The Unique Properties of Dark Magic

by Shadestyle

(Past Chapter 44) Bad Boys

He caught a spy. Not one of Celestia and Luna's of course, they were more likely to simply show up in person, if they wished to know his secrets.

This one was from the nobility. A unicorn who refused to say anything, once caught sniffing around files used by the researchers in Wacky Workbench Zone.

In a landmark case, he was brought to Weiss's court, without having requested it first. Something that made many nervous. If Weiss was now going to deliver his ironic punishments to any criminal, whether they asked or not...

There were eyes on this case. Ones other than Lord Weiss's own.

He sat on a throne of purple crystal, lazily leaning on a fist. "Now, I know it may seem frightening, but, for once, I have no ill intent. I won't be doing a single cruel thing to you. I won't lie to you, or let my anger out onto you," he said to the criminal, who was bound in chains, with a crystal over his horn that sapped his ability to cast through it.

He had to play the game differently, now that the Elements of Harmony were on the field, and it started here, in the dark court.

"You have spied on my people. Perhaps stolen their secrets. But, I have seen the light of harmony in person, and it has changed the way I shall deal with you and yours. Where once I was cruel, I shall now be kind. Where I once deceived, I will now be honest. No anger, but laughter. Instead of punishment... A gift, Mr. Lights Out, for you and you alone."

The unicorn was nervous, but kept a steely expression. This one had been trained. He knew the risks, and was prepared for whatever horrible thing came next.

Weiss snapped his fingers, and a portal dumped a bottle into his hands.

"In this bottle contains my gift to you. You will drink it, and from this day forward, I give you the gift that any infiltrator would kill for. I know your sort, you do what you do for Equestria, do you not? Go forth, then! Do good, as a pony with the power of invisibility and in return, never plague the Shadow Realm again!" Weiss said, throwing the potion to the unicorn, the ornate bottle rattling on the table in front of him.

The witnesses to the court were stunned. This was unusual, to the sage, who loved to smartly disguise the punishment under innuendo, expressions, and ironic metaphors. If what he said was true, if it really was as it appeared...

"And if I don't?" the unicorn guilty of espionage asked, leering at the bottle.

Weiss smiled. "You will."

It wasn't a threat, but an order.

Lights Out swallowed, feeling something dangerous run down his spine at the look in the sage's eyes. He drank the potion, and, with wide eyes, watched as his coat took on a sparkling sheen.

He disappeared, and the court was in shock, guards stock still as the criminal disappeared.

Weiss smiled indulgently, and nothing more was done.

---

Five years later, Weiss chortled at a newspaper.

"He couldn't even make it the whole decade!" Weiss laughed and laughed, showing the paper to Luna, who sipped at coffee nervously.

The headline was plastered with the results. Lights Out let the power go to his head, and in a short time, by the reckoning of an immortal, he was arrested for treason in Equestria. He couldn't help but abuse his new power for his own personal gain.

"You cannot honestly expect me to believe that this pony behaved exactly as you expected him to," Princess Luna said incredulously, reading over the paper.

Weiss grinned. "Well, I could hardly expect him to act any different. You know I spied on him for a year before arresting him, right? Itty bitty little Eyerocs, everywhere, at all times. They can be... So hard to spot."

One shimmered into existence, flapping above Weiss's head. The same sort of invisibility that the criminal had been given.

"Psychological profiling did the rest. He was doomed to betray you from the start. No family, no real ties to Equestria beyond his patriotic mentor. That patriotism didn't last long in the student, after the death of the teacher... It was somewhat inevitable. I could have been wrong, but, well, I wasn't. He did it to himself."

It was another black mark on Weiss's record, though what he did could have been considered quite 'good', from a twisted perspective. Benefit of the doubt, a generous gift instead of a harsh punishment. He told only the truth, and the whole truth, among what was relevant.

But, the secret key of course...

Weiss looked at his cutie mark. His special talent. "The world has a way of things, Luna. I've seen it, and you have too. It was too ironic for things not to play out that way," he said, a hint of malice entering his tone.

'He would have done it there, or here in the Shadow Realm, and since it isn't time for this villain to fall, there could only be one result,' he thought to himself, utterly confident in connections he made that had seemingly no relation to the reality around him.

He thought to the two members of his Council, and wondered what exactly it was either of them were planning. He hadn't been able to figure it out yet, but surely at least one of them had been plotting to betray him. The only question was when... and how.

'It will be fun to watch, either way,' he finally shrugged, and stood from the seat he was in, pushing his own coffee aside. Meetings like these were important. If not for friendship, then for an alibi.

He stretched. "Well, Luna, it's been a time, but you know how it is. Tell your sister I said hi. I've got places to be, things to destroy... Stuff to steal. Ta."

With that, he burst into smoke, causing several ponies in the cafe to cough violently, and making Luna huff as she had to blow a strand of her ethereal mane from her face at the shadowy wind blasting it out of place.

"Always so standoffish," she muttered with disappointment, and perhaps slight amusement.

It was sad that she couldn't seem to help him. Sad to know that he was still obsessed with play-acting as a villain. But at least he was honest with her.

---

Despite his best efforts, Weiss was unable to escape Celestia's attempts to make amends.

Doubly unfortunately, Celestia, lacking the power to enter dreams, kept their meetings to the waking world, and to appropriately lavish and ornate endeavors when it was "her turn".

"As thou canst see, these are jubilentils, quite expensive, but well," she pokes at one, and the magical legume laughed and giggled, releasing some of the joy it had absorbed in the soil.

"A treat, are they not?" she finishes, delicately eating one.

Weiss, unfortunately, had gotten used to a diet of crystals, metals, and monster meats, which, over decades, had changed his tastes quite a bit.

It took everything he had to remain polite and choke down the giggling plants. While the sudden surges of laughter that erupted from him were pleasant, it was soured a bit by Celestia managing to keep herself to a small polite titter.

After a while, he sighs with a smile that hadn't quite faded. "I've had better," he says with a raised brow.

The princess's own smile twists slightly. "I suppose I'll have to see what you consider better, in our next meeting."

With that, she rose from her chair, and servants took away the empty dishes, waiting for Lord Weiss to chug down the last of his wine before passing it off.

A brief, polite hug is shoved onto Weiss by the princess before she offers her goodbye, and he turns, rolling his eyes and bursting into smoke.

The entire thing was horribly horribly awkward, and Celestia mused to herself once and only once, quietly enough that no servant would hear it. "I suspect we had more fun fighting than we do befriending, isn't that so, Weiss?" she shook her head.

Either way, the good times of her and him quarreling would have to end. She needed to express trust, forgiveness, and apology in equal measure to the sage, to hopefully bring out in him what he seemed to be trying to push away.

"Maybe if I make awkward enough small talk, he'll renounce hatred just to make the diplomatic dinners stop. Luna would be pleased with that, I imagine," the princess considered, turning to her quarters to do some thinking.

Trying to establish a better relationship with a former rival was hard, but she wished to be kind, and if nothing else, the Sage deserved that much, after all that had happened.

She hoped he would not betray the trust she had given him.

---

"And you're sure? You're absolutely sure? Because I've seen Griffons go down into one of those treasure chambers of his, and they don't come back." Blackbeak said tensely. This new griffon acted cold and logical, and wore a black necklace that he guarded greedily. It showed that the newcomer was at least willful enough to muster up some greed, in spite of the Idol's influence on griffonkind.

For the griffons who lived in Griffonstone, the idol was a heaven-sent blessing that let them rise above their petty squabbling, but for those who chose to come to the Shadow Realm and make their lives there, it was a stifling restriction.

The Idol of Boreas. A magical artifact with one simple purpose. To turn the greed of Griffonkind to pride. It was powerful ancient magic, from a time before any living griffon. Some say that, without it, griffons would have fallen into squalor.

Blackbeak disagreed, and, in the Shadow Realm's files and stories, he read something that summed it up best. Greed, like Fire, is a wonderful servant, but a horrible master.

It was here in the Shadow Realm that griffons had fled, in search of the mastery to make their greed their servant, but they could hardly do that with the Idol's magic lain over them.

It was why Blackbeak, the criminal leader of a small gang in the Shadow Realm, had chosen to hear out this newcomer's words. He said that there was a way to steal one of the hidden treasures of Weiss Noir, the hidden treasure of Chaos Cacophony Zone.

Weiss refused to use a single enchantment in protecting the treasure chamber and what lay within it that he himself had not lain. If the gang could find one, even one single emotional flaw that the sage of darkness had, then the traps would be worthless.

But if they didn't... Well, the traps that the sage used for his greatest treasures were meant to utterly eradicate anything that wasn't him. Failure meant a one-way-trip to Elysium.

But success might mean the return of greed to griffonkind. The greatest heist to have happened in over a hundred years. Even through the pride he felt in his people, and the confidence he felt in himself, he could feel glimmers of deep avarice emerge at the thought of owning one of Lord Weiss's treasures.

'It seems the Idol of Boreas is not as powerful as they proclaim,' he thought to himself, smiling at the thought of mustering up powerful greed that shouldn't have been possible with the idol still in place, or so the legends go.

"What did you say they were called, again?" Blackbeak asked, noting the intriguing looks his gang was giving the newcomer. The weirdly calm griffon simply repeated what they said, like some kind of golem.

"The Chaos Emeralds. I know a method by which you can steal them. I offer it freely," the griffon explained blandly.

Blackbeak thought about this. It was risky, especially with the sage changing the way he handled criminal behavior in the zones.

"I'll have to talk to my gang about it. Don't call us, we'll call you," he said tersely, waving them out of the room.

They left, and as soon as they left the boundaries of the Shadow Realm, they ignited with a flash of green light.

They reached up, touching the black crystal necklace they wore softly, to make sure it was still there. Even centuries after death and rebirth through the Changeling Archive-Mind, some things were hard to remove, if they weren't detected.

This changeling in particular had once been enslaved through a black crystal made by Black Angel, and the orders persisted even through new bodies. Unable to resist, and then, incarnated later, unwilling to, the nameless changeling had returned to Tartarus to receive their master's orders. They retrieved a necklace of black crystal to maintain those orders, and now, they executed those orders.

Bring chaos and upheaval to the Shadow Realm. For Black Angel. For the freedom of his master.

For the hell of it.

Author's Note:

The Song of the Day is "Bad Boys".

Comments

[Fancy Fox]

Ooooh that last line hit.

For the hell of it.

Fantastic way to end the chapter!

[Asolem2]

The Idol of Boreas. A magical artifact with one simple purpose. To turn the greed of Griffonkind to pride. It was powerful ancient magic, from a time before any living griffon.

Wait, it forcefully turns their Greed into Pride... that's a pretty scary thing when you think about it

[Luminous Lead]

The princess's own smile twists slightly. "I suppose I'll have to see what you consider better, in our next meeting."

Translation: "Fine, then you prepare dinner next time"
XD