//------------------------------//
// Evil 
// Story: The Idea Box 
// by FatesEnd 
//------------------------------//

	"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU SOLD IT?"

Once upon a time, there was an evil empire led by an evil ruler. He controlled all the land from his tower, which layed within an ocean of raw magic beneath the world. He had conquered the dwarves, the elves, and even the humans with his powers. 

As usual, Trixie was having a bad day. She spent months tracking down the most powerful magical artifact in Equestria, and years saving up bits to buy it from its owner, only to found that he had already sold it to a museum!

Good had no place in his lands, and the subjects he ruled with an iron fist all loved and feared him. All in all, everything was wonderful.

Now here she was, digging through a stupid pile of rocks to find at the behest of a stupid map she bought from that stupid shopkeeper to find some stupid thing that some stupid unicorn sensed after a stupid earthquake in a stupid canyon. It was probably just some big stupid diamond.

One day, a rock fell from the skies, punching a hole into the world near his castle. He decided to use the opening as an opportunity to add a new tower to his castle, and ordered his underlings to expand it. Not even his wisest and most trusted servant could foresee what would become of this.

Trixie sighed.  Well, it wasn't like she had any other ideas. She had put so much time energy into this, she couldn't just walk away empty hoofed. 

As she moved another of the boulders out of the way, she was snapped out of her train of thought as she noticed a strangely shaped rock buried underneath.

All of the activity and spells by him and his minions had stirred up the ocean beneath the world, and it roared to life as the barrier between it and the land above weakened. The earth cracked as magic erupted and burned all in its path.

The rock turned out to be some sort of statue, depicting an strange, ugly creature standing on its hind legs. It had a pole coming out its back with a ball hanging from it. But that wasn't what interested Trixie the most. That would be the odd metal object with a yellow gem on the back of it that the statue grasped in its claws.

The ruler foresaw his doom and entrusted the symbol of his rule, passed down from his father before him, to his ancient and cunning adviser. This done, he traveled deep into the underworld in the hopes of using his powers to tame it.

As she reached toward it, the gem glowed and the object began to shift into... A sock with spikes on it? No, it was a gauntlet.

The adviser used an ancient ritual to seal the empire's army and himself in time, clutching the artifact in his hands, in the hopes that one day someone worthy of succeeding his master could bear it and awaken them. 

Something inside of her told her that it was important, that she needed it. Levitating it away from the statue, she slipped it onto her hoof and it began glowing with a faint light.

The magical torrent could not be stopped. The world below broke free and flooded the world above in arcane energies that scoured life from the land. Some creatures managed to escape the tide unscathed, but many died, and most were forever changed by the cataclysm. As the world settled, the magic once trapped below soaked the land, infusing it with power, and there were few things left that did not possess some trace of magic.

Walking away from the rocks, she began to look over the gauntlet, seeing how it felt on her. As she clenched her hoof, the gem brightend, and the sound of a horn echoed through her head.

New creatures achieved intelligence and created empires, unaware of what came before them. It seemed that the age of Evil and the world that came before would be forgotten, washed away by the eons.


From behind her, she heard the sound of crumbling stone.

But Evil always finds a way.