How to Save the World in 3,000 Words or Less
The doors to Twilight Sparkle’s reading balcony flung open, causing the princess to put down her book and look on in surprise at the unicorn frantically huffing for breath in the door frame. The pony in question was Ink Spot, her number six assistant and she had clearly ran a half marathon to find Twilight. She had to hire more assistants to work at her castle so she could keep up with mounting royal duties and of course her never ending research you see.
The lavender alicorn had taken her lunch time to chew on a sandwich and keep up on her reading of “Monarchy Mishaps & Misfortunes: How Not to Repeat History and Doom Us All (Again),” a far more palatable and amusing take on the history of Equestrian law and how to learn from past errors. Law, as it turns out, is quite possibly the driest subject known to pony kind and even Twilight Sparkle found it a subject she could handle only in small doses before her mind started to grow painfully numb. It was a running gag in educated circles that it was used by pegasi to make summer extra arid. Some unicorn scientists thought to weaponize it lest Dischord showed up yet again.
Unfortunately, her bite-sized hunk of free time had been spat out and it was at the hooves of the out-of-breath unicorn before her.
“Pr-prin-cess Twi-light…” Ink Spot huffed, her body was as white as flesh scroll paper while her flank and hooves were covered in inky blue-black blotches, with a knocked over inkwell on top of a ruined scroll as her cutie mark.
“Now we’ve been through this Ink Spot, you can drop the ‘Princess’ bit around me. I’m still not used to that moniker yet” she was over being surprised and slipped her “Daring Do says Reading is the Greatest Adventure!” bookmark into her book and set it aside. She was just getting to the juicy bit about the legal quandaries of the landmark case Cake v. Pie that happened in the year 344 A.N. (After Nightmare-Moon) and how that has shaped the Royal Kitchen since. Twilight Sparkle by this point in her life has had enough experience with ancient evils rearing their ugly heads and now Equestrian politics, which was its own brand of ugly, that she could set an example for her staff and colleagues, trying to be strong, calm and resolute in the face of stress and mounting chaos. It didn’t mean she wasn’t freaking out on the inside though, trying to put out mental fires, especially when Celestia comes to visit.
“Sorry… but there’s-“ she took another deep breath, “- trouble. Big, big trouble.”
Twilight quickly got out of her seat and stood up on all fours, her face now most definitely awash with concern, “What’s wrong?”
Ink Spot had now become more composed and had been downgraded from gasping for breath to merely panting. With an inky blue aura of magic she fished out a scroll and a large piece of gaudy jewelry from her saddle bags and displayed them at Twilight, “The ancient king of dragons and the embodiment of raw destruction has awoken from his deep slumber,” she unfurled the scroll and began reading it hastefully, “and it is prophesied that once he reaches peak strength, he will break through the mountain that currently entombs him, consume the sun, the moon and finally this world, which will bring everything we know to a violent end.”
“Wow. Let me guess, and I’m the one that has to fix this?” Twilight cocked a brow.
Ink Spot scrolled down the scroll some, “Err, looks like it. The demise of this world, along with its sun and moon is absolute, yadda yadda, unless a chosen one can halt the process and put an end to the ancient tyranny. One who understands the deep well of magic as well as friendship and who walks with dragons can save us all.”
“Well I walk with a dragon, singular, on a regular basis, but other than that it sounds like this fits me pretty all right. Where did you even get this?”
“There is a monastery that lives at the foot of the mountain the great dragon has slept in whose sole purpose for countless generations has been to act if he ever awoke once more. One of their monks has hastefully traveled all the way to ponyville and was admitted into care for exhaustion and colliding into an apple cart, so I had to fetch the items from him and get to you as soon as possible” Ink Spot was almost out of breath again, this time from the wall of words she had to spit out.
“Speaking of…” Twilight picked up the amulet from her assistant’s magical grasp and examined it, noting the shockingly pristine gold disk inlaid with gems arranged to look like a primal dragon consuming everything in creation, if you squinted hard enough I guess.
“Oh, right. You must take that to Canterlot Castle, or more specifically the deep catacombs underneath to find a worn tome and then follow a trail of clues to find a decrepit tomb elsewhere in Equestria that holds the key to deciphering the tome. Or was that the other way around? First the tomb and then the tome? Maybe the tome is in a tomb” Ink Spot shook her head, “Anyway, that amulet is the key to pointing the way. This is bound to be your greatest quest ever, one that will stretch across all of Equestria and likely even into the Griffinlands and Zebraca. Unfortunately your friends can only help so much in your endeavor. You are the chosen one after all and this is an adventure you must complete alone.”
“Sooooo… how is this monastery? Is it still safe?” Twilight asked.
“Well, from what I gathered from the monk, he said that for now they are safe yet they are unwilling to flee when things inevitably get dire. They are the first line of defence against the evil dragon’s power. He also made it a point to trek there when you finally acquire all the necessary components the translated tome has told you to gather, ancient artifacts that were scattered to the furthest corners of the world to keep cultists from gathering them all. There are also cultists who want the dragon to win by the way.”
“Of course” Twilight rolled her eyes and later hummed, “One more thing, what’s this dragon doing right now? Do we know?”
Ink Spot looked at the scroll once more, mumbling through the stuff she already read, “Well, it looks like his power is extremely weak and he is currently still trapped in the mountain, but he is sure to get stronger. Those artifacts are the key to everything. If we collect them all, he will surely be defeated, if the cult finds them, he will grow stronger and doom us all. At least that’s about what this scroll says.”
“Sooo, these cult guys don’t even know where these artifacts are” Twilight deadpanned.
“Doesn’t look like it” Ink Spot read some more, “Blah blah blah, devious souls, blah blah, will stalk the chosen one and strike when they feel the time is right, blah blah, be on your guard when on your epic quest. There’s nothing in here about them knowing where the artifacts are. It’s safe to assume nopony alive knows where they are, that’s why you have the amulet to guide you to the tome/tomb to figure all that out.”
Twilight Sparkle reflected all this information to herself as Ink Spot appeared more pensive. She had expected something a little more active by now from her princess. There was no rallying cry for action, no gathering of tools and healing potions with intent to leave at first light, hell Twilight was still eating her sandwich as she was apparently lost in her thoughts.
The young alicorn swallowed her meal and sipped at some ice water before politely taking the scroll from her assistant and rolling it back up tightly. She then calmly cantered over to her private study the balcony was connected to and steered herself towards the fireplace. With a spark from her horn flames roared to life across the logs and when she was satisfied with what she saw, she then tossed the scroll into the fire. Next, Twilight plucked a floor safe from the closet with her telekinesis, threw in the gold amulet, slammed the small iron door shut, spun the tumbler and unceremoniously banished the whole kit and kaboodle to the moon with the maximum sentence allowed by Equestrian law against inanimate objects without a trial, forever.
Ink Spot picked up her jaw from the floor as she witnessed the display of casually throwing the world over to the bad guys. She rushed over to the fireplace to see the remains of the scroll collapse into ash “Wh-wh-why would you do that? You’ve doomed us all!” She started to hyperventilate until Twilight Sparkle sauntered over and hushed her assistant.
“Shhh… shhhhhhhh... it’s ok. It’s all part of my plan” the alicorn’s expression crept into a smile and she started to teeter on her hooves, “Crisis averted! All before the end of lunch time to boot.”
Ink spot’s pupils were as tiny as buttons, vibrating heavily as she was still reeling from it all, “How does burning and banishing the only tools we had to saving the world avert total destruction?”
“Oh, well it’s simple really!” Twilight began to canter in place gleefully, “If I did go on some long and perilous journey to find ancient artifacts to stop the Big Bad, we would only be collecting them in one spot. They were all scattered and forgotten for a reason, right? So then we throw in the crazy cultists who don’t know where said artifacts are and likely never will because I banished the only thing that would help them. I can’t find them, ergo they can’t find them, the dragon is thusly stuck and unable to get to full power no matter what and I can go back to reading my book. Yeah!” Twilight jumped into the air and high fived herself while Ink Spot mulled this over.
“I… uhh… that sort of makes sense?”
“Believe me, it totally does. Sure, this all eating dragon is awake, the world is in a state of mid-peril forever and worst of all this will be a quest that will never ever be completed, however I don’t think anypony will even notice really. Quite frankly having an artifact that was created to either banish or restore an evil dragon depending on who uses it is sort of of a major oversight. Anyway, I’ll go to the Ponyville Clinic as soon as I’m able and tell this monk friend of yours what happened and that there is nothing to worry about. I’m sure he’ll be in as much shock as you were, probably more, so I should get to him while he’s still on pain medication” Twilight Sparkle beamed a confident smile and opened the study doors, letting the two ponies canter out, “Oh, and I know it’s been a rough day for you, so go on and take the rest of today off and relax, take a hot bath or something. I got this.”
Ink Spot gave a weak smile in return, “Alright pr-... Twilight Sparkle. I believe you. Thanks for saving the world I guess.”
The night air was crisp, just a shade above chilly as Winter Wrap-up sang its carefree tune just a week ago. Shadowy figures mingled in a hidden cellar of a run down barn miles away from Ponyville or anypony else for that matter. Those shadows belonged to a clan of hooded figures huddled around a large wooden table, adorned with a crude but familiar crest of an old-as-time dragon consuming all in his wake (which also included a veggie platter and ranch dipping sauce one of the hooded figures brought to this dark meeting).
One of the figures, in a more decadent robe than the others, hushed his flock of devotees and turned to the anonymous figure beside him “Now that we are all here, what is the status of your mission? Did everything go as planned today?” His voice was stern and made of steel.
“It’s uhh… let me be blunt. The mission is over” the hooded figure responded meekly.
“Over? What in Tartarus do you mean?!” the leader stomped his forehooves on the table and roared while the others looked on, quietly murmuring to one another, “We sabotaged everything so elegantly with Big Macintosh’s apple cart.”
The other cult member reeled back a bit “Like I said, it’s all over. Princess Twilight Sparkle found a loophole in the system and now there is no way to find the artifacts we need to give our Dragon Lord-” with that, all the hooded figures stopped to bow their heads in respect for their timeless master for a few seconds before resuming their scrutiny, “- the power he needs to get to full strength, destroy this husk of a world and recreate it to His whim.”
“Nothing?” the leader plopped back down in his seat, his voice losing its honed edge and rage.
“Nothing.”
“Really? Nothing at all?”
“There’s not a thing we can do unless we scour and overturn every inch of Equestria as well as the neighboring nations until we somehow stumble across all the artifacts. We would likely be caught in no time. Even then we still have no clue how to use them or even how many there even are.”
“Well… that’s a lot of work, way more than I was really looking to put into” the leader sighed out loud, “I mean, we all have day jobs after all. It was going to be kind of a hard mission to begin with, taking on a pony who in the last few years took on a crazed deity, a mad king, an evil queen and a tyrant demon lord. That was even before she became an alicorn princess, so she must be like crazy powerful, right? We were promised totally awesome dragon powers in the next life if we succeeded, but let’s be honest there was a slim chance of us actually winning.”
There was a collective shrug from all the hooded figures and one by one they agreed that this was totally a far fetched and stupid idea.
“I have guard duty at the castle and am eyeing a promotion” one figure piped up.
“Dragons are sort of overrated” stated another.
“I’m actually allergic to dragons. I was just told to go out and find a social group.”
“So, what about that dragon then? Isn’t he going to be kinda ticked off that his one chance of regaining his glory has gone down the toilet?”
“Oh, he’ll be moody all right but really there’s not much he can do at all. He was relying on us to free him and well that doesn’t seem to be happening. Give it enough time and he’ll just go for another eternal nap” the leader of the group surmised.
“Well then… what now? I guess that means our Cult of the World Eater is over before it even really started. Shame, I liked having something do on Wednesday nights.”
“There’s board games in the closet and we have a keg just waiting to be tapped!” a voice came from across the table.
The group of cloak-clad ponies stomped and whooped in gratification of this new direction, shedding their garments and tossing them to the corner. The pony who gave the news of her failed mission to her now-disbanded cult members grasped her robe with deep-blue magic and yanked it off.
“Well, this certainly went better than expected” Ink Spot sighed with relief as she was passed a tankard of hard cider.