4 - The Dark Tower
Vinyl Scratch - 19th of Megan, 29 AE
The Bismuth Spire - Crystal Empire
That. Was. Sisters. Damned. Terrifying.
My heart hammered away in my chest, threatening to explode while I stood shaking in the tower’s entry. I had no idea where exactly I was, or what stood around me. For once I felt the lack of situational awareness was justified. No need to kick myself over this one later.
“We need to go, now!” Sherbert hissed quietly, panic clinging to her voice.
The sheer stupidity of her statement snapped me back to reality just enough to wheel around and stare at her.
“Are you crazy?” I retorted. “You heard that thing. It will kill us if we came here for no reason. I’ll bet my cutiemark that it can see what we’re doing in here even while ‘asleep’. We’re doing something in here before we leave.”
Lyra nodded nervously. “I’m with Vi on this one,” she agreed.
Sherbert took a deep breath, and slowly nodded. “Okay. Fine. But- Vi! You said you knew how to call Discord! You can do that, and we can report this Voidborn, and he can get us the hay out of here,” she exclaimed.
Lyra jumped at Sherbert, clamping her hooves over her helmet’s muzzle. “SHHHHHHHH!”
“Keep. Quiet,” I reminded Sherbert, my commanding glare manifesting as an intense but brief flare of the lights on my helmet. “I’m not calling Discord. For starters, I think he already knows. With how terrifying that thing was, it’s words slipping your mind is completely understandable.
“Also, I’m pretty sure that would wake it up. And despite mistaking me for someone it knew, that took it a good bit of time to do. Do you REALLY think it would recognise discord instantly? I don’t.
“Say we call Discord here, maybe he survives the instant black hole creation, or whatever that thing feels like doing, but we sure as heck wont! So be quiet, explore a bit. Don’t take any of the books, it said that her writing needs to stay here. Maybe take an artifact or two. Just do purposeful things, and keep quiet.
“We will leave, in a little while. Once we can be sure it won't be pissed because we woke it for no reason. Okay? Okay.”
I turned my attention to the lobby around us. I half expected the bismuth to make up the inside of the tower as well as the outside. The building resembled the Crystal Spire a lot, enough to have had the same architect. The Crystal Spire was crystal inside and out. This place wasn’t.
The inside was granite. Either the bismith was a veneer, or a shell built around the polished gray-white stone slabs which made up the interior.
Having grown up in a stone castle, I could tell that the masons who built this place were experts. You could only rarely see where one stone block ended and the next began. Furthermore, the room looked almost exactly like a single piece of stone. Including the short staircase which led through a truly massive archway into a big central chamber just a short ways away from the entry-
I frowned. Wait… Arrow loops to the sides. Murder holes above. This wasn’t an entry. This was a barbican.
I focused on the hud elements which turned the scanners on, my suit interpreting my eye’s movement as the command. They’d been really good at detecting those physical landmines and the hex-traps on the way up. If this entry was passively defended, they would find whatever was hidden beneath the decaying black velvet carpet.
The scanner’s gridlines raced away from me, tracing over every part of the structure within the suit’s limited range. No defenses. But I did find the way forwards.
“Looks like we have a big indoor garden up ahead,” I informed, starting to walk to the stairs. “There’s three stairwells in there too. One going down, one going up one floor, and the next going up, well, um, more!”
Lyra tilted her head suspiciously. “How do you know that?”
“Are… Are you not using the suit’s sonar mapping?” I asked incredulously.
“Wait, these have a mapping system!?” Sherbert exclaimed.
I facehooved and groaned. “Yes!”
“But- But you needed CC’s help to find the cave entrance!” Lyra protested, stamping a hoof indignantly.
I knew she was just upset she forgot part of the equipment briefing, and acting out a bit. But I still felt I should address her specific question.
“Yeah! That snowfall was too heavy for the system to map anything. It was telling me I was in a solid object,” I said as bluntly as I could. “I don’t- How- CC even showed you two how to work the eye-tracking interface! It was part of the- Oh forget it!”
I sighed and walked through the archway into the dead garden. This garden once grew enough food to feed a thousand ponies, and based on the odd looking enclosed glass ‘cages’ around some of the grow beds, exotic ingredients for potions or alchemical processes.
I was really impressed that the building could support a room this huge without any pillars. With how old it was, there’s no way it had a mana reactor in the basement keeping a structural integrity spell running for all these years. This had to have been done the hard way, with support structures concealed by the dome-like vaulted ceilings ‘decorative’ ribbing.
“This is a seriously cool room,” Lyra said for me.
“Too bad everything here’s dead. Like we’re going to be if we stay here too long. It’s only a matter of time before one of us accidently knocks over a bookshelf or something,” Sherbert said worriedly.
“Good point, Sherbert,” I said with a nod. “Everypony, don't touch anything without inspecting it for rot or whatever first.”
“Sooo map. How do I turn it on?” Lyra asked me with an embarrassed hoof shuffle.
“It’s the second menu option from the top. The first one toggles the floodlights,” I answered.
Lyra paused for a few moments, presumably updating her suit’s own map. “Okay… So we have a basement, probably a dungeon, as well as storage. We’ve got the next floor up which looks like… Servant's quarters? Guest rooms? And then we have that one really really long stairwell.”
“Who builds a tower this high without an elevator?” Sherbert asked curiously.
“A mage who can teleport,” I said with a smirk. “Did you know that Twilight only included doors on her renovated castle for her friend’s use? She just teleports wherever she wants to be.”
“Sooo, Mage Medowbrook was an asshole to her friends?” Lyra joked.
“Looks like it,” I agreed with a nod. “So, here’s the deal. We have two objectives. First: Find my brother. Second: Find and use the ritual circle Lyra needs.
“I think that the best move would be to locate the mage’s lab in here. Because if you’re keeping an eldritch creature prisoner, that’s more of a thing you use a mage lab for than a dungeon. Of course… You may NEED a dungeon-sized space for all themagical equipment needed to hold something like that. But there’s a good chance the lab would have everything we need in one spot.”
I wonder how Sherbert would react when she learned almost all of my plans were based on ‘What would I have done if this was a O&O game module I wrote?’ It would probably be even better than Celestia’s mini-meltdown. Heh heh. She simply couldn’t accept that a tabletop game held value as a training tool.
“Not a bad idea,” Lyra said, rubbing her chin with a hoof. “We can be assured that the dungeon is down. But the lab? Could be WAY down, or way up. Why did she need all this space? We’re going to be looking through… Oh shit! This place has to be about… Um, at least three hundred thousand square meters of space. Probably more!”
I flinched. “Owch. You’re right. Well, hopefully most rooms are this big,” I said with an optimistic smile.
“This room was made to grow some seriously massive trees inside it!” Sherbert protested. “We can’t assume that every floor is this ta- Wait. How did she get trees growing in here? Mage light isn’t good for plant’s, right?”
I frowned and looked up, searching for any windows, mirrors, or source of light. There were none.
“That’s… A good question. Because yeah, magelight wont grow plants,” I confirmed.
“What the hay? There’s nothing up there for… What were these photosynthesizing?” Lyra asked looking to the large grow beds full of dead plant matter.
My DM senses tingled. In a bad way. This is where you’d put the Blood Bramble grove slash Vegepygmy platoon encounter.
“I get the feeling that we shouldn’t dig in those grow beds,” I said with a slow nod to myself.
“Why not?” Sherbert asked stepping over to a bed full of dead thorny, leg thick vines.
“Because plants eat too,” Lyra said bluntly. “If they are not getting their food from the sun, well, everything here had to have been a carnivorous plant. So under the dirt…”
“Ah,” Sherbert said slowly. “I get it now.”
“Let's leave this graveyard and check this place out top to bottom,” I decided, turning and walking over towards the taller staircase.
Sherbert hummed thoughtfully. “These suits have radios. Why don’t I go downstairs, Lyra goes up to the next floor and you-”
“NOPE!” Lyra exclaimed.
“Yeah that’s a terrible idea!” I agreed with a sharp nod.
“But this place is huge?” Sherbert ask-said.
I cleared my throat and nodded towards the taller staircase. The only proper way to say this was to sing a snatch of the old song. I just had to do it quietly.
“Don't You Know? You never split the party! // Clerics in the back to keep those fighters hale and hearty. // The wizard in the middle, where he can shed some light, // And you never let that damn thief out of sight…”
Lyra perked up, I mean, it was her favorite nerd-song. “We were skulking through this dungeon - A pretty sorry lot,” she said, apparently intending to start the whole song to calm her nerves. “Old Galliard the fighter had been actin' like a sot. // Our cleric had colitis; our torches all were wet-”
“Not up to doing the whole thing, Ly. Especially because you get loud on the third chorus,” I reminded urgently.
“Oh. Right. Sorry,” she said with a sad sigh, leading to a few moments of quiet as we started to climb the stairs.
“Why is there a song about that?” Sherbert asked finally.
“Because you NEVER, split the party,” I said as firmly as I could.
“It works out fine if you have a large group,” Lyra pointed out. “I mean, if there’s enough people to make two rounded groups.”
I glanced at my map, frowning as I couldn't figure out what was in the floor above the guest rooms. Two pillars in the middle of a huge empty room?
I nodded “Mhm, and there are three of us. In what would make a really good Evil Overlord’s lair.”
Sherbert nodded, only the fact that there was space enough for the three of us to walk side by side up the spiral staircase permitting me to see that.
Everything about this place was huge. I understood mages wanting to have big important looking homes, but who needs this much physical space if they are not trying to make a city within one building?
We climbed up and up for what felt like ages, all the while my suit continued to map the central chamber. Which just became more and more confusing. The center of the tower was, well, just two huge pillars! The outer sections of the tower had rooms, tons of them, but the middle? The vast majority of space used in the whole tower? Empty! Just the two huge support columns that presumably let the top of the tower have a floor.
Who did that!? Even using magic building something like this would take forever, or be super expensive. Had Mage Medowbrook died before finishing the tower? That would be the only reasonable expl-
We came around a bend in the staircase, arriving at a landing to access a floor. It hadn’t been the first one we’d been to, naturally. But it was the first one that led into the middle of the tower.
“Can we take a minute to check out the middle room?” I asked hopefully. “It’s REALLY buggign me.”
“I know right!?” Lyra demanded. “Unless it’s a massive aquarium for a huge sea-dragon or something I can’t figure out why you’d build that.”
“Build what?” Sherbert asked, tilting her head in confusion.
“Switch on your mapping system,” I sighed as I trotted towards the doorway into the mystery room.
“It is on, I’ve just been checking the little rooms for anything that looks like a lab- Oh, weird! The center is just those pillars and empty space!” She exclaimed as I opened the iron door into the biggest room I’d ever seen in my life.
The tower’s central chamber was one huge, massive, complex byond comprehension, enchanted object. The walls were just covered in brass, and arcanite circuitry, and inlaid rose quartz forming one HUGE single thing that I couldn’t even begin to make sense of. Everything looked like it fed into the floor far, far below us into a big gold-yellow sigil.
A strange sigil at that. I took highschool Enchanting, and that weird question mark, thorn, exclamation point looking thing shouldn’t actually do anything. But you wouldn’t build one that big out of bucking GOLD and hook this much stuff into it if it didn’t do something.
A pretty interesting mystery, which instantly became so minimally important due to what was inside the room.
The floor I was standing on, was not a floor. It was a gantry, one designed to retract away from the center of the room. There were lots of them from here working on upwards to the top of the room, where a whole mess of cranes hung from the ceiling, most of which held up enormous plates, parts, and rods made of brass, stone, bronze, and a mystery metallic substance.
Parts which clearly had been meant to attach to the thing in the center of the room. The room wasn’t empty, and those were not pillars. Those were legs.
Half finished legs, attached to a colossal golem, built with way more anatomical correctness than you needed. Most golems were vaguely shaped like a living thing. This one didn’t look any different from what I could see of the few finished patches of ‘skin’. No, it was the internals that made it weird.
The mystery metal had been made into a completely accurate equine skeleton, to which strange fibrous materials had been grafted to form an accurate analog of muscle. Silvery arcanite pipes ran through everything, making a pretty darn accurate circulatory system out of the magical superconductor. Lumps of what looked like silica gel formed fat deposits, padding out the places a healthy unicorn would be padded. The parts which had skin were skinned with a layer of blood red crystal plated in thin layers of different colors of brass, replicating the many layers of the epidermis.
The colossal construct was far from finished. The skeleton was all there, but the stomach was a huge gaping hole, with a few bare ribs poking through the finished portions, with only some of the bits you’d expect to see present. The only thing I could see within the chest that wasn’t spine was a heart, made of something so black it looked like a two dimensional inkblot.
The more I stared at it, the more I felt like I should step into the blackness. It was… A chair? No. No more than that. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew that if I walked into that heart, I wouldn’t ever come back out.
The black heart pulsed once, sending a wave of magic through the arcanite veins. The colossus was still powered. Nope!
I slowly backed out of the room, closing the iron door behind me.
“What’s in it?” Lyra asked quietly, watching my slow backward shuffle.
“Boss fight,” I answered quietly.
Lyra frowned and stepped past me, pushing open the door to look for herself.
I almost stopped her, but I understood her need to know. I also trusted her to not do anything stupid after seeing the colossus inside.
Sure enough Lyra spent three seconds looking inside, and then slowly backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.
“Did you see the Old Equish blueprints on the workbench on the gantry? That thing was called ‘Apotheosis’,” Lyra squeaked nervi-citedly. “And that spell matrix! Holy crap that’s complex. So many things! All I could make out was a conduit for shrinking the thing down.”
Sherbert gulped nervously. “Uh, so should that door-”
“It’s staying SHUT,” I said adamantly. “We’re not dealing with a kilometer high zombie golem that wants to stuff you into its heart.”
Sherbert took a few steps back from the door. “Eeep!” She squeaked.
“You said it, sister,” I said with a nervous laugh. “Uh… Let’s finish going up. There MIGHT be room for a lab on top. I’m not sure.”
We resumed the climb, which was only made bearable by my vampiric endurance. By the time we reached what I believed was halfway to the top, I was carrying an exhausted Sherbert on my back. The poor mare just couldn’t keep climbing the stairs. The many, many, many stairs…
“Whoever built this place should DIE!” Lyra moaned as we started on the final spiral of the doom stair.
I blinked in surprise. “Woah, wait, you’re tired?”
Lyra nodded. “A bit. Mostly bored! It would almost be worth building an elevator to go back down,” she grumbled.
Sherbert nodded, sliding off my back, apparently rested enough. “Yeah… It almost would,” she agreed. “So, this looks like the last bit of stairs. The room on top has a library sort of look to it. Guess it’s not the lab.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “It would be an ancient style lab though. So it’s worth a look. Besides, do you really want to go down all those stairs right after going up them?”
Sherbert paused, then shook her head. “Nope.”
“Well, your the ninja,” I pointed out nodding to the door as it came into view. “Care to scout the room?”
Sherbert looked at me, and shook her head. “Uh, no.”
“Why not?” I asked curiously. “Any tactical reason?”
“Yeah. It’s a single entrypoint for what would be a secured room. I’m not magic, I can’t just walk through a front door and go completely undetected. If I wanted to infiltrate I’d need to impersonate someone, or go in through a window. This is more of a, well, a Samurai thing.”
Lyra nodded once. “I agree. This is a breach and clear situation.”
I frowned sharply. I’d still like to get eyes inside before we did that. But, well, she was right. We had one known way in. Ancient wards might or might not still be working. This tower was pre-Necromancy Ban, merely opening the door could unleash a horde of skeletons.
“Okay, we go in hot,” I decided, moving into position to open the door and using my telekinesis to draw the energy rifle I’d been issued. “Hot, but quiet. Fire at will, but only after confirming a target. I’ll take point. Lyra, you take the rear. Sherbert, you’re in the middle.”
After waiting a moment for everypony to take their positions, and draw their weapons, I reached for the white oak door’s handle, and slowly turned it. Thankfully the ancient metal didn’t squeak, through the latch felt stiff. A very gentle nudge later and the door quietly shushed open, making a little bit of noise, but nothing I would expect any mortal to have heard.
No wards screamed in warning.
No preserved remains stood up to attack us.
The door merely opened, revealing a dimly lit library, some purple light flickering deep within the maze of bookshelves and relic containers.
And allowed us to hear faint whispers of something deep within the library.
“Iä cf'ayak'vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm,” it said, the words themselves feeling dark, old, and… Terrifying.
The three of us winced and began to move forwards, slowly navigating the rows of bookshelves, looking everywhere for any sign of the speaker. Whatever it turned out to be, I wanted to see it before it saw me.
“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Tsathogguanyth naflshogg vulgtm, Shub-Niggurath ftaghu nnnsgn'wahl cee ftaghu- Pfff! Seriously?” The voice said with a slight snicker.
I paused, and turned back to give Lyra a worried look. Had the thing seen us sneaking towards it?
Lyra didn’t seem to think so. She shrugged and nodded forwards, taking a few more steps.
“Okay, let’s just keep going then,” the voice whispered almost malevently.
I gulped nervously. It had seen us. Fleeing wouldn’t be an option. I raised my weapon, and began to look around even more intensely than before. Nothing. Not yet. Maybe a better angle would do.
I waved everyone forwards with a hoof gesture and continued to walk towards the library’s center, only a few book cases stood between us and the enemy. We would need line of sight if we were to survive.
“Fhtagn nilgh'ri, phlegeth ebunma y'hahog k'yarnak shugg ph'zhro s'uhn. Shtungglinyth ebunma uaaah ilyaa stell'bsna shogg r'luh,” the voice continued, shaking with barely contained laughter.
Sisters! This was some sort of spell, wasn’t it?
“Shield spells, go!” I whispered to Lyra.
Lyra nodded, and focused for a moment, casting three shield spells as quickly as she could. Fortunately, her helmet contained her horn’s light. Though, the faint gold shimmer of her overlapping hexagon shield cast a dim light across the ground around us.
Then again, it knew where we were...
“Chtenff tharanak gotha h'r'luh navulgtlagln, ebunma mglw'nafh Cthugha Fom-” the voice continued, now quavering with malevolent amusement.
Whatever this thing was, it was evil. I could feel it. We had to destroy-
“Pfff! Seriously?” The voice giggled.
I slowly stepped around the final bookcase and looked out into the center ‘nook’. It was circular, with a lower and an upper section. The lower section was mostly workbenches and writing desks. The upper section was nothing but bookshelves, accessed through twin staircases.
This was all beneath a small glass dome which gave us a view of the ice sheet above us. Directly below the dome sat a blue glowing magical circle surrounding a stone basin. And within that stone basin was a dark orb, black as the blackest void, somehow appearing both real and fake at once.
The orb was big enough to contain an alicorn with her wings stretched out, and burned with an ethereal purple flame, the source of the flickering light which lit the dark library. But within the orb…
Within the orb sat a mass of nothing, nothing that was something. Nothing which wore a pale faded cloak which was once a dark green, with a featureless face formed only from a wooden mask with only a pair of eyeholes and a slit where a pony’s mouth would be along with a single strip of iron down the forehead and nose to give it any sort of appearance.
The thing within the globe was holding an old book, and looking down at a old dusty skeleton covered in time ravaged wizard robes.
“Oh my god! Your R'lyehian is SOOOO bad!” The thing that should not be giggled in a male-ish voice. “I should have read this comedy millenia ago! Mglw'nafh fhthagn-ngah cf'ayak 'vulgtmm vugtlag'n. Hehehehehe!
“That’s not a spell. That’s ‘Please taco this vagina-sock, oh great water-drinker-man.’ You really should have forced me to teach you gram- Wait, what?!
“‘H' mgepah llll fhtagn ya front lawn.’ HA HA HA! Ya front lawn!? That’s not even- You just called yourself a front lawn. Ya, meaning I/self/my being and then, in Equish, front lawn.
“Ohhhh, boy! This- I just… How did you get the grammar for that ‘become a god’ spell you invented correct, and yet still have such a poor grasp of this language that you created a prayer which if it could work, would have made a pact with The Lord of Dead Dreams resulting in the creation of a sentient golem made from banana cream cake, manifesting itself in front of a person who wasn’t even born yet when you made the pact, and declaring its undying love for her?
“How did you even get to that? I remember this one, you were trying to summon an endless supply of natural rubber. Zero out of ten, worst literacy.”
Lyra slowly turned to look at me, I could feel her incredulous, jaw dropped stare through her helmet.
“Vinyl?” She asked in a mixture of terror, confusion, incredulity, and mirth. “Is that an Eldritch abomination mocking a dead wizard for their bad grammar?”
“No shit I am,” the thing giggled in response. “This this is the worst flubbed R’yleh-”
The thing stopped speaking, leading to the horrifying realization that up until now, it had been unaware of our presence in the room.
“Wait, that was speech. Who said- Oh! Hi!” It said as it’s mask-face swiveled towards us.
“FIND COVER!” Sherbert screamed in panic, firing three shots from her rifle in the vague direction of the globe.
The golden energy rays lanced into a bookcase on the far side of the room, missing the globe by a hoof’s edge.
DAMN IT, NEWBIE! Why does the new guy ALWAYS miss the reaction shot?
Lyra and I shared a single look of pure terror before darting behind the feeble cover offered by a bookshelf.
“Ohhh! Sorry, I wasn’t on the ball,” the abomination said, the apology sounding sincere. “I didn’t do my thing in this realm, I wasn’t expecting a ‘Slay the Ancient Evil’ quest. That is what this is, right?”
It wasn’t attacking right this moment, but if it was taunting a dead person over bad grammar, it would definitely toy with us before it killed us.
“It is now,” I mumbled, my mind whirling as I tried to find any possible way to beat this thing.
Lyra flinched. “Why did you say that? It may have let us go!” she hissed.
“WHY AREN'T YOU SHOOTING IT!?” Sherbert screeched, another four golden beams flashing through the dark library, exploding into harmless sparks as they struck the globe of darkness around the creature.
“Sounds like fun!” The self professed Ancient Evil said with an audible grin. “I didn’t come up with any sort of character. Wasn’t intending to do my thing here. I hope it’s alright if I recycle something? Oh! Wait, I know!”
The library shook violently, as if the world was being torn to pieces. It began to spin, books flying everywhere as everything but Lyra, Sherbert, and the entity was flung away, smashing into the edges of the room. The ceiling began to peel away, hellish red light pouring through the cracks as the world above us became a breathtaking yet eerie cosmic backdrop of stars, nebula, and impossibly huge worlds.
The floor below us warped, buckled, and tacked disintegrating into powder, revealing an infinite flat plane of clear crystal which looked to be flecked with tiny pockets of blood as decoration. The globe containing the entity vanished with the floor, though the magic circle remained, it’s six subcircles blazing even more brightly then they had been before.
The entity warped as well, it’s nothing-something from coalescing into the form of a wizened, old, decrepit, charcoal gray stallion with bright, weirdly happy, kind looking blue-green eyes. He was wrapped almost entirely in old cloth bandages, the mask moulding to fit over the face, and the cloak transforming from old and worn to bright, new, and clean.
“There we are,” the entity said in a voice which sounded as old as its new body looked. “Now, lets just get you three into more fantasy heroic looking outfits. Where did you even get those Dead Space arctic survival suits?”
“My Uncle,” Sherbert said seemingly reflexively.
“Sherbert…” I said slowly. “Just focus on surviving this. Don’t let it get into your-”
The entity’s head snapped around to look at me, cloak billowing dramatically. “Sis!?”
I blinked once, and saw my armor simply fall to individual pieces as if every woven fiber, rivet, weld, and other fasteners in my suit had decided ‘Eh, buck it’ in unison and just given up on holding things together.
“Sis!” The entity exclaimed happily.
“I- um, p-possibly?” I stammered taking a step back. “I- I know what dad said but I don't know-”
The entity, my brother, shook his head rapidly. “Nononono! No mistake, I’d recognise my big sis anywhere. Sure, you didn’t remember our quintillion years together, but you’re still you! Same personality, same everything but powers!”
“S-so does this mean we don't have to fight you?” Lyra asked worriedly.
He blinked in surprise and turned to look at Lyra, the mask seeming to show confusion. “Um, well, I mean… No? But you’re one of the Chosen Ones, right? You and big sis have been friends forever, born to a family where you could acquire adventuring experiences, yaddah yaddah, set out in the name of The Light to slay The Darkness, right?”
“Um, w-well, yes?” Lyra and I stammered.
“Yay!” he exclaimed. “A tiny bit of your memories have to remain if you remember how to play your part of our old game! One REAL fight for old time’s sake coming right up! Oh! Let’s do that one you thought would be fun last time! Hold on, I need to change character!”
The Darkness’s form warped and contorted, every aspect of it simply reshaping and recoloring itself a he transformed into an absolutely monstrous tan colored pegasus stallion clad in thick, bulky, pseudo medieval looking black power armor with skinned faces and a cloak made from the pelts of a dozen different ponies which was secured to his armor by simply being nailed on with iron spikes.
“MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” He cackled, his voice warbling and crackling in an otherworldly demonic fashion. “Fools! I anticipated this encounter from the day the seers proficized, whoops! Typo. Ahem, prophesied our meeting! You do not face me alone, but also my body guards.”
As he finished speaking, he swept his forelegs out in front of him, making his cloak billow in just the right way to look both dramatic and cheesy, and also rip the air between us open as he conjured a whirling vortex of purple, black, and green energy.
“Behold! Forces of good, corrupted and brought over to my service as loyal minions!” He said as shadowy silhouette creatures emerged from the portal one by one, and were introduced. “Kaldor Draigo! Commander Dante! Commander Farsight! Ghazghkull Thraka! Commissar Ciaphas Cain! CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED! Sebastian Yarrick! And of course, Sly Marbo!”
The shadows figures began to resolve into flesh and blood humanoid creatures, each one clad in exotic looking wargear, and snarling evilly. I scarcely had time to take in any details when the entire world froze, as if someone had hit pause, and The Darkness popped up in front of me in the form of, well, a de-aged version of the stallion he’d been a moment ago.
Despite the twice-Celestia’s-size evil pegasi form he’d been using still being where it- he had been.
What the buck was even- SO MUCH CONFUSE!
“Hey! This bring back any memories?” The Darkness asked hopefully.
“N-no,” I admitted, more than a little shaken from the emotional chaos I was going through.
“Awww,” he moaned sadly, looking down. “Oh well, I’m sure fighting the same party you threw at me in the last universe we visited will jog your memory! If any of it’s there.
“Please don’t hold back! I want to have a good fight, and if I win, I want to win for real for once, okay? Love you, sis!”
He wrapped his forelegs around me in a tight hug, and then vanished, the world resuming action. Just as if it had been unpaused.
I reared up, grabbing my head with my hooves. “I have no idea what’s going on!” I screamed in total and utter confusion.
The world instantly jumpcut back to the library we had been in before. The books were all in place as if nothing had happened. The orb was back. The Darkness was once again a nebulous form wearing an old mask and a cloak. My armor was whole and on my person.
None of that had happened? But… WHAT!?
“Awww…” The Darkness whined sadly. “I was looking forward to playing with you again. Now I’m going to have to explain everything… You don’t remember anything? Not even a little bit?”
“NO!” I snapped. “I have no idea at all.”
“Okay,” The Darkness said, nodding. “Well, in that case, I’m your brother, known as The Darkness, and you are an incarnation of my sister The Light. We traveled the universe together, playing a friendly game where I take the role of an Evil Overlord, and you take the roll of a Chosen Hero to stop me.
“If I won, we would feed on the energy created by the mortal inhabitants fear of the impending darkness before moving to a new universe. If you won, we would feed on their celebration of the impending golden age! We’re sort of the reason why so many universes have a concept of the narrative structure called the Hero’s Journey. Because that’s our game.
“It was super duper fun and you should totally let me recreate that arena and fight me so we can have another round because I am SO BORED! Please?”
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"Ya'll best not be breaking my suit... Eldritch or not, don't you be breaking my suits!"
Huh this is twist.. Not sure what to make of Vi's brother. At the moment it seems Meadowbrook was is the bigger danger
There is nothing more scary than a bored, almost allmighty entity. At least evil one can be somewhat predictable.
This is awesome, though I'm a bit disappointed it was as short as it was. Looking forward to the next chapter!
You don't bucking say!
8459421 I retract all my comments last chapter, you have super user-friendly tech, they are just being super DERPS
I get the feeling she was an asshole in general.
I too would like to see that reaction.
Wait... is this really a song?
Only split when running a party of 12 or more to split into sub-parties of 6 or more.
Too bad Sherbert didn't see that, she knows that is Voidbourn language.
So... a Voidboun pony suite?
Hey guess what, she is! like for 2,000 years or something.
I'm just going to read all this in John De Lancies voice.
I have a feeling this is going to become relevant at some point. Didn't Luna and Celestia ascend using a spell? like this one maybe?
Really Vi? You should know the newbie always misses the first shot, I'm pretty sure it's a law of the universe.
Shouldn't you also be asking how he know's what they are by name and what media they are based off of?
Well Vinyl dose DM, so subconsciously perhaps?
Fells like 40K
So you guys went around universe/dimension hopping LARPing?
You do not want to annoy the guy who can make things by pure will, agree with the stipulation of no permadeath for the party members, then you can break him out, all four of you can leave and have a few drinks and catch up.
Well I called having the 'boss' encounter by chapter 4, now let's see what big evil crashed in, flops on the couch and asks "what you gonna do about it?"
Free cookie to the one who figures out what Meep story I'm refrencing
They need to cobble together a pony body that Darkness can puppet around outside without having access to most of his powers. He'd fit right in in Ponyville.
8459848 Nah, Clover the Cleaver was the one who founded the spell to create alicorns, not Meadowbrook. I'm not sure what Darkness is referring to when he's talking about the spell to create a god. Probably something we have not seen yet.
8460334 What are you talking about? You've already seen it.
This got really unnerving really fast for reasons I legitimately didn't expect.
And was that the boss fight room from Morrowind?
Meadowbrook, an excellent example of why archimages without limits or restrictions are a Bad Idea. Sure, let's mess with Mythos! Let's create spells with words that should not be! And let's NOT learn how to properly spell the damn language even after imprisoning the concept of darkness itself!
Twilight would have a fit about it if she ever found it out. That is, after geeking out hard on all the books and the giant golem.
Sly Marbo was a tad too much, meeps. He already had Creed on the table, a couple Warhounds were bound to come two turns later.
Damnit sherbet, always wait the negotiation phase. Either the villain is too much of a badass for your attack to do more than wrecking your team's prep time, or you already dropped it before that
Aww, poor Eldritch Abomination. His sister doesn't remember squat. Hope you can reconnect to her paltry mortal form! Also, babies. We wants vampire/werewolf foals for cute! Wait, Octavia was a werewolf too, wasn't her? No mater, just teach your sister what she needs to know, for cute foals are a must? You do want to be an uncle, right?
8459848
Lyra is Lyra, and Sherbert is the daughter of the LORD OR DERP! Poor mare. That's a crap inheritance.
Medowbrook was... well, more of a self-serving cuntwaffle if you'll pardon my Prench.
https://youtu.be/2gfzLNAMOM4?t=38s
Not quite...
She's just mad that it bucked up her game of X-Com the last time this happened.
The joke is he summoned copies of all of 40k's OP/broken hero/command units.
8460057 What makes you think he has most of his powers? Dudes incide a bubble in a magic circle perched atop a colossal magical project.
8460334 Can confirm that there's no mention of Medownbrook's plans save for in this chapter.
8460480
If so, I didn't intentionally make that reference.
8460631
Problem is, if you are an Archmage, you're only bound to the restrictions you agree to, for so long as you feel like being bound to them. It's not like anyone can actually stop you. Except for 8th dimentional god-type entities who decide "Screw that mare!"
Oh she did way more than imprison him.
That's exactly why Discord and Order allow Yog-Sorgoth to enter the univerce. To keep people away from the tower and doing that exact thing.
"Didn't you see the boss arena's design? I was clearly recreating the atmosphere of a 1990s Terran Role playing Game. If I made it a fair fight it wouldn't be authentic!"
"We Voidspawn don't reproduce sexually. Nor do our families work like that. My sister and I formed together from the same spark of potential without parentage, nor linage. That said, they ARE adorable, and it DOES look like fun to make one..."
8461491
The half-completed body of a synthetic god hangs, suspended viscera exposing a heart that tore at the mind like a wound in the world, in the yawning chasm that some mad mage made a home of in an age long dead.
The threat of divinity perverted beyond reason, and crafted into the likeness of some ambitious heretic, now missing from the scene, leaving an incomplete symphony of nightmares to linger in the last echoing half measure of eternity.
Evangelion hits a similar note, in Central Dogma.
8461491
I know, and my aim was to keep it that way.
Except with him wandering around where people can can keep tabs on him, and with him trading some of his remaining power and a promise of good behavior for not being stuck in a room bored for millennia on end.
8461491
So Meadowbrook was so much of a pervert they decided that a Great Old One was a fit doorman? Makes a lot of sense, actually.
Not that it would stop Twilight. It's an millennia old archimage dungeon filled with forbidden & forgotten knowledge. The full divine Pantheon itself would do little more than delay her inevitable nerdgasm. Resistance is futile, you shall be lovingly read in front of a cozy fire accompanied by a loving bottle of wine amidst rose petals
Also, OctaScratch foals ftw!
Oh, and I wonder what will be the reaction to discovering n the quintessential story of sophomoric civilization is a LARP. Someone is going to facepalm/hoof/claw/paw/appendage so hard reality itself is going to shudder
8461358
Wait... if Lilly is the Lord, and the heir of a Lord is a princess, does that make Sherbert the Princess of Derps?
The incarnation of good being dead just shows how fucking awesome Twi and her friends are for ushering in the golden age when it should have ended.
8461954 The incarnation of Darkness being a huge dork also helped a bit :P
8461989
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he created copies of himself to play D&D with for like a couple centuries.
8460357 8461491
I mean sure, we've seen the result of this particular "Create a God" spell, but up until now we've never known that it was Meadowbrook who created that spell. At least I didn't know, and I apologize if I missed info prior to this chapter that suggested she was the one who birthed that spell.
8462388 YOu're confused. There are two separate spells here. The one that makes an Alicorn, and this one.
Okay that went wierd veeery fast. I'm not sure I like the cross universe references made by eldritch abominations. That's at least on par with Pinkie level weirdness. I'm more comfortable with the way Blizzard incorporates Lovecraft into Warcraft.
But it's an awesome story non the less and I await updates.
Ninja training clearly needs some classes on being genre aware.
That is one serious mech.
Big pile of nope right there.
So, Vinyls 'brother' here used to play a game with his sister where his sister was the good guy and he was the bad guy? I have to wonder if it really was a game, or he is so crazy at this point that he's mistaking what was really going on. Either way, that says something probably positive about vinyls predecessor.
Hehe I love this Darkness character, he is so dorkily amusing.
Sorry I haven't been commenting lately, life has just been a little crazy and I got behind on the story. So hopefully I'll be able to comment again soon like I usually do. (Just hard to do so on a kindle, which is what I've been mostly using to read.)
Haha! I see what he's doing, and yeah these two are definitely related!
Edit: Oh! Oh! His name! Somepony should "cast magic missile at The Darkness!"
I feel like in a series so full of references someone will appreciate that one.