As the group made their way across the many mountains and landscapes of Equestria, they couldn't help but take in all the breath-taking sights and wonders. Even Celestia, Luna and Cadence were quite awestruck with all the new regions they were uncovering with their journey to the Pit of Lyrics.
Leading the group was Starswirl, since he had been able to use his magic to trace the trail that Twilight took to take her group to the Pit of Lyrics. He was quite quiet, deep in his thoughts as he kept his horn lit so that everyone could see the trail that Twilight and her friends took.
"So, out of morbid curiosity..." Rainbow Dash tried talking to Starswirl, yielding almost no response other than that of a rather disgruntled grunt from the focused wizard. "What's with the wizard costume?"
"These are the clothes I was garbed in since as long as I could remember..." Starswirl began explaining, whilst also being able to control his magical stream. "They represent a wizard's honour for pulling off some of the most extraordinary feats in Equestria... and for slaying some of its' greatest dangers..."
"He received such a heroic honour for safeguarding Equestria from a meteor shower, by forming the ancient Utopia Regime..." Celestia went on, explaining for the ponified Rainbow Dash so that Starswirl didn't lose his concentration. "It was one of the earliest organizations that was established in Equestria, even when the four chosen ones weren't even chronicled..."
"At the age of 19, Starswirl's Utopia Regime stretched across the entire world, reaching out to every other civilization that existed long before Equestria's founding..." Luna continued on with the explanation as they continued to follow the trail. "His words reached out to all of the most powerful Unicorns, Shamans, and Necromancers across the land, so that they could combine their powers and create a powerful barrier that would safeguard the world from all other cosmic threats to our world..."
"However, the barrier began to whittle down and die over the years, since no more cosmic and otherworldly threats arose within the Utopia Regime's time of prominence..." Starswirl said calmly, still managing to control his stream of magic even through his speech. "If only we'd been alerted of Lyricans living among us, I would have tasked the other controllers of the barrier to find suitable heirs to sustain it." he then hung his head in shame. "If we hadn't learned of the Balance of Lyrica and put up the shield, we would have doomed ourselves either way, since it was an otherworldly force that no-one but the Lyricans could control..."
"So, either way, this was all supposed to happen?" Rainbow Dash asked, unaware that all of these events had been scripted without her even knowing it.
"That is correct," Starswirl continued as the group followed the trail even further. "What happens isn't because of coincidence, nor is it a chain of events set in motion by some individual's meddling. No, everything that happens was decided by destiny..."
"Destiny?" Applejack parroted in a rather deadpanned tone.
"Yes, Applejack of the Human World. It was destiny that tempted Sunset to attempt to rob the crown of Magic, which provoked Twilight to come into your world and spread the Magic of Friendship..." Starswirl furthered his explanation once more, ensuring that the humans-turned-ponies would understand. "Destiny cannot be altered, nor can it be changed. However, it can work in your favour at the best of times..."
"We should be coming up to the Pit of Lyrics in a couple of minutes, everyone. Be prepared." he motioned the group towards where the magical trail was about to end, seeing as there was a massive crater in the distance...
True to Starswirl's words, the Pit of Lyrics was still there, and looking in even worse shape than before. The place looked all but decimated completely. The only things that could be seen were piles and piles of pure rubble and destroyed structures. Not even the tower that the Twilight and Rarity of the past had fixed was still there. Instead, it had been replaced with even more destroyed pieces of the once great civilization.
"Hmm... It seems like the passage of time has not been too kind on this once-marvellous city, hasn't it?" Starswirl was examining the damage done by The Dazzlings over tens of thousands of years ago. "The portal to Lyrica still remains, though. We just need to find it, and be gone from this wreckage..."
"And how do you propose we do that?" Rainbow Dash asked, her voice sounding as arrogant as always.
"Celestia, Luna, Cadence! The time to restore this once-great civilization is here!" Starswirl said, using his magic to leap over to the other side of the massive crater with little effort. After a graceful landing, he watched as Cadence stood her ground whilst Celestia and Luna flew over to the other ends of the crater, making it so they were stationed at all four corners.
The four of them then shut their eyes and lit up their horns together, charging up a rather powerful spell. The energy that they took in was a rather hefty amount, and it made all four of them levitate off of the ground with the vast quantity of energy they were taking in.
Then, all their eyes shone like majestic stars as they fired the beams directly at the center of the crater, so that the four of them collided into one colossal orb of pure energy. The orb flew upwards as the four ponies cast their power into its' otherworldly mass, making it grow larger and larger. Then, the four ponies directed the orb into the bottom of the Pit of Lyrics, where it collided with the wreckage and engulfed the entire area around the crater to become consumed in a gargantuan explosion of rainbow-coloured light.
"Fortissimo! Look at that..." Siren Twilight said as she pointed a finger towards a celestial map which was now radiating with rainbow-coloured energy. She used her fingers to zoom the map in, revealing ten ponies becoming consumed by a massive surge of magic.
"Hmm..." he examined the burst of energy with a cool and collected visage on his face. "It seems that that podgy old fool Starswirl the Bearded has finally resorted to desperate measures..."
"What's the plan, Master Fortissimo?" Siren Pinkie asked as she too was staring at the ten ponies and the rapidly-restoring Pit of Lyrics.
"Should we destroy them before they even set foot in Lyrica?" Siren Rainbow Dash looked eager as she drew her sword, ready for a fight with the ponies at the Pit of Lyrics.
"Not this time, Rainbow Dash. I'm not a fan of repetition..." Fortissimo merely chuckled as he watched the rest of the events unfold on the celestial map. "Instead, we shall simply wait for the ten of them to come to us..." he then turned away from the girls and grew his rather evil smile once more as he said to himself, "Provided that Honous and Chival don't completely carve them into pieces..."
When the powerful explosion of light had died down, the girls all saw a rather regal sight as their jaws dropped in astonishment.
The Pit of Lyrics had been restored to its' natural state, with beautiful pristine buildings with golden markings all over them. The bridges that led into the city had now been fixed, and were now made of a rather crystalline material. As for the streets, they were even cleaner than the cleanest streets in history, which were so clean that they reflected the light from the sun above.
It wasn't long before Starswirl, Celestia and Luna returned to the group of ponies, proud of their accomplishment.
"Well then, shall we?" Celestia asked the six girls as she reached a hoof out for the six of them, who graciously smiled back at her generous offer.
The ten ponies and three Lyricans crossed the crystal bridge into the City of Lyrics, peering over the edge to see the clear, dark depths below them. They let out rather awestruck noises as they peered down into the darkness before regaining their courage upon seeing the majestic city once again.
"Come along, girls. Don't dawdle. Saving the world doesn't mean you can just look at things like goofy-eyed children all day." Starswirl said, getting the other girls to hurry up and return to him.
"So, Starswirl... What happened when you disappeared?" Cadenced decided to ask once all ten of the ponies had reunited with each other.
That sentence alone got Starswirl to stop in his tracks. He hung his head, kneeled down, and heard dozens of voices in his head. He could hear the events of the great war, the events of The Dazzlings' banishment, and even the words The Blasters spoke to him as they captured him. He merely gasped for breath as the memories roared in his mind like a charging crowd of fans, getting closer and closer to him as the memories returned to him. Eventually, he craned his head upwards and screamed, getting all of the voices in his head to stop instantly.
It didn't take long for him to notice that he'd scared all the other ponies with his sudden outburst. He looked over to them and said, "Sorry about that, girls. I've had a rather... unpleasant chain of events since my return..."
"Just tell us everything you can, Starswirl. As long as it isn't too traumatizing for you..." Celestia said, massaging his shoulders with her hooves in an attempt to calm him down.
"No, no. You deserve to hear the truth. Even if it will scar me once more..." he said, graciously accepting Celestia's massages as he sighed to recap his tale. "You already know of the events that happened before, during, and after the war, Celestia and Luna. But it's the proper time that I tell you of what happened involving my disappearance..."
"It started shortly after I'd banished The Dazzlings here to the Human World..." he said, looking at Adagio, Aria and Sonata whilst remaining where he was. "When you hear my tale, you'll know why it was my most foolish mistake to date..."
"Mistake?" Adagio was rather interested upon that word that had fallen from Starswirl's lips and teeth. "Why was it a mistake to banish us?"
"Because a few days after I'd banished you, I was assaulted by three figures who went by the names of Fortissimo Blast, Allegro Maelstrom, and Orchestral Chill..." he said, ensuring that the girls were listening. "The three claimed that they were the brothers of The Dazzlings, then used some kind of archaic power to send me to another world. As I was cast in my chains, they told me that even when corrupted, The Dazzlings were saving the worlds, despite them being corrupted with Dark Magic. You see, even when they wielded the darkness, they were still safeguarding the worlds with their singing, by keeping the Balance of Lyrica even..."
"You mean..." Rainbow Dash said to herself as all of the girls were deep in thought.
There was a long silence between the six girls, which they used to process the story in their heads. Eventually, when the ending finally came to them, their emotions suddenly shifted dramatically with their response.
"WHAT?!"
"We went through all of that trouble just to defeat three good guys?!" Rainbow Dash looked horrified as the facts were glaring her in the face.
"Correct, they were good. However, they still needed to be freed from their Dark Magic." Starswirl followed up, reminding Rainbow Dash of the positive side of the story.
"Then the story returned to me, with The Blasters locking me up in tight chains in a blood-red landscape with tartaric-looking spikes all over the walls and ceiling..." Starswirl said, his repressed memories returning as he shuddered in fear. "They had torture methods beyond anything I've ever seen before, with chains that pull you so hard that they actually dislocate a pony's hooves if they fail to cough up what their captors want..." his memories only made him even more tense as he continued to recap his side of the story. "They left me in there to die, feeding me nothing but dead horses and decaying Lyrican corpses. Luckily for me, they were free of disease, because they wanted to see me suffer in fear, instead of being given easy access to death's cold embrace..."
"Hmm... Sounds like one of Dystopia's torture chambers..."" Aria Blaze said, using her own hands to rub Starswirl's tense shoulders in an attempt to soothe him even further. "The Furen Sirens had very... convincing methods on getting information from people who refused to co-operate with them..."
"There was one torture device where one body was strung up by the legs, with a number of body look-alikes in the same position, all of them hanging above a pool of corrosive acid," Adagio continued with the many different torture devices that Furens utilized to their advantage. "The tormentors would pose the question, then cut one of the strings with their crystal-coated axe, sending one of the unfortunates diving into the acid. They'd keep doing that, warning the victim that the next string to go could very well have been the one that held them up. This method made the captives cry in fear. Literally, they cried with their sheer terror, and ended up crying out the information their captors needed. You're rather lucky they just chained you up to the De-Limber..."
"Well, I guess when you put it that way, I AM quite lucky to have just been chained up..." he said, smiling as he looked at Adagio's face. "However, they did make me reveal something quite unsettling..."
"What did they force out of you, Starswirl?" Fluttershy asked, seeing the sheer terror on his face.
Eventually, he sighed and said, "The amount of decibels that'll be able to rip through the fabric of reality, and hit all three of the worlds in the trinity..."
"WHAT?!" the girls all said again, looking at his rather sorrow-ridden visage with their own looks of terror.
"The Blasters said that they were doing their own musical tournament, and said that, unlike their little sisters, they prefer to go big or go home," he recapped all that Fortissimo had done to him. "I tried my best to resist and keep my lips sealed, but he combined De-Limbing me with a powerful spell that simulated my brain being impaled by his sword. I screamed and hollered out in pain as he just continued torturing my like some real-life voodoo doll, my pain seeing absolutely no end..." his voice quickly turned into a winging voice as he recapped all the pain he'd suffered in that torture chamber. "And then... I cracked..."
"Guess that's another thing to add to the list of 'Why our brothers need to be stopped'..." Sonata said as she pulled out a makeshift list from her pocket and wrote by pulling out a pen from the same pocket. Once it was all done, Sonata put the list and pen back in her pocket, returned to Starswirl and said, "Go on..."
"I told them how loud their song needed to be so that they could hit all the corners of the three worlds, so that they could set their heinous plans in motion..." he said, envisioning The Blasters' evil laughter as their song hit the ears of everyone in the Human World and Equestria. "And after I did, they just released me back into this world, crippled and lifeless... I wound up near some kind of archaic town with an otherworldly curse on it, but I paid no mind to it and tried to survive without the aid of those undesirable, brain dead equal-sign ponies...
"That I believe that Twilight can deal with another day, but right now, The Blasters are the main threat to Equestria..." Celestia said as Starswirl's tale ended. "We need to find that portal to Lyrica immediately, so that we can save the worlds from The Blasters' insidious plans..."
"Good idea, let's keep moving..." Starswirl said as they made their way towards the almighty castle which housed the portal to Lyrica; the one passageway that would determine the fate of all three worlds...
The wind howled across the dead landscape of Lyrica, its' noise seeming to fall completely on deaf ears with absolutely nothing there to hear it.
However, the silence was eventually broken when a blue portal opened up, and a horse's clopping hooves and whinny could be heard from the other side. There was also the sound of armour, shuffling around as the noise got closer and closer to Lyrica. Eventually, a massive figure on horseback emerged from the portal, leaping out of it like a majestic hero of the past.
The figure itself was garbed in some of the most majestic armour imaginable, with blue crystals draping the white and golden armour. The helmet it wore nearly covered its' entire face, with only the shining blue eyes visible. It was carrying a sword in one hand, and a regal shield in the other. It was seated quite comfortably on a majestic saddle, which had been put on the back of an armoured horse with flowing white hair, and crystal blue hooves.
The horse whinnied once more as it could feel a battle drawing nearer, but was then soothed when the giant knight gently stroked its' face with its' shield hand.
"Patience, Chival... Those cretins will be upon us soon..." the knight spoke to his horse, ensuring that it fully understood what it was saying. "Come their final hour, they shall be slain by the most heroic of the Euphorian Deities; Honous, and his trusty steed, Chival!"