• Published 24th Nov 2011
  • 7,684 Views, 179 Comments

Harmony's Wrath - hahatimeforponies



[OLD STORY] A strange book shatters Twilight and her friends' worldviews and sets them on their own adventure.

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The Last Piece

The door of Fluttershy's cottage slowly swung open, and the last of the orange sunlight filtered into the room past the pegasus entering.

"Uhm... hello? Anypony home?" She asked, looking around. Cautiously, she took another few steps inside. Still silence.

"Ah, the others must still beAH!" Twilight, following close behind, nearly jumped out of her skin when not one, but two ponies poked their heads out of hiding into the doorway, wearing goofy expressions and sticking their tongues out. The surprise also sent Fluttershy scurrying behind a birdhouse.

"Boo!"

"What th- Pinkie!" She recoiled, still panting in shock.

"Hah, you're a natural!" Pinkie Pie giggled, bumping hooves with the stranger; a grey pegasus.

"Well duh! You don't know Derpy Hooves?" Rainbow Dash pushed in past Twilight, greeting the stranger eagerly.

"Wait... you know this pony?" Twilight shook herself off and closed the door behind herself.

"Sure! Back in Cloudsdale, she was like a big sister to me and Fluttershy. We were still pretty young when she had to leave, but it was still awesome when she was there!" Dash beamed. Derpy blushed a little and chuckled.

"Had to leave? Why?" Twilight blinked.

"I..." Derpy began, only for Rainbow to cut in and resume telling the story.

"When it turned out her daughter was a unicorn, she moved to Ponyville and got a job carrying the mail! She is the best mom..."

"I guess that explains why I've never met you before, since all my mail goes through Spike... which reminds me! He wasn't awake earlier, I don't know if he's still tired from our... trip... to..." Twilight stopped her train of thought, and turned a suspicious eye to Derpy Hooves. "... Pinkie, why is... is..."

"Derpy."

"... why is Derpy here?"

"Well..." Derpy lifted her hoof and started to explain, only to be interrupted again when Pinkie Pie jumped in her way.

"When we were eating lunch she came in looking for Dinky and then we told her that the Cutie Mark Crusaders are missing so then we went back to her place because there was this letter that said where they were going and then we told her why we think they went there and then I got to listen to how Equestria was made again and themf!" Pinkie's flow of word soup was interrupted when Twilight clamped a hoof to her mouth.

"Hold up a second. The Cutie Mark Crusaders are missing? And you let Derpy in on this whole... thing? What... I..." The expression on Twilight's face conveyed what she couldn't articulate. One eye half closed, the brow of the other halfway up her forehead, mouth pulled back into a grimace and one hoof raised to her temple.

"If somepony will let me speak..." Derpy gently shoved Pinkie Pie out of her way to talk to Twilight directly. "Yes, the Cutie Mark Crusaders - my daughter included - are missing. Your friends Applejack and Rarity were galloping around town looking for them, and I ran into them looking for Dinky. Turns out, the other three left a note for her saying they were going to Canterlot to find you guys..." Twilight's eyes went wide. "... that's what I thought. And that's when they let me in on your... adventure, as a possible reason why."

"The whole thing?" Twilight bleated incredulously. Derpy nodded; her one unfocussed eye at odds with her otherwise serious expression. "Ugh! It was supposed to be kept a total secret! We can't just keep telling everypony and anypony about it!"

"Wait up, Twilight. I say Derpy here is trustworthy." Rainbow Dash interrupted. Derpy struck a slightly dramatic pose, right on cue. Fluttershy nodded in agreement from behind the birdhouse. "Plus, she might as well stick with us and help Applejack and Rarity bail the little squirts out of trouble."

"And you're not going to help with Scootaloo?" Twilight tilted her head. Dash sighed.

"Bleh. Annoying little orange thing never leaves me alone."

"Rainbow!" Twilight barked. "How can you be so callous? She's in danger!" Rainbow hung her head in shame.

"I... uhm..." Maybe a little too blunt...

"I expected better from you, Rainbow Dash. Anyway, Pinkie. Did you find any leads on Trixie?"

"Hoofington!"

"Hoofington?" Twilight raised a brow. Pinkie nodded.

"We figured she'd be all washed up there, but I don't know how since there's no beach in Hoofington. I wish there was a beach in Hoofington, cos then I could go and play there, and..." Pinkie continued to ramble on, and Twilight zoned out, giving the idea a sanity check. Hoofington... as first guesses go, it's not bad. It's a start. "...and that's how I met Rainbow Dash!"

"Uhm..." Twilight blinked. Dash looked equally nonplussed. She shook her head and ignored the non-sequitur. "Okay. Hoofington it is. It's on the way to Canterlot, so I guess... that's convenient. Now, where are Applejack and Rarity?"

"They said they had some things to take care of." Pinkie shrugged. Twilight cast a worried look at the setting sun.

"They'd better hurry up, we're running out of time... Everypony, rest up while I study these books. You'll need your strength. This could be another long night..."


Smash.

A stick of wood snapped on a metal pole, with the aid of two firm, simultaneous hoof-strikes. The two pieces, one with a large, flat metal blade embedded in it, fell away, landing on a growing pile of similarly broken axes. An earth pony picked up another axe in her teeth, and propped it up against the pole, supported by a crate. With a single, dexterous movement, she spun on her front hooves and delivered a sharp kick to the tool, one hoof on either side of the pole.

Snap.

Splintering apart, the two pieces tumbled from their support, just like the last one. When she went to replace it and try again, she noticed a major discrepancy between the piles of broken axes and intact ones; more precisely, she was down to the last one. It was unremarkable in many ways; a little old-fashioned in design, but then again, so were many of the axes that lay in two pieces behind her.

"Twilight, ah hope you're right about this..." She mused grimly, and propped it up against the pole. Once again, she turned, reared back, and bucked her hind hooves back.

Thunk.

That was odd. She looked over her shoulder, seeing the axe behind her perfectly intact. Better try it again!

Clack.

She peered over her flank again. Still nothing. She glared at the tool, and on her next approach, she got a few lengths' run-up, before swivelling at the last moment and putting all of her momentum into the kick.

Ka-shunk.

"There we g... wait..." She looked around a final time to see that, rather than the axe snapping against the pole, the pole had bent backwards, and the axe had slipped over it without so much as a scratch. She smirked, and retrieved the intact tool to inspect it. Her smile slid from her face when she looked up, and saw the tremendous pile of broken wood and steel on the floor; every axe on the farm, bar one. "Now ah just gotta explain all these to Big Macintosh..."


"Come on Rarity, you can do this..." The unicorn took a few deep breaths, hidden behind a tree in Ponyville's central square, within spitting distance of the town hall's entrance. Lowering her head, her horn began to glow, building into a short flash. When the light subsided, she had apparently disappeared; however, phantom hoofsteps in the snow belied her presence. Tip-toeing carefully around the hall, she made her way to the basement, where some of the town's oldest treasures were kept.

She'd done her homework on this. When the last of Ponyville's barons died and the mayoral office was set up, many of the barony's riches were bequeathed to the town, and have been gathering dust under the baron's townhouse-turned-town hall ever since. There had been a few initiatives to set up a museum for the collection in the past, but none of them ever gathered enough steam. Her reasoning for investigating here of all places was simple; all the other artifacts found thus far had in some way returned to their point of origin over the years. Dash's spear had returned to the gryphon kingdoms, Pinkie's rocket was tucked away under Sugarcube corner, Fluttershy's staff was found in the Everfree forest, and Twilight's sword stayed in Canterlot. It only made sense that her dagger had, at some point, made its way back to Ponyville, and lay with the rest of the barons' riches.

Her experimental invisibility spell was holding up well - not even a shimmer of her body could be seen. So far, so good. She did a quick visual scan of the basement, and seeing nopony around, she locked the hatch behind herself, and uncloaked. It was dark, the basement was expansive, and there were an awful lot of boxes. So she decided to cheat - setting her horn aglow, she initiated the same spell she used to locate gems in the ground. Smirking, she lifted her head to see where that left her. Her smile, however, quickly departed. Every second box appeared to contain half a dozen gemstones, at least. Well that was helpful, Rarity. Want a blindfold while you're at it? She thought for a moment about the dagger itself. She remembered from the palace that its gems were arranged much like Corundum's belt ornament; three pale blue gemstones in a line, the middle one a little larger than the other. But what were those gems... aquamarine? Blue topaz? Spinel? Lapis lazuli? 'Blue' doesn't really narrow it down... Wait! Corundum... sapphire! Armed with this deduction, she focussed a little more, narrowing down the scope of her spell. Sapphires...

At the back of the cavernous basement, she saw the contents of a single box lit up. Three pale blue gemstones, arranged in a line. I have you now, handsome...


Twilight had found herself a nice little cove in one of the windows of Fluttershy's cottage to curl up in and read. Alright, time is short so don't indulge, Twilight... skim. She took a deep breath and pulled Magic of the Body from her discarded saddlebag. Let's see... contents... Of course, the whole book just had to be in ye olde Ekwestriane, didn't it? Sarco... sarco... Cutie Marks? Hmm... worth a look, but I'll save it for a little later.. Osteo... wow, some of these look really bad... here we go, Haemomancy, page 412. She flipped the book open in the middle and sifted through the pages, releasing their collected dust. The book was in immaculate condition, but it still had a millennium to gather dust.

Eugh... okay. Blood manipulation, blood transfiguration, here we go, blood rituals. 'Bloode rityuaels...' who wrote this thing? 'Blood rituals are a complex form of magic, combining elemental, sacrificial and ritual components to pierce the barriers between planes. The elements used determine which plane is breached, the insignia drawn in the blood determines the type of exchange undergone, and the type of sacrifice determines the depth of the exchange. The elements...' elements... elements... the story said something about lighting the blood pattern on fire, so let's see, fire, fire... 'Fire, flames and sparks connect with...' I'm not even going to try and pronounce that. She made a note of the bewildering sequence of letters, some of them not used in modern Equestrian at all, to check against the Diaries of a Planeswalker later.

Insignias... okay, this seems simple enough, these drawings are pretty clear. Wow... there sure are a lot of symbols here. Messages, transport, summoning... oh, here come the complicated ones... drawing energy, dispelling energy, banishment! Let's see... 'This insignia removes beings from the plane of the caster to the target plane. In order to work at all, it requires a minimum sacrifice of...' She gulped. Light reading this was not. '... a hand, a hoof or an organ. As with all insignias, the potency of the ritual rises with sacrifice, and the minimum sacrifice required increases with the ability of the target to resist.' That's definitely not good... 'At higher potencies, the ritual begins to cleanse any residual magic left behind by the target. Demons typically require a minimum of a single life sacrifice to banish.' She began to drip cold sweat, and even her internal voice began to waver. 'Magical artifacts can contribute to the potency of the ritual, but on their own they are not enough to banish a demon.' Sighing and shivering a little to herself, she turned away from the book. So finding Trixie's element will help, but it doesn't get around the fact that somepony needs to give their life to make this happen... and we're still not even sure if we're in the right ballpark... She shook her head and turned back to the tome. There has to be another way. She flipped through a few more insignias, and finding nothing, she pushed the book to one side, and pulled out Diaries of a Planeswalker.

Hmm... what was that name again? She scanned the book - a slightly messier manuscript - looking for the distinctive mish-mash of letters. After a few minutes of flipping back and forth, checking for references to fire realms, she eventually happened upon the entries of interest. 'Today I have entered what can only reasonably be described as the plane of hell. Without my enchantments of protection, I and my diary with me would have been incinerated upon arrival. They call this plane...' there must be a pronunciation guide for this somewhere. '... and its masters the Djinn. The Djinn are mischievous, greedy, wrathful beings, who like the flames, shift form on a whim and wreak terrible fates upon those who cross them.' Fits the story's description of Celestia so far. 'At a moments' notice, they can whip up powerful combinations of curses to bestow centuries of horror on their victims. Heavens preserve Equestria should one of these beasts be summoned to it. I shall not stay in this plane for long; while I task myself with uncovering the secrets of the planes, perhaps this is one plane whose secrets are best left just that - secret.'

Twilight shuddered. She rubbed her face in her hooves and pushed the book aside for a moment. Heavy stuff... With a sigh, she returned to Magic of the Body.


The four young fillies pulled their capes tighter around themselves as they mounted their scooter. Scootaloo had spent some time sleeping, and Applebloom had been tracking down some supplies, while Sweetie Belle and Dinky Hooves kept an eye on their convoy. Something about this town just gave them the creeps, and the setting sun wasn't helping. They figured there wasn't much worth sticking around for; once they could pick out Canterlot on the horizon, they might as well be on their way to a friendlier town. The journey through the winter night would be hard, but such is the way of adventure.

"Wow, it sure is pretty tonight!" Dinky marvelled at the dusk sky, the first stars appearing as they left the town.

"Yeah... it's almost like that night we were watching the meteor shower!" Sweetie Belle agreed.

"That was bee-yoo-tiful! Remember, Scootaloo?" Applebloom chipped in, taking a quick glance at the sky before looking over to their pegasus chauffeur. Scootaloo just sighed and kept diligently beating her wings.

"Yeah. Just awesome." She grumbled. Applebloom raised an eyebrow. What's gotten into her?

"You should have been there, Dinky!" Sweetie Belle turned to the other unicorn, both of them huddled in the back with Applebloom for warmth.

"I think I was watching that meteor shower with my mom. She's the greatest!"

"Is she better than Applejack? Huh?" Applebloom gave Dinky a light shove.

"Or Rarity? Rarity's pretty great!" Sweetie Belle giggled.

"Augh, shut UP!" Scootaloo yelled from nowhere, the scooter skidding to a sudden halt. She lay over the handlebars panting. The three ponies in the back blinked and gawped at the little pegasus, shocked.

"Scootaloo, are you..." Applebloom ventured, after a few moments' tense silence.

"I... I'm fine." She leaned forward, and the scooter began to move again.

The rest of the trip was quiet.