//------------------------------// // Book 8: Temptation II // Story: The Holy Covenant of the Triumvirate // by rathgood //------------------------------// Book 8: Temptation II To much of a virtue can become a vice. Give to much and you lose yourself. Temptation of the Mind The agents of the forest went forth and scoured the land. Their master bidding them to find more converts. Bound to the earth, the chaos-born focused first on the magic tribe. Their power being the next one the tender coveted. Their power would allow them to ascend to the sky. The scouts infiltrated the camps and villages on the outskirts of the land. These were the ones most likely to be overlooked by the sisters. Their gaze rested squarely on the population centers. Their minds focused on the harmony tribe and the budding religion. Many scouts had no luck. Finding only the hardy Earth-born villages where they were working the land. These villages were close family compounds and were wary of the travelers. Letting them stay for a night, then seeing them on their way. These farms would not provide them with the forces they needed. Angry, the scouts touched the land, spreading a disease to the crops, one that would not present itself until the food was consumed. If the chaos-born could not add to their own, they would weaken the other. The frontier communities traded between themselves, unknowingly spreading the infection. Soon plague broke out. Bad crops causing an outbreak was nothing new, but was still taken seriously. A single mold contaminated shipment from one of these villages could spell a pandemic, corrupting all of the crops, sickening many more ponies. Each life was sacred and measures must be taken to preserve enough of them as possible. As such the Royal Medical Society, a long standing magic-born group centered on healing magics and elixers dispatched a group on twenty of their best, lead by the vice chancellor, a mare known for going above and beyond to aid the injured and sick. Her group quickly moved to one of the most afflicted villages. They arrived to be welcomed only by death. The disease having killed every mare, stallion, and foal; eating them from the inside out. To prevent further spread, they burnt the village and the tilled fields. A funeral pyre for the lost souls, sending them to the All-Seeing. Incised by the loss of life the noble mare collected samples and rushed to the next village. Hoping that there, at least she could save at least one of them. They found the next village in better shape, but not by much. The disease was in full effect, all were sick, but none had died yet. The Magic-born doctors jumped into action right away, taking samples, temperatures, and using scanning magics to track down the source and root cause of the epidemic. What they found was disheartening. None of the tomes had any trace of the disease. Its characteristics were alien, chaotic. It was as if it was not one but four or more diseases that had co-mingled, changing each other. The symptoms of no one pony were the same, aside from the bulging pustules found on their skin. Pustules that even when lanced of their fluid would quickly return. Undaunted the mare and her colleagues began work in earnest. They concocted powerful medicines to lower the fevers and soothe the aches. They used ointments imbued with healing magics to mend the lesions and weeping sores. None seemed to make any headway against the mysterious infections. The elderly and young began to die, the hardier of the ill lasting longer. The vice chancellor would not yield. She began to use powerful healing magics, ones only known to the higher ranking members of the society, ones that tapped into the very life force of the user. These too failed, unable to impede the accelerating advances of the insidious agent. Like the last village, all afflicted died, the doctors and nurses doing their best to ease the pain of their passing Also like the last, they to made a pyre for the dead. The searing heat would do what they could not. The members of the party insisted that they return for help. Perhaps others in the society would be able to provide insight into this outbreak. The lead mare refused to return. To much time would be lost returning. More would die. She refused to fail again, even if it meant giving more of herself, more of them all to cure it. Bolstered by the determination of their leader, they continued on to the next village, fortifying their own magical defenses against catching and carrying the disease. Taking with them the knowledge they had gained at such an expensive cost. The third village had just began to show the signs of the disease. The first victims were the elderly, their immune systems taxed from the rigors of a long life on the frontier. Quarantining the ill to stem the infection they tried their best to save the elders, but to no avail. Even the powerful, life siphoning magics could not prevent the inevitable. The mare grew more desperate. Immolating the corpses, much to the chagrin of the other villagers, they once again sent their spirits to the All-Seeing. Hope returned when no more cases arose after the unfortunate elderly died. Perhaps their precautions, timing, and luck had beaten the disease. This false hope did not last long as one by one, others fell ill. The foals were the hardest hit and the hardest to bear. Young lives cut short by such a cruel fate wounded the magic-born in ways no knife or spell could. One filly in particular hit the vice chancellor harder than the others. She was the same age and had the same general features as the mare's own daughter, who was safely back in the capitol, far away from this dreadful disease. Still the uncanny resemblance was too much for her to take and thus she poured all of her strength into curing this one foal. If she failed here it would be like failing her own daughter. She needed to give more than she had ever before and she did. Against the advise of her subordinates she prepared her spell. Channeling her very spirit into the spell, she became a nimbus of soothing green energy. The light and energy released soothing those within range like a cool spring rain. Focusing this energy she channeled it into the young one, permeating her entire body. Infusing it with the very essence of life, her very essence of life. Just as the light reached its apex, it suddenly stopped, the spell and connection broken by the other worried magic-born. By doing it they had spared their leader from sacrificing her own life. With the energies dissipated, the mare collapsed, as near to death as one could be. She would not wake for over two weeks. The filly, as she would find out had fled into the nearby forest and was assumed dead, just like all the others who had contracted the illness. In the two week coma, the rest of the village had succumbed, died, and been burned. Only one village remained, this one thankfully clear of any signs. It was here that the mare had been recovering. The reprieve was short lived. The constant exposure to the disease and the weakening of their magical reserves had taken its toll and soon the doctors and nurses who had sought to cure the disease fell victim to it. Soon too did the villagers who had kindly sheltered them fall victim to it as well. The magic-born did their best to stem the progress of the aliment, but helping the others weakened them to the disease. In short time, they gave up helping the others and thought only of themselves. The earth-born, unable to magically slow the disease perished. The magic-born lying to themselves that their survival would lead to the survival of many more. They had more good to give to the world. The vice chancellor, with an immune system hardened by many years in service lasted longer, but soon she was rendered unable to help others. Despair reigned over the compound. Feverous and guilty, the mare began to hear a voice, calling for her from the forest's edge. Delirious she stumbled to the edge to find its source. Who she found amazed her, it was the little filly from the previous village. Somehow she had survived. Somehow she had beaten what the mare could not. The young one spoke of a spring she had stumbled upon, dying of thirst she had drank of it. The water and its strange flowers and plants had quenched her thirst and in turn cured the illness that afflicted her. The filly lead the Vice Chancellor to the spring, where both drank of the water. Almost immediately the pustules vanished, her mind cleared, the fever broke, her magic was restored. Using the renewed strength she crafted a magical bag, collecting the water to give to the rest of the team and to research for future uses. So consumed by the urge to share the blessed water she was oblivious to the fact that the little filly who had shown her the spring was no longer there and that only one set of hoof prints marked the path back to the village. Returning to her group she found them all near the edge of death. Channeling her healing magics, now a slightly sickly green, into the water, hoping to boost the effects; she passed the elixer out and the twenty magic-born drank. All twenty recovered instantaneously. All twenty had the mark of their gift begin to glow the same sickly green as the mare's own mark now did. In unison, the magic resonated and rippled from the mark, encasing each in a crystalline cocoon of emerald energy. Here they would stay for many weeks, until the next new moon. When the All-Seeing closed both eyes that night, the cocoon's hatched. From them came beings twisted by dark magics, barely resembling their previous forms. More insectoid. More feral and savage. The vice chancellor who had consumed more of the water than the others had become larger, more powerful than the others. A voice resonated through their minds. Welcoming them to the chaos-born. His chaos-born. The new chaos-magic-born looked at themselves and were horrified. The magic-born had always been the most vain of the tribes and even now they were just as vain. Their new forms were disgusting, gut wrenching, wrong. They all began to glow a sickly, firey green and in flashes, gained new forms. Some resembled their own, previous forms; others of loved ones; others of different tribes; and still more as prominent figures in the harmony tribe. Further flashes erupted and more forms changed Each change drained their energy, made them hungry, but not for food. They had given their all for others. Their love for others and for life had cost them everything. Now they would feed on the emotions of others. It was at that time when a search party from the capitol arrived, worried about the doctors and nurses dispatched months ago. The chaos-magic-born masked themselves as loved ones or friends of the search party. The vice chancellor, now their queen gave one command. Feed. The confused party was overtaken and all that remained were desiccated husks. All life, all emotion had been drained from them. The forest enjoyed their agony and bid his new minions join the others in the den. Soon they joined the chaos-earth-born and began to cultivate their powers. The lesser of the chaos-magic-born, like the chaos-earth-born gave themselves freely to the tender of the forest and were joined with his growing body, imparting their gift from the All-Seeing and their transformational ability to the tender's chariot. The Twilight felt the increased disturbance in the balance and this time did not ignore it. She brought the imbalance to the elder two and together they looked for a source. The forest cloaked the presence of its growing army so the sisters would not sense them. All they found were the burnt villages cleaned of the plague their advisors had mentioned. The loss of life from the random epidemic was heart wrenching for the Twilight, who was far younger than the others and was not used to such things yet. The Sun and Moon consoled their sister and believed that the imbalance she felt was the loss of life. Turning to other tasks, they focused their efforts again on the burgeoning religion with them at their center. Meanwhile, in the capitol a young filly hears her mother's voice. Telling her that she loves her. Calling the young one to join her.