//------------------------------//
// Chapter Fifteen: Allure of the Dark Side 
// Story: STAR WARS / FiM: Realms of the Heavens 
// by Tathem_Relag 
//------------------------------//

Everfree Imperial Garrison
1:59 P.M.

Twilight stared at the door. For some reason, she felt a shiver run down her spine as she thought about entering the room. A shiver of fear…
…but also of anticipation. It was as if somepony was calling to her, inviting her to join in a rousing study session, but she heard nothing. And another voice seemed to be saying, “Run away. There’s nothing here for you but pain.” It was a curious sensation.
“Uh, Twilight? Are you alright?” Applejack studied her friend, giving her a good once-over. The alicorn had been standing outside the door with a conflicted look on her face for more than ten seconds. Applejack wasn’t too fond of the idea of entering the Inquisitor’s room, either, but he had insisted that it was the best place to access the Imperial archives. Twilight had agreed to visit it, accepting his story that he had the most authority – and therefore, security clearance – of any of the humans. Applejack, however, could tell that he was hiding something, and Twilight’s expression suggested a deeper conflict than just having sudden doubts.
“Huh?” Twilight blinked several times. Somehow, she had forgotten that there was anypony else there with her. “Oh! I’m fine. Really. Just… thinking about something.” She returned her attention to the door. There was definitely something unusual on the other side. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. Beyond that, the room was a mystery – and she couldn’t just leave a mystery unsolved. She had to go through the door.
Malen, who had been watching her from beside the door, smiled. It sent another chill down her back. He must have seen the determination resolve itself on her face, but the way he seemed to intuitively understand everypony’s emotions and decisions was decidedly creepy. In fact, he almost seemed to feed on them. Twilight briefly wondered if he had some sort of connection to the changelings, then immediately dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Even as big as the galaxy was, the chances of the series of events that led to the creation of the changelings being replicated anywhere else were absurdly thin. It must have “just” been another one of the abilities of his that separated him from the other humans.
He pushed a button on the panel next to the door, and it hissed open. Twilight led her friends into the utter blackness beyond.
Except, no – it wasn’t quite black. A faint red light gleamed by the back wall. As Twilight stepped closer to it, it got brighter and brighter. Soon, it was illuminating the whole room, and its form was clear to see. The light came from a pyramid about half the size of a human head that sat on the bed stand. It was made of gold, a strange black metal, and glowing red crystal. When Twilight came to a stop in front of it and the sound of her own hooves striking the metal floor faded from her ears, she realized something else.
It was whispering to her. It spoke in a language she didn’t know, but somehow, she understood the meaning. “Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”
She took a step back, and the light dimmed a little. She laughed nervously. “Hehe. Ah, does… does anypony else hear that?”
“No, they can’t,” Malen responded for them, walking up beside her. “It calls to you through the Force – to its rightful owner.”
“What? ‘Rightful owner’? Wait, you don’t mean… me?”
“Yes. It is a Sith holocron. It’s drawn to the strong, to those who are both willing to learn its secrets and capable of using them. I may not be a true member of the Order of the Sith Lords, but I have possessed it for many years, and learned much through studying it. Now, however, it senses your greater potential, and it seeks to instruct you.”
“There’s something… wrong about it.”
“Right and wrong are labels invented by the weak and fearful. ‘Right’ simply means that it makes them feel safe; ‘wrong’ that it scares them, challenges them. Holocrons hold nothing but knowledge. They cannot hold ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ for such things do not exist outside of one’s own perceptions. The teachings of the Sith widen those perceptions, and make people realize how limited their views of the universe were before. The holocron feels ‘wrong’ to you because it threatens your preconceived notions, the societal norms that you’ve been conditioned to think of as fundamental absolutes of reality. It scares you because it will make you grow – and growth isn’t a painless process.”
Twilight backed away from him and towards her friends. “No… No! That’s not right! There is good! There is evil! Good is when you’re helping others. Evil is when you only look out for yourself, without caring about whether or not you hurt somepony else in the process. What you’re saying… Look, if somepony attacked your friends…” She reconsidered her example. She was pretty certain he didn’t have any friends. “If somepony attacked you for no reason, hurt you, and laughed about it, wouldn’t you call that evil?”
“Might I call that evil? Perhaps. But that’s because it would be I who was being hurt. I’m sure he wouldn’t consider it evil, and if our roles were reversed, I wouldn’t either. As I said, evil exists only in the mind, merely a word used to describe things that threaten us. It’s entirely subjective. Are your definitions of good and evil conclusions that you came to yourself, or merely the ideas your society has indoctrinated you into believing? Good and evil are not like trees and rocks. If I point to a tree and say, ‘This is a rock,’ I can be proven wrong by scientific facts. If, however, I point to an action or philosophy and say, ‘This is good,’ you can debate with me as much as you wish, but you will never be able to scientifically prove otherwise. You are correct about one thing, though – from your perspective, what I’m saying isn’t ‘right.’ It isn’t safe, it makes you question what you’ve always believed. But it calls to you anyway. You know that what I’m saying is true; you want to expand your perceptions, to gain greater knowledge. All you have to do… is ask the holocron.”
“I… I…”
“Now you hold on, there,” Applejack broke in, stepping up beside Twilight. “You may be able to mess with Twi’s head with all that nonsense, but not me. Some folk call me simple, an’ I reckon that’s true in ways. I got simple values – my family taught me what’s right an’ wrong, an’ I’m stickin’ to it. All yer fancy talk won’t do nothin’ to me, an’ you can be sure that I’ll do everything I can to make sure you don’t hurt her, either.”
“Yeah!” Rainbow Dash flew up to join her. “Twilight’s my friend, and whatever it is you’re doing to her, I won’t let you! I’ll always be there to help her, no matter what!”
With various sounds of assent, the other three Element-Bearers also stepped forward. Twilight looked back at them, a relieved smile breaking through on her face. “Thanks, girls. I know you’ll never let me down.” She turned to the Inquisitor, whose expression had tightened into a rictus of fury. She couldn’t tell for certain in the scarlet tint the holocron’s glow gave everything in the room, but his eyes seemed to have somehow changed from their usual dark brown to a sickly yellow. “You see, Malen? This is what good is. It’s standing up for each other, giving other ponies strength when they’re feeling weak, helping them when their situations seem hopeless. My friends are always there for me, and I’m always there for them. Together, we’ve spread friendship and harmony to countless ponies across all of Equestria. But you’ve shown that you don’t care about those things. You use your power to hurt others, even… to kill them. You don’t care about anypony except yourself. If you really think we’re ‘weak’ for believing in goodness, then by all means – show us how much stronger you are. Prove us wrong.” She tensed, preparing to call upon the power of the Elements as soon as he responded with violence.
The expected attack didn’t come. Instead, Malen squeezed his eyes shut for several seconds, breathing deeply through his nose and clenching and unclenching his fists. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked straight into hers. Though they were back to their normal color, it was still one of the most unsettling things she had ever seen. Aerin’s gaze had borne similarities to Starlight Glimmer’s, before her reformation – full of pain and loss that drove somepony who might have once been good into carrying out evil acts in a desperate and misguided attempt to remove the cause of the pain. The depths of Malen’s eyes, however, held no such hope for redemption. They showed nothing but hatred and a love of destruction, a lust for power and a reveling in all things dark and corrupted. If there had been a good person in there once, it had been driven so far beneath the surface that it might never come back again. He was a combination of the worst of the villains that had plagued Equestria – Tirek’s callous disregard for others, Sombra’s cruel tyranny, Discord’s twisted delight in sadism, and Chrysalis’s heartless scheming and manipulation.
He spoke, his calm tone belied by the barely-contained rage on his face. “You can believe whatever you wish. As the Sith Code says, ‘The Force shall set me free.’ You can do, say, or think anything you want, so long as you have the power to crush those who would try to cause you to do otherwise. I won’t attack you now – it would be foolish to walk into so obvious a trap. No, I can play the long game. If there was anything my time as an assassin or my foolish Consular of a Master taught me, it’s the value of patience. You will come around to my way of thinking eventually. In the meantime…” He turned his attention to a strange contraption on the wall. “You wished to access our archives, did you not?”
Twilight was caught off guard, both by the remarkable self-restraint he showed for a villain, and by this seeming non-sequitur. It took her a moment to remember that the archives were, indeed, the entire reason they had gone to his room in the first place – or at least, that was what he had intended her to believe. But she had no intention of staying near that “holocron” any longer. “No,” she replied, “I think we’ve imposed on your hospitality long enough. Come on, girls, let’s get back to Ponyville.”
“Very well.” Malen pressed a button on the wall. “Lieutenant Orgus, please send down a security team to escort our guests off the premises.” Taking his finger off the button, he grinned at her. “Can’t have you wandering off on your own and getting lost, can we?”
Frankly, she didn’t have any intentions of spying. She just wanted to get out of that place and leave its evil taint behind.





To her surprise, the human troops didn’t try to kill her. Instead, they simply led the Element-Bearers out of the building and past the fence, though their blasters made it clear what they intended to do if anypony stepped out of line.
Back at her castle, she spent the next ten hours writing down everything she remembered about the base, the humans, and their weapons, finally collapsing into bed well after midnight.
And in her tormented dreams, she saw the broken body of the guard, the fierce looks in Aerin and Malen’s eyes, and the red pyramid. And she once again heard its chilling call.
“Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”