Aether, Heir of Chaos

by Arcane Anonymity

Keeping this stuff straight is complicated

Alright, eggs and toast are always awesome.

Anyhow, back to the story...

The girls, slightly more convinced that I wouldn't willingly harm a pony, got sent to have lunch and return the Elements. I tried to argue that keeping them 'secure' in a freaking vault was stupid; first and foremost being that, since they live almost ten whole hours from the city by train, there is no way to get them quickly unless you fly (the slopes are what makes the travel so slow). Plus, everyone knows where they are! All Discord had to do was find the most important-looking vault and swipe them! If anyone wanted to invade, they'd just have to strike first and hard to capture the building!

Whatever, I warned them.

Celestia teleported me to her study, and asked for lunch to be brought there. The guards I KO'd with magic were let in on the secret, by the way.

She told me she saw things of the humans through the ages. Most of the time it was empty scenes with pieces of technology or something or the other, and she decided it would be cool to have - it's why the ponies use cups with handles.

She then saw some of mankind's... less glamorous moments. And it seems she saw alternate versions of my Earth, too, if the stuff that happened is any indication.

It made me think... would I be able to see into the worlds of fanfics as some 'alternate' to this Equestria?

I closed my eyes.

Either my imagination just got more vivid, or I could see things... well, it was hard to focus, so whatever I saw kept changing over and over.

I caught something and the picture didn't shift, Luna was intrigued, and asked what was I seeing.

I recognized it as one of the human stories by the guy's description, conqueror tries attacking and all that... only this one succeeded. Then a female draconequus called Concordia, a changeling queen curiously named the same, Celestia, Luna, Starswirl the Bearded-

"Ow!" I flinched, since my eyes were hurting pretty badly. I forced the vision too much, and in a way that I 'didn't find comfortable'.

Chaos lesson 2: Pushing/pulling the powers down and back is relatively easier and far less straining that up and forward.

Back to the story. Princess Luna asked what would such a group accomplish.

"You made the Elements of Harmony and went to town on that would-be emperor's head." I replied, rubbing my eyes.

I was still a little peeved that humans were viewed as evil... it would be much easier if I could just show them.

Then I had an idea. If I have so much power sitting around, why not use it? I snapped my fingers and made a TV appear. A huge, flat screen TV.

Chaos lesson # C: Apparently, the way I think means my chaos magic is self-limiting (which is good, at least for my sanity). I have certain expectations, which means that that's the way my imagination works, which means that that is the path my chaos magic will try to follow. It is much, much easier to make a TV pop into existence and watch stuff there than it is to will the images into my mind, because I'm used to monitors, projectors, and TVs.

Then I whipped out some footage of firemen rescuing people from burning buildings.

Without magic, because that's how they roll.

The princesses commented on their bravery, and the ingenuity of humans when making all of our devices - more specifically the firetruck.

They made quite an impression, and I didn't have to explain how a TV works! Well, the device itself I explained, but since they have movies in here, a TV show and live footage weren't that alien of a concept.

I promised I would show them some other human shows, along with other such things.

Yes, I invited the diarchs of Equestria to movie nights and cartoon/anime marathons. And I intend to make them awesome. Star Wars anypony?

Lunch was vegetarian, obviously enough, so salads and veggie stew for me. There are griffin chefs for the occasional non-pony diplomat, but I was still a little bit of a secret so I couldn't go around ordering tuna and salmon.

Still, I can taste the magic, you know? Even plain lettuce 'feels' better on my tongue here than it did back home. It's the reason unicorns don't pick fruit with magic, too. If it's still too fresh (i.e.: On the tree/ground/parent plant), their magic makes the produce acquire an odd taste! Most often described as the feeling of static in your mouth. It takes a levitation spell that's.... slightly different (more attuned to earth and plant magic than 'normal'). Twilight, being a Magic talent, easily modified her spells so as to not 'taint' the taste of the apples she picked in 'Applebuck Season'.

Plant-talent unicorns do this pretty much instinctively, kinda like earth ponies; non-earth magic unicorns have more trouble adapting their spells. Cinnamon Swirl, one of the maids, is a unicorn and her personal garden (of which the centerpiece is her cinnamon tree, obviously) is just as well tended as that of any gardener Earth pony.

Also, I hear laughter. You! Yes, you, you know who you are! Stop it. Seriously, stop thinking everything is a double-entendre!

Well, not to say she doesn't- err... I'm not going to go into details, that's what Discord and the other nuts of the Collective are for (freaking perverts). Or I might just let the girls themselves speak about it; Feather Duster would like that.

Anyways! We talked so, so much more!

Mostly, about the differences in nature here and back home, and what I think this 'chaos deficit' is all about.

Twilight was invited, naturally. I'm going to need plenty of smart ponies to get this issue straightened out.

I spoke to them about other Equestrias, most of which I came to know through fanfics, of course; about how, in some of them, ponies control the weather because they are that attuned to the world and Evefree is an anomaly. In another, the world was made that way, again with the Evefree as an abnormality -sometimes created by Discord messing up everything.

Now starts the interesting bits. In some of them, the world was just like mine -an enormous, multi-biome version of the Everfree- but Discord messed it up BIG TIME and now THINGS SUCKED.

"Well, I never! That 'me' must be stupid!"

Shut it!

In any case, that version is this version in reverse: Chaos disrupted the world so much that weather doesn't work any more, and animals -while more intelligent- suffer from some crippling lack of certain survival/adaptional instincts because their natural cues don't work any more.

That, or some other cataclysm (sometimes humans, sometimes ponies) wrecked nature's stuff and the ponies had to compensate. Ponies used their magic and talents to bring the world some semblance of working order.

In this, I suspected the reverse: The world was either 'normal' from my perspective, or not yet 'normalized'; Discord kick-started nature in the Everfree forest, and made a few other anomalies for kicks like the Island of Shifting Seasons, but since he's a dangerous lunatic he got imprisoned. In any case, the ponies subdued nature too hard and now she either refuses to work, or never got a chance to begin working properly. Ponies use their talents and magic to force the world to move, lest it stagnate and kill everything.

Here, the hoof-made snowflakes are to 'seed' the clouds to make actual snowflakes instead of 'ice shavings', even though ice is supposed to make the hexagon-based shapes by simple virtue of the process of formation of the crystals themselves.

About the only thing that does work correctly are plants; earth ponies and their magic only enhance health and yield of crops, and they haven't done anything weird towards the domestication of species that humans haven't done already. It helps that some ponies have performed weird experiments on plants, like the ability to hollow out trees to use them as living space (like Ponyville's library) or flowers that glow once every twenty-four hours to make some impressive (if strange) flower-based clocks.

Though later I would find that something is indeed wrong with the plants outside of the Everfree and the other 'anomalies', but that's for another time.

After a while, nearing dinnertime, I concluded that the chaos-order magical dynamic was... hmm, the comparison sounded better on my head.... kind of like a refrigerator; you expel one from the (aligned) spell you're casting so as to prevent it from causing the other to go haywire. The problem comes when you just use one over and over without taking the 'residue' somewhere else; it's like leaving the fridge door open; you're making the device try to lower the temperature of the whole room, but the heat it absorbs is dumped back into the room, which makes the cooler work extra, which increases the temperature of the room.

Oh! Like fire and ice magic, abuse one without using the other - not even to offset the other's effects- and you'll end up freezing the whole city.

See? Much better! If you want the room to feel comfortable, you heat it up when it's cold and cool it down when it's hot!

A levitation spell, which is balanced magic by the way, works on surprisingly simple physical grounds: You 'grip' the thing you're moving and the weight is transferred through the magical connection between point of origin and object to another point of your choosing, usually the ground under your feet because of the physical connection being so quick and intuitive. It's kind of like a crane, only the caster's body doesn't have to bear the weight at all; lifting anything heavier than yourself would be nearly impossible otherwise. Newtonian physics are observed, but you can use a different point (even if they are physically disconnected, like the other side of a chasm), alter the surface you're putting the pressure on, or even use multiple points to transfer the weight to. (The reason why Twilight could lift the Ursa without sinking her reference into the ground was because she used the spell to increase the surface area to the point it could take the weight).

An anti-gravity spell is a primarily chaos magic spell; basically, you make gravity stop affecting the target the way it's supposed to. One of my favorite uses for this came from a videogame; you tilt the reference frame so that gravity pulls an object (in this case, the user) at an angle but you also push the target upwards just enough that there is no contact with the floor. Travel everywhere like that! You push away the 'order' of the law of gravity to perform this spell.

Most shield spells against physical damage are based on order magic. Solidify something and ta-da! A shield. It'll repel intrusions because you're either using a material to block, or issuing an order of 'don't pass the glowing border' to things trying to do so. I say 'most' because you can use many, many different effects to shield yourself - like anti-gravity! "Anything trying to trespass on this space has its reference tilted in the direction it came from" and BAM! Chaos/will/belief-based shield. You can also modify the properties of, let's say, air, so that they behave like steel on the space delimited by a certain shape - like a bubble, a sphere with normal air inside, a solid wall, then normal air again outside.

It was when the time to lower the sun and raise the moon came that Twilight stumbled upon an even more important detail.

"You should rest, Twilight Sparkle, we shall speak more on the morn." Luna said.

Twilight was about to protest, since the discussion of whenever the spells are chaos, order, or balance-based was as interesting as the workings and technology of another world... then she let out a yawn large enough to put a whole hoof inside her open maw.

(I might or might have not had something to do about it, since I was getting tired of speaking so much.)

"Oh! S-sorry!" She said, blushing red enough to rival Applejack's best apples.

"Go on and sleep, I'm still going to exist by morning." I said.

"T-thank you." She gave the princesses a bow of respect, and shared a quick nuzzle with Celestia. "Goodnight, princess Celestia, princess Luna."

Then she remained silent for a few seconds, staring at me.

Then the princesses started staring at me.

"What do we call you?"

"Well, that's a good question! I'm going to need a good name!" I said.

"What about... Paradox?"

"I get the feeling I should avoid those, so no." I thought for a little while more... I was going to have to study nature... and the stuffy sensation on the air was starting to get to me; it was uncomfortable, even though it was supposed to be pure mountain air...

Pure air? That was an idea.

"How about... Aether. Call me Aether."

Comments

[Lazaro Sol]

Ok I can now conclude that either
A: you have had training on the laws of universal shifting
OR
B: the story you are writing is actually being broadcast from the univerce MLP-AA/42 zeta

[Lazaro Sol]

1844341 have you traveled though the univerces? Do you actually KNOW how much of your theriories are correct, not all possibilities are actual univerces trust me I have the top scientests at the royal ziolian university looking for a "Simpsons" univerce and if they can't find it it don't exist. So yeah I'm kind of an expert on these things bro.

[Lazaro Sol]

Also I never said I didn't happen I am questioning wether his story is coming from this univerce or if his immagination is a link to this univerce

[Lazaro Sol]

1847348 you are from a diferent plane of existance, those are diferent from universes and I blame Siri for misspellings I'm on a I Phone for god's sake. Anyways what species are you and where do your loyalties lie? (btw definante launguages are not my first language I'm used to a form of telepathic language.)

[Lazaro Sol]

Maybe a number you are looking for is centillion?

[Lazaro Sol]

1848982 hmm a shapeshifter I've heard of you you're on the existance spectrum 48-9 right? Other than that what loyalties do you have? You and I seem to have the same role in our planes of existance forgive me, I rarely think outside of my plane but on my plane this universe exists and I'm asking if he is using an "immagination window" to see this universe or a kind of magical bypass to get the story to this universe. Also welcome to existance plane 77-7

King Lazaro Sol of Ziolia

[Leux]

1849465>>1849295

and over there, my children, two guardians arguing again about irrelevant trifles... lets see if we make both mortal and trap them in Asean Sanzetzu, one of the home realms of that what they call Demons... this would be at least interesting, am i right my beloved young creators? *a choir of probably 30 children answers with* "Yes Dreamer, this would be fun!"

*flick* *nothing happens* wait my fingers are wet... *grabs a towel out of nowhere and dried his hands* *flick* *change of scenery... a strange red land with no sun, no stars, and no moon...*

P.S. @ Arcane Anomaly good work ^^

[Leux]

1849615 XD dat's goooood ^^

[Lazaro Sol]

1849465 well that's how I root out a liar or madman and have you not read the fact that I don't like definite languages and you know nothing of my plane
1849591 I'm not immortal I'm just extremely powerful and live for a long time, I'm 21 trillion years old now.

[Leux]

1849937
real immortality do not exist, it would be a to abrasive punishment...
thing about it, and decide; dreamer or dream, creation or creator, God or mer Mortal?... with all of its blessings and curses.

Nothing that can be labelled as existing, exists for ever, but simultaneous it will exist for ever.
The simple truth is, every thing exists in one single spot, and there is no surrounding, not nothing is outside of this spot, no there is no outside. but in the same simple instant, this spot is a single thought in an other higher kind of reality, nothing from this reality can go there and nothing from there can get to ours, they can only watch and manipulate, whisper and manifest here as an mer image of what they want us to see them.
And they have dreamed us. not that this Reality would be a dream, nor will it vanish because this dream will end, no time is irrelevant, like you can chose what word you will write, they can likewise easily chose where and when they want to watch or be.
What we understand as History, is nothing more than the setting they have chose at there moment to be true.

But to know this do not change anything child, only because this all what we call reality is just a thought, did not mean that it is not real, it is likewise real to us like a picture of a Muffin is real to an picture of Derpy hooves, only because its not real to us do not mean its not real to the picture or Derpy.

And so child, don't bother your little broken heart about what can be and what would be, just enjoy the trip, the Dreamers take care that everything goes like it should go, because its there dream, and who likes sad dreams?

...
BADABUM LEUX STRIKES AGAIN

P.S. correct me please if i have done some grammar or spelling mistakes. thank you.

P.P.S. @ Arcane Anomaly: sorry that i abuse the comments to give my literary voice the finishing touches. ^^" *crouches -> run*

[Fearlessgerbil937]

No offense, but a lots of this is you going on tangents on random things. You can use blog posts and author notes for those. I can understand if you're trying to make the protagonist seem more chatoic, but it's a bit much