Sage of Harmony (Season 1)

by Eon Seb

22. Plans Exploding

In a secure area underneath an ancient house in Canterlot, a twisted being was looking over the report of yet another of his plans going up in flames. After dismissing the informant, the curved horned miscreant proceeded to rage, yell, and break several non-expensive objects that were placed in the room for that exact purpose. They were finding the need to replace them more and more often with each reported disaster.

First the dragon they had redirected was sent away. No. The first mistake had been attempting to remove the bearer of magic while she was still in Canterlot. How had it all gone so wrong? the original plan would have moved their ploy to have the 10 ancient noble families combined ahead by several generations. The one responsible for messing that up was still being prepared to undergo their punishment.

Honesty, having your cutie mark carved off and sacrificed to increase your magic was not that bad. He had gone through it and his core had increased by one third it's previous size. Granted, that ritual and the rituals to activate his connection to 7 of the 10 houses had been spread out over about eight months rather than done all at once, but still. Each of the awakenings had multiplied his power by a factor of 2, add this to the Karkadaan transformation ritual which flat out doubled his power and he could match some of the strongest mages in history.

So why were all of his plans blowing up?!

Plan A: Marry the bearer of the element of magic to remove the Elements of Harmony as a threat and gain the Sparkle family magic at the same time: Ruined.

Plan B: Lock up the element bearers one by one to stop them from meeting: Foiled.

Plan C: Prevent the Lunar throne from gaining power: Stopped before it began.

Plan D: Kill the bearers with a dragon: Prevented by an angry bug!

Plan E: Free Discord: Still in planning stages and won't be ready until AFTER the Gala

Plan F: Old standby: joy

Plan G: Find way to dethrone a Princess legally; HIGHLY unlikely

He was reduced to using the old standby; plan for the next generation and try to unite the 10 houses to make a body for their King to inhabit. Over the years, 6 of the 10 families had been absorbed into his, so only 3 remained in some way.

Those being the House of Fancy, the House of Platinum, and the House of Sparkle.

No mater what he tried Fancy Pants refused all marriage contracts for his daughter so that was out.

The Line of Platinum had disappeared completely and the Sparkle clan had nothing to do with arranged marriages after that busy body Night Light took over as head. That Stallion had a spine made of Jelly coated arcanium! Nothing could convince him to sign his children into any contract.

With this knowledge, his plan of having the first legally recognized herd in over eight hundred years went down the drain.

It looked more and more like he would have to cut his losses and try to seduce Fleur De Lis on his own. "sigh" his public persona was not going to help with that. Unless he lucked out and found a daughter of the Platinum line running around, he might just be sunk. On the bright side, any children he had would be even stronger than he was. True, this would be at the cost of their mother not surviving the birth, but sacrifices must be made in war.

Now he could handle his plans blowing up (right) but this last one just hurt. That carefully engineered feud/war with the buffalo to cut off one of the Princesses' allies was 400 years of work (the better part of his father's life) gone to shit! "I can't think of one way for this to get worse"

In Tartarus

An imp that went by the name of Murphy got a sudden headache followed by a sneezing fit. He had the feeling that his workload and entertainment was about to increase dramatically

Back in the lair

The dark unicorn suddenly got a chill up his spine, as if a stampede had gone over his grave. "Hum. Perhaps I should not have said that. Oh well, I'm sure it will be fine. What could possibly go wrong?" At that moment, a flash of teleportation magic foretold the arrival of his most annoying accomplice. "Ugh, What do you want?"

She grinned condescendingly "I wanted to check up on the latest failure. Why our king bothers to keep you around, I'll never understand."

"Shut up! Like you've done any better. Your latest plan won't be ready until some time next year and, knowing your love of drama, you'll mess up just like usual."

"Well someone's grumpy. Besides I don't get how you can call me a screw up. What have you done recently that worked? So far, I'd say you're the biggest failure to the plan since Snowfall Chickened out!"

"Hey leave my Grandmother out of this! I already have the one who made my plan to absorb House Sparkle useless in the Ritual chamber."

"What punishment did you use on the poor sod?"

His grin was nasty "None, yet. However, all the rituals of power will be done at once to make her ready to bring our king's new body into the world. We even found a way to include the power boosts from House Fancy and Sparkle with some stolen blood."- Here he showed faked confusion

-" And I seem to have misplaced all the pain numbing runes for the ritual. "

This caught her attention "You are a sick being. No wonder I like you." His grin grew several notches.

"We have everything set up. Care to watch?"

Her response of "Yes" was more hiss than words. She was an avid fan of the art of causing pain.

Author's Note:

I split the ritual into it's own chapter just to be safe. Those who do not like to read dark themes you have been warned.

Comments

[Comickook]

Hello there. Thanks very much for getting this next chapter up. I really appreciate you going to the effort. Once again, great job on the exchanges, humor, emotional content and future chapter set-up in all the right places. I'll definitely be looking forward to more of this as soon as time and inspiration will allow.

[Umbra Animo]

welp unnamed bad guy you have officially screwed your self