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// Where have I seen this before? 
// Story: Paradoxical 
// by Smaug the Golden 
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War was declared on the pegasi next day. And on the earth ponies. Both races also declared war on each other and then on the unicorns. My first thought was that it was stupid. I spent a few days moping around the castle before I decided that I had better find someone to complain with. As such, I went to Arcane.
“Why did war get started?” I griped. “Why couldn’t they just chat it out like friends?"
“Because,” Arcane replied as he fiddled with a book, “the tribes are all racist and arrogant. They can’t see beyond their own stupidity in order to work together in an attempt to stop this blizzard. There’s fae on the move and they can’t look beyond their own snouts.
“Effectively, they’re spoiled children. They’ve known nothing but this type of attitude and are unable to accept anything. They blame one another for their troubles instead of looking inward at themselves. They can’t stop trying to grab the bits that someone spilled when their diamonds are being stolen from their pockets.”
“That was surprisingly long-winded and was filled with more than a few metaphors.”
"I get preachy when I’m mad.”
“What are you mad about?” I asked.
“Everything. Your arrogance, the tribes’ stubbornness, the windigoes, Riptide. It’s a long list.” He slammed his book shut and began walking out of his room.
“Hey,” I asked, “where are you headed?”
“To the dungeon,” he replied. “I’ve got work to do.”
“What are you working on in the dungeon?” He chose to ignore me, walking through the corridors with me trailing behind. “Seriously, what’s your issue?” I was so preoccupied with Arcane that I forgot to look where I was going. I crashed into a blue unicorn who seemed as oblivious to the world as I was. “Sorry,” I muttered, helping her up.
“No worries,” she said happily. “Trust me, I’ve had worse. Where are you headed?”
“To the dungeon.”
“Why?”
“My friend is headed there, I’m just following him.”
“Why?” she asked. “Isn’t following someone a bad idea? You have to listen to what they say and you get nothing in return.”
“Not really,” I replied. “We’re friends, we take turns taking the lead, and so on. It’s very symbiotic.”
"My sisters say that symbiotic relationships are just another way of saying that both members of the group are parasites and thus should be stamped out,” she said. “They also say that the relationship the unicorns have with the pegasi and earth ponies is symbiotic, and as such we are all going to be destroyed by ourselves.”
“Are your sisters philosophers?” It would have explained the pessimism. Don’t sue me.
“No. Besides, what would that have to do with anything?”
“Starswirl,” I heard Arcane shout, “get down here or I’ll do it all without you.” Queen Brass, who stood nearby, gave me a very disapproving glance.
“Starswirl,” Queen Brass asked as she approached. “What are you doing with Arcane this time?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “He told me that he was making so that we didn’t have to worry about the blizzard.” The queen raised an eyebrow at me and I gave her my best 'I know nothing' smile.
“Dusk,” the queen said, turning to face the unicorn I had been talking to, “what are you doing at this hour in the morning?”
“Getting lunch,” she replied.
“Dusk,” Brass said, “it’s eight.”
“But lunch is the meal where they serve make your own foods, like sandwichs.”             
“Dusk,” Brass sighed. The queen looked like she was going to go on a long explanation about economics and food. I decided to step out. I made a dash for the dungeon and Arcane.
The dungeon of Midnight Castle was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The king had filled it with rewards from his many expeditions. Kraken tentacles, kelpie fins, dragon teeth- you name it- adorned the walls. The king had a penchant for getting into fights with dangerous creatures. I was relatively certain that there was a demon skull in the dungeon somewhere, I just had yet to find it.
“Arcane, what are we doing down here?”
Arcane, who had somehow managed to don a suit of armor, approached me. “Starswirl, we are going to summon a kelpie. Riptide, to be precise.”
“How? And where’d you get that armor?”
“Simple. I’ve set up the summoning ritual once more. It’s not exactly hard to get the ingredients--  but I did have to pay a fortune for another phoenix feather.” He gestured with a hoof. “Follow me. Oh, and I got the armor at the market. They sell everything there. Hayburgers included.” We walked deeper and deeper into the dungeon, all the way to the bottom floor.

Arcane had set up the ritual we had used to summon Riptide in the future down to the last detail. Once more, technically for the first time in history, Arcane stood over the bathtub and chanted. For the first time in history, Riptide was summoned by Arcane.
“Who dares summon me?” he roared.
“I am…” Arcane trailed off, but quickly resumed speaking. “I am Starswirl, greatest mage to ever live.”
Riptide set a hoof against his chest, probably to make himself look patriotic. I felt it made him look stupid. “You were wise to summon Riptide, greatest and most powerful of the kelpies. I have helped the greatest warlocks of this day and age.”
“Can you name a few?” I asked.
“Sure. Never Quits, Sendak, and Meadowbrook, to name a few. I helped them with some of their mightiest schemes. If those aren’t qualifications then I don’t know what is.”
Arcane raised an eyebrow. “You knew Meadowbrook?”
“Sort of,” Riptide admitted. “He summoned me, I gave him some information, he told me that I was useless, and then sent me back to my homeland. He threw a cauldron at my head, which then helped him make one of his enchanted items.” Riptide glanced over at one wall and admired the creatures parts on it. “Wow, that’s an amazing dragon talon.”
“Which one?’
“The large gray one. Looks like it might be Gorias's.” Riptide began to reach for the claw, almost as if he wished to take it. Why he wanted to do with that I had no clue. It was old, wrinkly and had a piece of black crystal in it. I had walked past it multiple times before, and all it did was make me hate the dull colors.
“I meant the artifact.” Arcane slapped Riptide’s hoof as he reached for the talon, causing Riptide to retract it in pain.
“The one with that horribly dull name. The Sword of Sharpness or something.” Riptide waved his hoof limply a few times until it started functioning again.
“Don’t all of his items have dull names?” Arcane asked. “There’s the Helmet of Hardheadedness, the Crystal Ball of Foggy Futures, and so on.”
“I really don’t pay attention to politics and sword scandals. Regardless, why did you two summon me?”
I pulled out my scroll and showed to him. “We tried to use this thing to get to the future, but it wouldn’t work.” Riptide examined it closely.
“Well, that’s obviously not going to work. You’ve got a perfect backwards time travel spell here.”
“What?”
“Simple,” he said. “You designed a spell that would take you back in time, not forward in time.”
I blinked a few times. Arcane hit me with an ironclad hoof. “You’re dead meat.”
I shrugged. “I’m sorry.” I turned my attention to Riptide. “So, do you think you could help us engineer it to take us forward in time?”
“Nope,” Riptide said. “I could make you a new one, but it would cost you.” He placed his hoof on multiple spots of the scroll. “See, you’ve got this weird bit here, and this thing is certainly a typo from whatever you copied it from. Honestly, what kind of mind do you have, and who taught you to do time travel?”
“You. What would it cost us for a new spell?”
“You eternal soul, a boon and a lot of rock candy. Also, there's no way I could have you this. I'm certainly not incompetent. Admittedly, it makes sense, but I'm not that bad at time travel.”
“How about we just give you a bunch of cake after you’ve helped us?”
“Fine. But I still need that boon.”
Arcane raised his visor. “Why?”
“Your race is doomed if you don’t fulfil this. My cousin is bent on destroying the world as you know it.”
“You have got a terrible family.” Riptide shrugged and flopped out of the tub, dragging himself along the floor in a bizarre manner that also appeared efficient.
“She’s eviler than my other two cousins.”
"Let’s just kill her and get this over with,” Arcane muttered as he pulled a massive sword off one wall. “I’m sick of being stuck here."

Thirty minutes later, we found ourselves standing in the middle of the blizzard. Arcane was pissed and Riptide had no clue where we were. “You said you knew where your cousin was!” Arcane snapped.
Riptide shrugged as he chilled on a giant heap of snow. “I told you that she was going to destroy your race; I never said that I knew where she was.” Arcane growled and swung his sword around a few times before finally sighing and sitting down in a snowdrift.
“Why?” he murmured, throwing the sword to one side. “Why does this always have to happen to me? Any magical being I work with doesn’t even know left from right.”
Riptide flopped off of his snow pile and landed in front of Arcane. “Don’t worry pal,” he said, wrapping a hoof around Arcane and then withdrawing it immediately, “we’re not that lost. We just have to figure out where the pegasi live.”
“And where is that?”
“I have no clue,” Riptide replied as he slithered across the snow. “But it shouldn’t be too hard. They live three thousand feet off the ground in a massive city made of clouds.”
Arcane pointed upwards with a hoof. “There are clouds everywhere.”
“Well, I apologize if I didn’t realize that the pegasi had become masters of camouflage. It’s not like I keep up to date with the times.”
“Um, what are you three doing trespassing on pegasi land?” A green pegasus in a suit of dented armor stood not far from us.
Riptide raised an eyebrow. “We’re not trespassing, we’re in the middle of nowhere.” The pegasus replied by throwing the book at him. A heavy volume struck him in the chest, knocking him over. Riptide flipped through it. “You really carry this thing around with you? It’s a legal dictionary, not some soldier equipment.”
The pegasus glared at him. “If you don’t clear off, I have the right to convict the three of you on the grounds of trespassing, refusing to follow orders, and being insolent, according to the pegasi law. You could spend three months to life in prison. Do you really want that to happen?”
Riptide sighed. “Look, I’m a kelpie. You have no right to convict a fae. We’re protected by all that boring legal stuff.”
“So you’re not going to come willingly?” The pegasus bent her legs in anticipation. I glanced between the two of them, preparing for a fight.
“No, I’m not going to clear off or come with you.”
“Then I’ll have to fight you.”
Riptide grinned. “Go ahead.” The pegasus promptly attacked me and pinned me to the ground. I began screaming in panic and Riptide looked genuinely surprised. “So, you’re going to kill him if I don’t come?”
“No,” the pegasus replied. “I’m going to severely maim him. So, you going to come?”
“Arcane,” Riptide said, “knock her on the head with that sword of yours.” Arcane obliged and she fell over unconscious. “So,” Riptide commented as he pointed to her army. “She’s a relatively low ranking, incompetent pegasus soldier.”
“What makes you say that?”
"Simple,” Riptide said. “That badge on her chest. The privates in their army where them. What do we do with her?”
"She could take us to Hurricane,” I suggested as I stood up and massaged my head.
“I vote we eat her.”
Arcane looked up at him. “Why would we do that?”
“I haven’t eaten since last week; I get violent when I’m hungry.”
“We are not going to eat her,” I said as I pulled some rope out of my saddlebag. “We’ll just tie her up for a little while and then she can take us to the pegasi.
“You’ll never take me alive!” the pegasus shouted, apparently not fully unconscious. Arcane knocked her on the head, this time with his ironclad hoof. She moaned and fell over unconscious. We tied her up and left her on the ground. We walked a little ways, trying to find some way to take us to Pegasopolis.
“You know,” Riptide commented as he slithered through the snow, “there’s a lot of snow, but not a lot of hail. Why is that?”
I felt compelled to state my mind, so much so that I slipped on a patch of ice because I wasn’t paying attention. “Ow,” I muttered as Arcane helped me up. “Riptide, it’s windigoes who are causing this. They’re spirits of Winter, it’s not surprising that they don’t bring hail.”
“That makes sense, but seriously, what kind of terrifying ice fae don’t bring hail?”
“Winter, not ice,” Arcane grumbled as he walked past the two of us. “Do you think we could get to Pegasopolis before we freeze to death because you guys are arguing about what the windigoes are?”
“Don’t worry too much,” Riptide said calmly. “We just have to find the giant cloud.”
Arcane glanced at the stormy skies. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to find Pegasopolis in this weather. Do you think we should just have our prisoner take us to the pegasi?”
Riptide turned to face Arcane. “Fine, but you’re cheating me out of a perfectly good meal. Let’s go wake her up.” He slithered back to our camp, Arcane and I in close pursuit.
When we returned, we wrapped her on the head with a hoof, thankfully not ironclad, until she woke up. She glanced between us and then sighed. “So you three aren’t a nightmare?”
“Nope.”
“Fine, what do you want? My armor? My fortune? My rights to a rank in the army?”
Riptide glanced at the two of us. “Those sound nice. Not sure if she actually has any of those, aside from the armor, but who knows?”
“Of course I have all three,” the pegasus snapped.    
Riptide sighed. “I don’t actually care if you have any of those, I don't even care if you're the daughter of Commander Hurricane. Can you just take us up to Pegasopolis? I have some business to attend to.”
“I’d rather die than betray my kingdom to the unicorns. Or whatever you are.”
Riptide waved a hoof at me and Arcane. “Do me a favor and ready a spit.” I blanched, and I expected that Arcane had as well, but the armor hid any reaction my friend had.
The pegasus began to panic. “Alright, alright, I’ll take you to Hurricane.”
Riptide smiled in a way that gave me shivers.  “I’m glad we could come to an agreement. Now, would you prefer to take us to her before or after lunch?”
“Before.”
Riptide looked thoroughly disappointed. “Alright. Well, take us to your leader or something.” He untied the pegasus, but left her wings bound. “So, what’s your name?
“The stories always say that you shouldn’t give your name to a kelpie or they’ll put a hex on you.”
Riptide threw his hooves into the air. “Wherever I go, people think that kelpies are out to get them. Why is that?”
“Because you’re a shapeshifting water demon that wants to know the names of everyone in the world?”
“Would you rather I have your name or that I have you in my stomach?”
“I prefer the former option. It’s Pansy.”                
As Pansy began to lead us, I ran up to Riptide. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Nope,” Riptide replied. “But it’s certainly going to be entertaining."
Arcane slugged Riptide across the jaw with his hoof. Riptide screamed in pain and slithered away after the pegasus. “That kelpie will be the death of me.”