzy!" Were the words. 'Oh, hello Ditzy'... everything ground to a screeching halt. A cog tried turning in reverse, but was knocked out of alignment, a record was scratched, a spring sprang. "Oh, hello Prospit!" Were the words that answered the first words, taking was was left of Twilight's cognitive processes and blowing them all to hell. "I saw you walking around town, and decided to see how you were doing!" A neuron caught fire. "You know each other?" Spike asked, looking between the dragon - back in her yellow dress - and the grey pegasus mare. "Yes..." Ditzy answered, a little question in her voice. "Why didn't you say anything?" Asked Spike. "It never came up." Ditzy shrugged. "Yeah - I mean, it's not like we have to exhibit everything about our lives to every single new friend we make." Prosperity nodded. "Although it's not much of a secret, I mean, I have that picture of your cave in my bedroom. You know the one; where Carrot is halfway to the ground in a dead faint." "Right! A year or so before Dinky was born... How's your family doing?" "Oh, just fine! Thanks for asking." Ditzy giggled. "Your dad agreed to train Dinky and Sparkler in Wind-Shaping! I wasn't sure I should ask... I mean-" "Don't you worry about a thing." Prosperity patted her head. "They aren't the first unicorns, and Sparkler isn't the first adopted pony either; he's that kind of guy, you know the types, the ones that say 'family is family no matter how are you related'." Just as the smithereens of Twilight's mind were blown into whatever the heck was smaller than smithereens, she shook her head. "Oh, I should have guessed, 'Prospit'." Ditzy smiled, and Prosperity blushed a little. "What." Twilight looked at them. "How do you know of him, Ditzy?" "Ah! My mom introduced me to him when I was little!" She smiled. "But he was stone until a couple of days ago!" Twilight stage-whispered, trying to keep herself from exploding from all of the conflicting information. "Not all of him." Prosperity chuckled. "Besides, one of Breath's many, many Associations is Freedom." "Yeah!" Ditzy cheered. "And now that he's like that, it'll be even harder to make him stay somewhere against his will." Twilight's eye started to twitch, and a couple of hairs sprang out of place. "Um, How do you know all of that? Is it because you are friends?" Spike asked in Twilight's behalf; he really didn't want to write a letter to Celestia apologizing for not being able to talk with 'Prosperity' any more because Twilight had a Friendship Aneurysm. "Who else knows?" "Well, of course it's because we're friends! I remember how Carrot didn't believe that he could talk through his statue until I took her to him... Actually, I don't think there's a single member of the Wind family that doesn't know; I've told the stories to Dinky and Sparkler, and took them with me a while ago." Ditzy scratched her head. "I mean, his meddling is the reason there even is a family." "Nu-uh, Wind Whistler also had a really big part to play." Prosperity wiggled a claw. "She made the first move." ***** (The pair, the past) A rosy haze covered her wing. The semi-transparent phantom in front of her, one of many attempting to wear down the borders of the world, was her target. She swung her wing, launching the haze, and a terrible absence tore its way through the air and impacted the metallic thing across the chest. The magic scattered, and air rushed back . A blue haze followed after hers, but this was a crushing presence that landed precisely in the same place as hers, making the armor actually buckle from the strain. The magic dissipated, and the air rushed away. A gray blur slammed against the area of the stomach, Windstorm's flying buck forcing it to double over, just to receive Wind Whistler's buck to the head. Another, thought smaller, blue haze hit the phantom, while the pink pegasus's wings rotated in place, the crackling of static filling the air. Windstorm once more hit the phantom in the head before a flap of his wings let him put some distance between them as a bolt of lightning, tinted pink from magic, struck. Windstorm bucked one of the phantom's knees, while Whistler landed a hoof between what passed for its eyes. Storm struck a shoulder, as Whistler weaved and kicked its legs to keep it unbalanced. Storm tripped it, with some assistance from Whistler's kick to its head, making it fall flat on its back. Flying above it, close to one another, the two pegasi prepared a maneuver they had rehearsed. Had Fraymotifs not been player-exclusive, they would have called it something like 'Air Aria'. Windstorm, wings open wide and angled slightly, pulled his legs close to him, as if to buck downwards. Wind Whistler, wings pulled close to her though angled slightly, prepared to kick upwards. They kicked, Storm pushing Whistler with all of his strength. A pink-and-blue spiraling missile shot down, causing the earth to crack beneath the spectral machine. The order of the world reasserted itself, making the construct vanish, leaving behind its reward. Windstorm landed with a stomp of hooves, surveying the colorful objects. Panting, he trotted over to an equally-breathless Wind Whistler, watching each other in the eyes for a moment. "That was-!" Whistler began, the adrenaline leaving her agitated. "I was cap-cap- I was able to feel what you were int-inten-trying to do!" "I know!" Windstorm replied. "I mean, I was there, and I knew you where going to be there! An-and the way we both Breathed like that? I mean-!" "Ind-indu- Right!" Whistler exclaimed, then laughed as the rush started to fade. The both of them stood in silence for a moment, smiling. Wind Whistler felt how he Breathed, and she knew he felt the same. She leaned forward. Windstorm was far from clueless, but he was still surprised. He stood there, letting her come closer of her own accord. She closed her eyes, touching her lips to his own; at the slightest hint of him actually starting to press back, she pushed forward even more. They held themselves like that, a strange warmth flowing through them, simultaneously prickling their skin like static. When she pulled back, Windstorm smiled at her. "Wow, that was- I mean..." He chuckled. "Does that mean I'm the stallion of your choice?" She nodded, the same smile on her face. "That... well, that was the first time I kissed... well, at all." He chuckled again, blushing slightly. "Anything before was just nuzzles." "The same." She said, her own cheeks tinted pink. Windstorm kicked the dirt of the small crater. "Was... did you like it?" Wind Whistler let out a small hum of faux-concentration. "There is insufficient data." She grinned, leaning forward once more, her voice dropping to a whisper. "More 'samples' are required before being able to draw a conclusion." "I guess I shou- I mean, it would not be erroneous to presume that I am to provide these 'samples' for your research?" He whispered back, grinning as well. "Mh-Hmm." Their first kiss as a couple turned into two, then three, and four. By the sixth kiss, Wind Whistler had arrived to the conclusion that yes, she did in fact enjoy being kissed, and should endeavor to repeat the experience in the future. ***** (Prosperity. Today) "I'm not sure of all of the details, since I didn't enter the scene until latter, but apparently she kissed him first." Prosperity scratched her head. "Typhon gave her unlimited access to his things, and that made her much more willing to do things outside the norm. I love him and all, but something about how he somehow found the way to be both reckless and discreet with how he meddled with events around him rubbed me the wrong way." There was a knocking on the door. "Royal Guard, open the door." Said a gruff voice from the other side. "Sure took their time." Prosperity said, sighing, straightening her skirt again, and walking over to the entrance. "Most likely, they were coming up with an excuse to even show up." She placed a claw on the door, but turned to Spike before opening it. "Get something to take notes on; I bet he racks up a dozen violations of the dragon/pony treaty in less than ten minutes." She grinned, showing her many sharp fangs to the world. "I'll make him regret even thinking he had any power over me... I was raised by Typhon, after all."