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// Interlude: Today I Direct My Energies Toward Positive Goals 
// Story: I Am Going To Save And/Or Destroy Equestria! 
// by Bucking Nonsense 
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My name is Aphelion, and I used to have a pretty good life.
I'm a unicorn stallion, and I was, at least for a while, very happy.  I had a best friend, as well as a mare who, when we both came of age, I'd intended to make my bride, and a talent for magic that made many envious.  Since my cutie mark was of a ringed planet on a starry background, there were many who whispered that I might be my generation's Starswirl the Bearded.  They may have been right, had things gone a little differently.
If only I had not been abducted, and spirited away to a foreign land by a centaur who coveted my magic...
No, it was not Lord Tirek, although I don't blame you for assuming it to be so.  My abductor's name was Sendak the Elder, a wizard, a hermit, and an outlaw amongst his own kind.  He had abducted me, and intended to use me as a renewable source for his own slowly diminishing magic.  Had things happened differently, I might still have been locked in a cage, in a land far from my home, weak, miserable, and filled with despair.
However, Sendak had a student, an apprentice, a protege.  Yes, that was Lord Tirek.  And it was because of his student's blunder that I am free.  Tirek craved power, and when Sendak revealed my existence to his student, the young centaur decided to make my power his own.
However, both Sendak and Tirek had underestimated my own strength.  Tirek had attempted to drain my magic using a spell he barely understood.  Sendak, when he had captured me, had used a potion to render me weak and unable to resist.  However, he had not counted on my hearty constitution, and I had quickly built up a resistance to the foul stuff.  Tirek, not knowing how best to cast the spell, and not knowing he'd need to drug me or restrain me to prevent me from resisting, quickly found himself no match for me.  He was young, and stronger in some ways than Sendak, but I was younger, and stronger.  I escaped, fled the cave, and was discovered by the local authorities.
I soon met the king and queen of the land, who were full of apologies, and promises that justice would be done.  I, personally, just wanted to go home, and the king personally escorted me back to Equestria.  I will not say that we became friends along the way.  The differences between him and I were far too great, not in species, but in station: He was a king, and I, while a powerful magician in my own right, was still a common born citizen of a distant land.  What I will say is that I came to respect him, and he, I think, thought well of me.  Take from that what you will.  The trip home was lengthy, but uneventful, and after a brief audience with the princesses, I returned home.
And discovered that, in just a few short moons, the life I'd once had was no more.
I had been gone for nearly half a year.  Everypony had thought that I had died, eaten by some manner of ravenous beast.  My kidnapper had, after capturing me, taken steps to make it seem so, in order to prevent anypony from questioning my disappearance.  The mare I'd thought to make my bride had, after learning of my 'death', been overcome with sorrow.  My best friend had comforted her, and within three moons, the two had fallen in love, and were making plans to wed when they both came of age.  I don't blame them for that, nor am I bitter: Had I truly died, that is exactly what I would have wanted.  My anger lies solely with Sendak, who had abducted me, and a little with Tirek as well, who saw me as nothing but a means of gaining greater power.
What broke my heart, however, was the fact that my mother, who had been in poor health for many years, had passed away during my absence, her condition having potentially worsened due to my disappearance.  With my father having passed on years before, it meant that the assets of my family had, with no legal heir remaining, passed on to the state.  The property of both my family, and myself, things that had been in our family for generations, had been auctioned off to charity, and there was little that could be done to get them back, even if I had possessed the wealth to do so.  The house I'd grown up in had been turned into an orphanage.  I was now a stallion with nothing left to his name.
I was fourteen years old, and I had nothing, not even a roof over my head.
I did what many ponies do when they hit rock bottom: I took to the road.  I traveled with caravans as an armspony, using my magical strength to aid in protecting merchants and their wares from bandits, monsters and worse, and was able to see many distant lands.  I turned out to be good at it, and my skills were in high demand.  Over the course of a decade, I walked the sands of Saddle Arabia, I visited the roosts of Griffinstone, and even butted heads with the minotaurs of Tauria.  I learned a great deal about magic in my travels, more than most ponies can even imagine was possible, and earned a sizable nest egg in the process, enough that I could easily have retired at my twenty-third birthday, had I felt a desire to stop.  However, I suppose that I grew to enjoy life on the road.
Things changed, however, on my twenty-fifth birthday, when Tirek, along with his brother Scorpan, had attacked Equestria.
I had been attached to the caravan of a Saddle Arabian spice merchant at the time, but when I explained to him what was happening back home, he allowed me to depart without any ill will.  He gave me his blessings, and gave me a writ allowing me free passage on his fastest ship.
As we cut across the waters as fast as a falcon or a pegasus could fly, I thought to myself that now I might have a purpose: I had fought Tirek once, and won, in spite of being weakened, malnourished, and shaking off the effects of a sleeping potion.  He might be stronger than he once was, but I was certain that I was stronger still.  I would return home, strike the brute down, and be hailed as a hero.  That, I believed, had to be the reason why I had lost everything: So that I would have spent the last ten years and more honing my skills for the sole purpose of striking Tirek down when he came to my homeland.  The unicorn that he had once tried to use as a power source would wipe that brute off the face of the world, once and for all.
Alas, it was not to be.  The princesses had already defeated Tirek by the time I had arrived, and the brute had been locked away in Tartarus.  Normally, his punishment would have been far more severe, but Scorpan, who had turned against his brother and aided in his capture, had asked only that his brother's life be spared.  So, in spite of not being a fiend in the truest sense, and in spite of being only a greedy, irredeemable monster whose demise would make the world a better place, Tirek was simply imprisoned, rather than his head used to adorn the gates of Canterlot as a warning to those who might emulate him.
Again, I was left without a purpose, and I considered going back to the caravans.  But then Lady Luck lent me a helping hoof.  In a roadside tavern, I met both Scorpan and Starswirl the Bearded himself, who were traveling to Scorpan's homeland.  While the two of them were powerful in their own right, they could use an armspony and a guide who knew the way: Scorpan had mostly followed Tirek to Equestria, and did not know the way well enough on his own to trust himself as a guide.  Since I knew the way to Scorpan's homeland well enough, having traveled back to that place a couple of times during my marches with the trade caravans, the two were willing to have me along.
I learned a great deal from Starswirl, and he was impressed, I think, to meet a pony so young, yet so well travelled, so learned, and so willing to learn more.  I stayed on with Starswirl for two years, long enough to learn all that he could teach me, and long enough to be by his side at his death bed.  I think it gave him comfort, having a fellow Equestrian by his side in a foreign land.  His last request was that I inform his former student, Clover the Clever, of his death.  Intent on honoring that request, I bid farewell to Scorpan and his homeland, and journeyed back home.
Halfway back, the sun and moon collided.
By the time that I had returned, Equestria was in chaos: The fiends were loose, and all of them, plus Tirek, were running rampant, bringing chaos and destruction wherever they went.  I had missed Commander Hurricane's final battle, and by the time I had set hoof again on Equestrian soil, Diretusk and his legions were already here, subjugating fiends.
I know my limits: I cannot stop fiends on the level of Arabus and his ilk, and while I might be able to stand against Diretusk in a fair fight, the boarc is unlikely to oblige me.  However, I can do one thing.  I studied Sendak's notes while I was at Starswirl's side, curious about whether there might be a method of blocking the spell he'd used to drain my power, should I ever encounter its like again.  I know a great deal about Tirek's magic draining spell now, more than I suspect he knows himself.  He will not be able to drain my magic as he had so many others, so unlike any other unicorn who still draws breath, I can face him without falling instantly.  It took a good bit of traveling, and a fair bit of coin, to learn where Tirek was headed, but I am no stranger to walking, and I have more than enough wealth to spare these days.
The fiends have separated into two camps: One swears allegiance to Grogar, and are gathering strength in order to stand against Diretusk in a final battle that will likely sound Equestria's death knell, one way or the other.  The other fiends are forced to swear loyalty to Diretusk, and are likewise girding themselves for that final confrontation.  Tirek, meanwhile, not willing to call either tyrant his master, was last seen two weeks ago, heading towards the Crystal Empire, no doubt hoping that he will gain enough strength there to be able to defeat both sides.  He will serve no tyrant, save himself.
I am, even now, navigating the harsh winter snows that would normally bar the way to all save a beast of Tirek's size and strength.  However, I have braved worse passes, in worse weather, and even now, I can see Tirek's tracks clearly in the snow.  He cannot be far, perhaps only a little bit ahead of me.  I will run that brute down, and then...
...Then I will do what Celestia and Luna should have done years ago.