Chapter 37 - Aftermath
As soon as the black hoof made contact with the sphere, several gasps escaped the pony audience. Momentarily afterwards there was complete silence as absolutely nothing occurred. Being certain that her attempts to foil any of Discord’s plans had completely failed, Chrysalis began shooting glances to the nearby changelings. Most of them returned her glare with an unresponsive stare, as if to say that they could care less if their lives had been lost.
‘They have been taught well…’ The changeling queen thought, ‘As for this traitor here… What should be done about him…’
As she slowly peeled her hoof away from the sphere, a cataclysmic explosion of pure magical energy was released. At first, the green glow spread almost instantly through Ponyville and some nearby areas, and everypony was slightly confused as to what was happening. The green aura seemed to pose no threat at first, but when the air around them began to heat up at an alarming rate, hysteria broke loose. The ponies began running around in seemingly random patterns until they had reached a building, in which they would force their way in (if required) then board up the entrance they had gone in through with whatever furniture they could find. Some ponies tried to bash through the temporary barricades, in which some succeeded and hid inside as well, while the others which had failed would continue to the next building and attempt to enter once more. The changelings were somewhat lost as to what to do, some of them chased ponies (or rogue changelings), some of them remained immobile, waiting on the queen to actually do something, and a very small selection fled the town altogether. Unfortunately for the few changelings that had attempted to help Ponyville, they had all been dog piled almost instantly after the magical energy was released.
While the town was in a state of complete chaos, Discord leaned back onto a few changelings and took a sip of wine.
“Chrissy, you just made my job a lot easier!”
>---<
Celestia waited patiently on her throne for any news of what had transpired in Ponyville since Discord’s release. Twilight, in changeling form, paced nervously beside her, as she had been doing for approximately an hour. As a small white pegasus pony wearing a tight blue uniform, sporting a cutie mark of a letter, burst through the giant doors, he shot a look of suspicion towards Twilight before rushing towards the princess.
“Princess, I bear grave news of Ponyville” He said, giving a deep bow
“Rise, Rush, if this is urgent, there is no need for formalities.” Celestia responded calmly.
“Very well… There has been some sort of unidentified explosion in Ponyville. As of the last mage’s report, the type of magic is definitely changeling magic; however the purpose of the spell is completely unknown. We request your analysis of the situation, and in haste.”
Celestia rose from her throne, as Twilight stepped forward to follow her outside. Turning her attention to Twilight, she bowed her head and shook her head. Knowing that the princess wished to be alone, Twilight let her ears down and backed away.
“Lead me to the current analysts, Rush.” Celestia stated.
“Of course…” The pegasus said, still eying Twilight nervously.
When both the Princess and Rush had left the room, Twilight slowly slumped back onto the ground. She only wanted to help, and she would have done anything just to save her town and her friends. Filled with disappointment and regret for not having done anything, she silently began weeping in the empty room.
It had been a few minutes now without anypony entering the throne room. Twilight’s tears had finally dried, and she was just sitting silently in hopes of getting some sort of news of the current situation. She heard a quiet creaking sound, similar to that of a door, and looked up to see Scootaloo carefully looking around the room.
“H…Hello?” Scootaloo called out nervously.
“Hi Scootaloo…” Twilight responded after a sigh.
“Oh… Hi Twilight… I was sort of looking for the princess… You know where she could be?”
“You just missed her; she left to go check on Ponyville’s current situation, which I must say, isn’t looking at too well…”
Scootaloo bowed her head down in disappointment, but quickly looked back up with a massive grin across her face. It wasn’t the regular ‘Oh that’s great!’, but more of the ‘I have a great idea that might get my cutie mark’ smiles. Twilight knew that smile all too well, especially after her multiple experiences when the Cutie Mark Crusader’s tried to do something that ended in complete disaster.
“Scootaloo, if you think I’m going to help you get your cutie mark-“
“No, Twilight! I just remembered something! Something about changelings and stuff!”
>---<
Ponyville wasn’t destroyed, nor were any of the residents harmed in any way. Changelings littered the abandoned streets and the air was filled with an overwhelming amount of magical energy. As a matter of fact, the amount of energy in the air was causing anything with magical capabilities to malfunction. Quite a few changelings were polymorphing into random ponies without noticing, and at irregular rates, almost like a bad case of the hiccups. Either they were transforming, or they just outright fired wild magic from their horns with completely random effects. Discord was laughing maniacally while Chrysalis continued to misfire spells in his direction, yet he still couldn’t control his own powers either, and was creating, destroying, polymorphing, moving or warping random objects (and occasionally changelings) nearby.
Floating just inches from the ground in a bubble of energy was an unconscious Jack, protected from the effects of magic through his own bubble of pure magic.
Jack was dreaming of a Ponyville (far different than the one now) which had been destroyed by his magic, and he had been the only survivor. Wracked with guilt, Jack wandered through the Everfree forest in attempts to just stay lost forever, or if he got lucky meet a painless death. No wild animals were around, and even the Everfree forest had suffered from the explosion; charred trees just about everywhere, with grass burnt down to the roots, and the poison joke patches looked like piles of ash. His thoughts were silent, as was everything around him. He would wander in hopes of meeting something alive, or something that could at least make a sound. As he reached a dry river, he let out a long sigh before hearing a booming voice.
“Doth thou realize the truth?” The voice echoed through the dead vegetation.
“Huh? What? Who’s there!” Jack yelled desperately. The first sound he had heard in a while startled him, and he was suddenly eager to speak to the voice.
“Thou hath no reason to panic.” The voice said reassuringly, and much quieter, “Tis’ a friend, and I wish to help you.”
Flooded with relief, Jack slowly stepped down the slope of the small valley where the river once ran wild. As he reached the bottom, he looked skywards towards the sun, which had been slightly darkened by a cloud of ash. Looking around in attempt to find the source of the noise, he failed to notice anything out of the ordinary, and decided to simply ask about it.
“Might I ask who you are, and where you are?”
“You know me as Princess Luna,” The voice said, as a dark blue alicorn materialized from the shadows a few feet away from him, “I am here to guide you.”
“Guide me through what?” Jack said, now curious as to why the princess of the night had shown up in the middle of the day.
“This is nothing but a dream. This is not the reality which has really occurred. The world outside of here, it’s still alive, but barely. The magic you released was quite a lot, and I was quite surprised to find a changeling capable of doing that.”
“Wait, don’t you normally sleep during the day? And how do you know about what happened if you were never there?”
“Searching the subconscious allows me to become aware of recent events, although I have to use it sparingly, it does take quite a lot of effort. Luckily for myself, upon entering your dream, I felt a strong amount of magic emitting from the subconscious, which allowed me to search freely upon recent memories.”
“Well… That makes sense, I guess…”
“My time is short. I must tell you now that I am uncertain if the effects will disperse around the town, and that you may be the only one capable of saving Ponyville, if not all of Equestria. As a favor, I can help you awaken, but I cannot help you further.” Luna said, after bowing her head as Jack’s mind slowly began to blur the setting around him.
“Wait… I… You… Twili….” Jack gasped, as his head was filled with incomprehensible blurs of images which made it nearly impossible to focus. Before long, Jack’s mind had turned into a pretzel, and he was thrown into reality.
Taking a sharp breath, Jack opened his eyes to find his vision obscured by a thick green aura surrounding him. Slightly nervous at first, he rose to his feet and examined the surroundings. There were plenty of changelings, all of which were changing forms, as well as Discord and Chrysalis having what seemed like a joke battle; neither of them could hit each other, or the spells would perform useless effects, like smacking each other with water or growing flowers from their hair.
‘First things first,’ Jack thought, ‘How do I get out of this bubble thing?’
>---<
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier!?” Twilight exclaimed, grabbing the filly in a green aura as she ran through the throne room door dragging the pegasus behind her.
“Woah! Argh! Ahhh! Well I didn’t… Oh! Wheee! Think it was… Ah! Important!” Scootaloo yelled as she was tossed and turned around a variety of corners, tapestries, and various decorative pieces.
“No time to talk!” Twilight exclaimed, as she rushed through the front door to the palace, “We have to keep going!”
As soon as the changeling broke through the front door of the palace, two guards yelled something at her and jumped in her direction. Forgetting she was in changeling form, Twilight dodged the two guards as the crashed into each other comically. Pressing forward, she started running through the busy streets of Canterlots, causing many ponies to scream, run, crash into each other or just outright faint. Within seconds, Twilight had almost the entire Canterlot guard after her, mostly due to causing complete chaos throughout the city.
Celestia saw everything working itself out from a balcony just on top of her palace. She shook her head and let out a smile. She knew that Twilight would do something irrational after she sent Scootaloo in, but that’s just what she wanted her to do. She understood the power of friendship far more than she did, and if Jack was more than just a close friend, she knew that they would be able to do something to save the city.
‘Let me just help you out a little bit, Twilight’
An unexpected flash occurred, and Twilight found herself (as well as the foalnapped Scootaloo) several feet outside of the green-tinted Ponyville. Blinking a few times to make sure she really was just outside Ponyville, she rubbed her eyes for a moment before snapping back to reality. Scootaloo, on the other hand, squirmed uncomfortably in the magical aura before being dropped rump first onto the ground.
“Ow…” Scootaloo moaned, as she slowly rose from the ground. Turning around, she saw exactly what Twilight was looking at, and was equally confused as to how they had gotten there so quickly. “Uhh… Twilight? What just happened?”
Without answering Scootaloo, she turned to her showing her confused look before returning her attention to the city.
“Scootaloo, stay right here.” Twilight said assertively, “It’s dangerous, and I’m about to do something crazy…”
"But wait Twilight you're glo-"
Before Scootaloo could finish, Twilight was already running into the town.
>---<
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw some sort of irregular flash of light, something he had not seen yet. He knew that it would have been some sort of magic, but to actually determine what kind of magic it had been was far beyond his current knowledge. Shrugging it off as just another miscast of a changeling spell or one of the two villains’ spells, Jack attempted to force his way out of his self-made prison. His hoof landed on the sphere with a loud crack, but there had been no damage dealt against either the sphere or himself.
‘Hmm… Maybe I should try an indirect approach…’ Jack though, while slowly bringing his horn closer towards the sphere.
Without warning, however, the sphere shattered as soon as he began focusing energy into his horn, and Jack fell an inch to the ground. That inch, however, was enough of a fall to startle him, and caused the energy around him to react irregularly with his horn, which shot a small white missile-like object towards a changeling tied against a tree. Strangely enough, the object seemed to phase directly through the changeling without any sort of effect, and the changeling which had (or hadn't, depending if phasing through something counts as contact) been hit returned a look of confusion in his direction.
‘Weird. Wonder what that was’ Jack thought, failing to notice that the chaos filled town was now focusing on him.
The entire town, including the ponies that had barricaded themselves inside (who were peering through cracks in their defenses), was now watching the changeling slowly make his way towards Chrysalis. How had they all seen him, and why were they all focusing on him? Perhaps it was because he had been trapped inside a magical sphere the entire time, and had suddenly broken free. Or, maybe it was the fact that he was glowing in a vibrant violet aura, while slowly walking towards something in the distance glowing with an equally strong violet aura. Unfortunately for Jack, he was unaware of the other glowing object, as his vision was blocked by Chrysalis.
‘Is it just me, or did it suddenly get quiet…?’
Looking around himself, Jack saw that the changelings had stopped moving (although they were still transforming) and he saw several faces peering through the windows of the semi-destroyed housing. Curious as to why they had all stopped and were staring at him, Jack decided to give himself a look. Upon seeing the purple aura, Jack yelped in surprise as he recognized the aura as the same one Twilight used when casting spells before she was a changeling. What surprised him even more was the massive pain he was getting in his horn as he felt the magical energy built up.
The final surprise Jack got was having the magic released towards the object sharing the same purple glow in the distance.
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gah! cliffhanger!
DAMNIT WHATS WITH YOU AND CLIFFHANGERS!?! but other wise yeah good chap
I just read this story in its entirety just to see that the last comment was five weeks ago D:
2654281
same here but I'm just about to start reading it.
Ok now i caught up please continue this.
Okay, I'm back. Computer got fried
so I tried to get it repaired at the local shop. They couldn't get it fixed, so I ended up sending in the computer in to Asus (the brand I used) in hopes they could fix it, they no longer made the part, so after a month I finally just got up and bought a new computer. Now I have a Lenova and it has a glowing keyboard. And lots of RAM. And lots of installing needs to be done; at least I can still type while that happens 
so whens the update?
Can you update dis shit please.
:headbangingvinyl: <----- We need one of these.
2675017
That's why I always custom-build. All the parts are standardized, you get to pay for a PC that puts your money most effectively to what you use it for, and the absolute worst thing that can happen is that, if your CPU or motherboard die and they're too old, you might have to replace the CPU, motherboard, and RAM.
(I had to do that back in January. My motherboard died and, since it was about 5 or 6 years old, it was easier to just buy a new, faster CPU and upgrade from 4GiB of RAM to 16GiB of RAM than to find a good replacement motherboard with the right sockets to match the old parts.)