//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 - Corruption // Story: A Scientific Breakthrough // by Eruedraieth //------------------------------// A week passed since we recieved the letter notifying that Celestia found the runaway human. I had a few jobs and tasks here and there from Celestia. One of those jobs included capturing what looked to me like a random commonner. Celestia was positive that this random commonner had something to do with a rebellion rising up in one of the nearby small towns. I didn't question it, and just captured the poor fellow and took him to Celestia. He stood no chance against the Shadow, ofcourse. When I decided last week that my name needed to be a bit more befitting, I told Celestia about it, and she agreed completely. I tried prying some information out of Celestia concerning the human, but she kept her mouth firmly shut. I wondered why in the beginning, but eventually I just stopped trying and made myself believe that Celestia would tell me herself in due time. Twilight was worried too, ofcourse. The letter had left a huge impact on her, and I often had to comfort her when she thaught she heard 'things' at night. The other elements were all quite busy with their jobs, and Fluttershy had a lot of animals to look after. I barely saw them at all during the week. Today, though, was going to be different. We woke up in the morning, and I just relished in Twilight's embrace. Spike, however, decided to barge into the room at that moment, holding a royal letter. "Guys, a letter arrived today! I think you might want to take a look at it!" I sat up in the bed and took the letter from him, breaking the seal and opening the letter. It read: Dear Twilight and Primal, I have no doubt this last week was confusing for the both of you. After the letter I sent you earlier, I had made no attempt to give any further information about the human. I had my reasons. However, we found out where the human is located at. She's residing in a cave in a mountain relatively close to Ponyville, called Whitewash Mountain. I want for you two and the rest of the elements to inspect the cave. I don't know what we could expect from someone living in solitary for that long. I advise you to take utmost care in approaching her, and if possible, attempt to integrate her into pony society. Put her down only when there are no other options. Your Princess, Celestia Twilight had read the letter along with me, as she was quite curious as to its contents. After finishing with reading, we looked at each other, silently wishing for the other to have a plan. "I say we take heed to Celestia's advice, bring the Elements of harmony along with us and check what the hay is going on with her" I suggested. We quickly got dressed. I put on my travelling gear Rarity had made for me, ad Twilight settled on just her saddlebags, as she didn't really need any clothing other than on fancy occassions. "By the way, I still wanted to ask you about that blood sample I took from you. I know it's a long time ago, but I found out then that your blood is able to transport carbon dioxide. Any explanation as to why that is so?" Twilight asked, whilst eating the breakfast I made for her. "To put it simply, carbon dioxide is a waste product for humans. We breathe in oxygen, and we breathe out carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide in turn gets consumed by plants, which 'breathe' out oxygen. Essentially we live in harmony with plants, the plants providing us with oxygen and us providing carbon dioxide for plants. That's the basic gist of it" I explained. "Hm, interesting. I never really studied plants in-depth. Maybe I should do that some time. First though, we have the issue of the runaway human" she said. "I take it you guys are going on another adventure then?" Spike asked. "Can I come along with you guys for once, i'm getting really bored with just tending to the library all the time". Twilight looked hesistant, as to which Spike pleaded her to take him with us. "Oh all right, I have been quite neglecting your need for adventure I guess". We finished our breakfast, and headed out of the library, to fetch the rest of the Elements of Harmony. We stopped by Rainbow Dash's home, as she would be able to round up the rest faster than we could. "Rainbow Dash! We need you down here STAT!" Twilight shouted upwards at the cloud home. It took a little while, but eventually a groggy cyan mare peeked out over the side of the cloud home. "I'll be right there, gimme a sec!" she shouted back at us. I admired the scenery while we waited for Rainbow, and not too much time later she came charging down to us. She wasn't able to stop herself in time, and barrelled into me. I fell over, with Rainbow Dash located on top of me in quite the awkward position. "Would you get off me already? We got an important matter to tend to." Rainbow smiled awkwardly, and quickly muttered an apology before floating off of me using her strong wings. I stood up, brushing the dust and grass off of my clothes and looked at Dash. "Could you do us a favour and fetch Fluttershy? Take her to Applejack's farm, and we will meet you there with the rest shortly." Dash nodded, and flew off towards Fluttershy's cottage. "Let's get moving, we've got no time to waste" I said quickly. We headed over to Rarity's abode next, as I expected the mare would take some time to prepare for a journey. I explained the situation to her, and she quickly cobbled together a few sets of clothing and propped them in her saddlebags before returning to us. "We have no time to waste! Let us go to Pinkie pie!" she said. We headed over to Pinkie and arrived at the bakery not a moment later. Pinkie, ofcourse, was over the moon with excitement and quickly bounded upstairs again to pack her saddlebags with whatever she was going to be packing them with. Twilight knew what she would be packing, and explained it to me and told me not to worry about it. "It's Pinkie Pie, go figure. Or actually, don't go figure. You will probably go insane in trying to". Pinkie got back to us in utmost excitement, and already started bounding over to Applejack's farm. We followed her quickly, barely able to keep up with her long bounding strides, and arrived at the farm in quick succession. "What the hay's goin' on guys? Why're we all 'ere?" Applejack asked in confusion. I explained to her what I said to Rarity and Pinkie, which caused her confusion to clear up, along with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy's slight confusion at the situation. I quickly pulled out a map from one of my utility pockets, and folded it out as I held it in my hands. "We have to head to Whitewash Mountain" I pointed at the map, to where the mountain was located. "The mountain is right next to Smokey mountain, to the right of this railroad track. Celestia told us the runaway human we wanted to try and find should be located there, and told us to go and inspect the situation" I said. Spike seemed excited at the thought of adventure, and couldn't help but bounce around Pinkie-style. "Finally! I'm going on an adventure!" he shouted. Twilight just chuckled at Spike's theatrics, and asked me which way we had to go. "If we head northwest from here, we should arrive at the Whitewash mountain. We should take care to head to the right mountain, though, as Smokey mountain is right next to Whitewash Mountain" I said. "I know what Smokey Mountain looks like, I had to go there once to find a rare gem only found on that mountain" Rarity said. I noticed Spike looking at Rarity what looked like an extreme amount of love and affection, which was not returned. "Good, atleast we will find the mountain with relative ease, then. Only problem now is that we have to head through a forest to reach the base of the mountain" I said. "The animals inside that forest shouldn't be a problem. Just let me deal with them" Fluttershy said with confidence, which was quite a rare thing to see. "Les' git goin' then! No point in makin' that human wait fer us!" Applejack said in mock excitement. All of us quickly checked to see if we had forgotten anything, and headed on our way to the Whitewash Mountain. Ofcourse, I could've just teleported us there in an instant, but I had no idea what we would expect there. That and the fact that a journey like this helped lift spirits and increased the general feeling of friendship. We followed the railroad track for a bit, checking the map every so often to see if we headed in the right direction. I enchanted the map to add a marker for where we were, which pointed us in the right direction. We just chatted about all sorts of things during our journey, and Rainbow Dash flew ahead of us to scout for any possible dangers. Spike sat on Twilight's back, as the young dragon didn't have the stamina to take such long walking journeys yet. Applejack held a conversation with Rarity about Celestia knows what, and Fluttershy was in the back of our group, admiring the forest in curiousity. Pinkie was at the front of the pack, bounding along in excitement while shouting "FUN!" from time to time. I walked next to Twilight, trying to come up with a plan of how we would deal with the human. I looked at all of the mares' constellation marks, and thought of a way to use those effectively. Twilight noticed me thinking, and asked me what I was thinking of. "To put it simply, I have literally no idea on how to deal with her once we get there. I was thinking of using the marks I gave you, but I don't know how much of an effect they will provide". I materialized my belt, sensing danger and drew my daggers, and saw Pinkie twitching on the spot. She took the lead in warning us: ''Guys, my Pinkie sense is tingling. I don't know what this combination is but I don't like it." She looked at me to find my daggers already drawn in wait, and relaxed a bit. "We got Primal to protect us if something does come for us, and im sure our new marks can prove of some use!" she said in a slightly happier tone. Pinkie's sense and mine were right, as not long after a pack of four wolves jumped out of the cover of the forest. Rainbow Dash immediatly tensed up, and I noticed her channel a spell in preparation, but Fluttershy stopped her: "STOP! Let me try and reason with these wolves, i'm sure they can look elsewhere instead of us." Fluttershy approached the wolves cautiously, and I motioned for Rainbow to keep her spell channeled in case something happened. From what I saw she had a frost spell ready, having noticed its power in preventing harm to her friends while not causing any to the victims, other than maybe hypothermia. Twilight was tense, aswell, and I saw her mark glowing softly, which indicated to me that she was going to cast either some sort of armor or a paralysis spell. Looking over at Applejack, I saw her mark glowing aswell, ready to cast an illusion if needed. I was tense aswell, readying a spell I wanted to test out for some time now. It causes me to disappear from sight and reappear behind my target, essentially opening up an option for an instant backstab. I called it Shadowstep, as I vanished into the shadows to 'step' begind my target not a moment later. I looked over to Fluttershy to see her attempt to converse with the wolves, who just seemed bored and waiting to pounce on her at any moment. I saw one of the wolves getting ready to jump, and I shouted: "FLUTTERSHY! GET BACK! THE REST GO!" I cast my shadowstep, and appeared behind the wolf that wanted to jump on Fluttershy, and stabbed him, instantly wounding him to the point of surrender. I had become quite efficient at disabling targets, striking important nerves and muscles to stop the target dead in their tracks. Wolves, in that respect, were not a lot different from ponies, as they were just slightly bigger quadrilateral creatures. I knew exactly where to strike, disabling my target. Rainbow's frost spell had hit the other three wolves, who were now frozen in place. Twilight and Applejack let their channels drop, seeing as it was no longer needed, and headed over to Fluttershy to comfort her. "Don't you worry 'Shy, I froze the wolves and Primal disabled the wolf who wanted to jump at you. They'll be fine eventually. Right Primal?" Dash said. I nodded, and Rarity commented something about "those poor wolves", while Fluttershy just sat in silence shivering. I motioned for Twilight to cast a paralysis spell on the wolf I disabled, and I healed his wound to allow for faster recovery. "Come, let's continue before those wolves become active again." The party agreed, and after nudging Fluttershy to get moving, we continued on our way to the mountain. "I sure do hope we do not encounter more of those wolves. I would hate to see what disabling those would cause for damage on Fluttershy's psyche" Rarity said. "You keep Fluttershy in check, we will deal with those wolves if they appear" I motioned to Rainbow, who nodded an approval. We neared the edge of the forest we had to breach in order to reach the mountain. "The cave should be located near the base of the mountain, accessible to some degree by climbing some rocks, Celestia had said" I said to the party We carefully entered the forest, Dash rushing ahead to scout it out. When she came back to us to tell us that it was clear and we had a straight path towards the mountain, Twilight fell awfully silent. "Something does not feel right about this" she said. I felt it too. A strange, and ominous feeling of what was to come. We cautiously waded our way through the forest, relieved that nothing else stopped us, but distressed by it too. "It's quiet. Too quiet. Almost as if something tore through this forest and taking all the sound with it" I said with a low voice. We neared the other edge of the forest, and saw the cavern before us. "Is it me, or does it look like there's an aura of darkness emanating from the inside of that cave?" Twilight said. "Ah can see it too. Ah can't say ah'm mighty afraid of whatever's in that cave" Applejack added. Rainbow flew up to see if she could spot anything, but the inside of the cave was too dark for her to see anything. She shook her head towards us in vain, and waited for us to climb the rocks. Pinkie bounded up the rocks with relative ease. It was quite easy for me too since my height compared to the ponies gave me a significant advantage. Rarity, however, had a bit of a problem with climbing. Spike rushed over to give her an aiding claw, and together they managed to reach the entrance of the cave. I tried to peer into the cave, with no succes. "Twilight, we could use some of your light I feel. Use your mark for it as to not exhaust your personal magic supply". She created a small orb of light which sprang forth from her mark, and it flew ahead of us into the cave, illuminating a long and winding passage headed downwards. "I'll take the lead. She would probably be scared the least by seeing another human first. Let me do the talking, if that is possible" I said. I ventured forth into the cave, the light-orb illuminating our path ahead. WWWWW We walked for what seemed like an eternity, the cave unending and bathed in darkness save for our light-orb guiding us. Eventually, we reached a point where the tunnels took a sharp right. Rainbow being the bold-headed one, took a quick peek around the corner. "Can't see anything but darkness, so I guess that's a good thing?" Rainbow said in a wavering voice indicating she was a little scared. We carefully took the corner, arriving in yet more darkness. Suddenly, our light-orb fell to the ground and died out of nowhere, bathing us in complete darkness. "Okay, I'm quite scared now. Twilight could you get the light back, please? Quickly?" Rainbow Dash said. Twilight tried using her mark to create the orb again, but nothing happened. She then tried using her own magic, but aside from the dimmed light emanating from her horn, there was no light. "So something extinguished our light and made us unable to create any..." Twilight said, shivering. I drew one of my daggers, and tried enchanting it with a light-rune. The rune managed to attach for a second, but vanished shortly after. "Even my enchantments are useless. Let me try Fire" I said. I created a small fire in my hand, and launched it into the dark path ahead of us. What seemed like another eternal tunnel ended up being something completely different. The flame died off halfway through travelling to what seemed like an enormous chamber. "So there is what looks like a chamber ahead of us. Follow me" I beckoned. The party followed me hesitantly. We arrived at the entrance of the giant chamber, and I tried lighting another fire. Nothing happened, though. "Great, not even my fire works now" I stated. We heard a soft sounding grumble from somewhere in the chamber. It didn't sound like a monster, but it didn't sound completely human or pony either. "Hello? Is anybody or pony there?" my voice echoed through the room. "Who are you?" I heard a voice say. I tried pinpointing where the sound came from, but there was way too much echoing. "My name in this world is Primal Dagger, the Shadow of Equestria. My human name is Joshua, though" I answered the voice. "A human?" The voice asked. "Wait, you said Joshua?" "Yes, what about it?" I had a feeling I knew the voice from somewhere, but I couldn't quite place it. "It's me, Michelle! You remember me right?" The voice asked, in a slightly happier tone. "Michelle??" I queried, with a look of deep confusion plastered on my face nobody was able to discern. "What are you doing in this extremely dark cave, out of all places?" "I was scared. I saw you black out back on Earth, and I couldn't help but try and help you" she said, with a slight tone of regret. "I'm sorry." "Don't be. I have someone here who stated she saw you running away from what seemed like nothing. Care to explain?" I said. "From NOTHING?! I ran from what looked like an enormous monster with massive pincer-claws and one fiery eye!" I heard her voice change tone mid-sentence, to something a bit more ominous. "I ran for days. Eventually I found this cave, and I just kept running forever. I found this chamber, and decided to hide here." Unseen to the eyes however, was the state Michelle was in. The darkness around her was a sentient being, molding her into something horrible, something corrupted. The same darkness that tried to protect Michelle from prying eyes had extinguished our sources of light. It seemed the darkness itself came to life and obeyed Michelle's wish to hide. "Surely you can come with us now, then? We don't mean you any harm, as you couldve noticed" I said, hoping she would say yes and leave this frightening cave. "I don't want to." The hope shatters. "I heard a voice, saying it would be all right to me all this time. That same voice is telling me not to trust you and your intents" she said in a dark voice. "Ugh. Do I have to drag you out of this cave myself? Celestia knows I would do it" I said, slightly annoyed. "You are not dragging me anywhere" she said, with a noticeably inhuman growl coming from her voice. "Okay. I guess you asked for it, then." During our conversation, I managed to pinpoint the source of the voice, and cast a paralysis spell that way. The chamber suddenly flooded with light, causing our eyes to burn. After the burning subsided, we could not believe our eyes. In front of us, was a human. Was. The "voice" she said she'd heard, molded her into something terrifying. Something corrupted. Something evil. "Girls, cast your best spells! NOW!" I shouted to my company. All 6 marks brightened, each for their own spell. Rainbow Dash prepared to cast a massive lightning bolt. Rarity conjured a shield and sword to protect and fight the corrupted human. Applejack duplicated herself 6 times, and all 7 of her were casting a powerful spell which would strenghten the other's resolve. Pinkie worked together with Rarity to enchant her sword to set fire to the target, and enchanted the shield to prevent even the strongest of blows. Fluttershy stood by and channeled a spell which would instantly heal any of our wounds. I stood ready with my Fire- and Wind-imbued daggers and a powerful rune inscribed into the air in front of me, an ancient sign for eternal torment. Spike inhaled, and was ready to cast his fire unto the corrupted human. Lastly, Twilight was casting a dual-spell from both her mark and her horn. Her horn was sparking with energy as she channeled a massive magical bolt, and her mark was channeling a powerful protection spell for herself as she took a few steps closer to the corrupted human. We all unleashed our combined might unto the corrupted human. After the smoke and dust had settled, the sight was horrifying, to say the least. She was staggered by the force of our blast, but was still standing. "Is that all you have?" Her voice not natural any longer. "Pathetic. Here I thought someone would be able to challenge the creature I transformed. Too bad all of you are too weak". I stood in disbelief. I then remembered that aside from the marks, the girls had something powerful aswell. "Girls! Call upon your Elements!" I shouted. They all looked at me with confusion. "We don't have our elements here!" Twilight shouted. "You don't need those physical objects! They are merely a focus for your power! Channel your element on her, NOOOW!" I said, panicked. While I was urging them to use their elements, the corrupted one had been channeling what seemed like something which could completely wipe us from the face of the earth. All of the girls focused, channeling their respective elements. Loyalty, Kindness, Generosity, Honesty, Laughter and Magic. From what I had seen of the show, this was the moment they would start floating and create a circle in mid-air. I was right about my assumption, as they indeed started floating and creating a circle. I saw a gigantic ball of energy appearing in front of the six, and a second later, a beam shot out to the human, just in time to stop the death-beam the corrupted had been channeling. It was like every single clutch-movie and game ever, where the good and bad guy channeled an extremely powerful beam at each other. Should one falter, that one would be wiped out completely. It all depended on this. I watched the clash of the beams, and noticed something out of the corner of my eye. A small glint, which came from a black gem on top of a pedestal. I quickly shadowstepped over to it, and took the gem out of its pedestal. The corrupted one turned its fleshy eyes at me. "Do not touch that gem!" "Oh, but I will. Definitely now that you asked me not to touch it. In fact, i'm going to throw it into the beams" I said, mocking the corrupted one. I enchanted my arm, to provide for extreme stability and precision, and prepared to throw the gem at the beams. "NO, DO NOT DO THAT!" the monster shouted, apparantly panicked. I threw the gem. A massive explosion ensued, and after that, darkness.