Chapter 1
Twilight took a moment to take in her surroundings, she was in the everfree forest to see Zecora in hopes of finding a remedy for Spike's worsening dragon-breath. She sighed and continued walking to her destination, but froze when she heard what sounded like somepony talking. "Is anypony there?" She called out nervously. No response. She moved in the general direction of the disturbance. <This is stupid.> She thought to herself. <I should'nt be going off the path.> But something other than curiosity was drawing her off course.
Suddenly, thunder crashed in the sky, scaring Twilight half to death. It started pouring down rain. She sighed again and used a simple spell she picked up from her brother and created a rounded barrier above her, the rain rolling off its smooth, translucent surface. Safe from the rain, she proceeded through the underbrush toward the disturbance she heard earlier.
The dark stallion sat in his clearing under the bare branches of an ancient tree, his matted silver mane hung over one eye, the visible one an emotionless orb of mercury. He dragged his hoof around in the dirt, tracing random patterns in the wet earth, looked up to the sky and sighed. <Rain,> he thought to himself, <What do you do in the rain?> He closed his eyes, letting the water run down his face. "What do I do?" A torn ear perked up when he heard a pony call out in the forest: "Is anypony there?" His mercury eyes widened and he shivered at the sound of the voice, it sounded just like-<Echoes.> he quickly thought. <Just echoes of the past.> He was about to settle back down when he detected a faint surge of magic. <I guess somepony actually is here.> He allowed himself a small smile, he has'nt had company for a while, quite a while.
Twilight pushed aside the heavy brush with a bit of effort and walked into the clearing beyond. Something told her that this was the source of the voice she heard. Taking a look around she saw nothing remarkable save an old tree with no leaves and a suspicious lack of any form of plant life around the base of it. Moving with caution, she appoached the tree and got a good look at it, the trunk was covered in carvings, written in old Canterlot dialect, yet some looked oddly recent...
Twilight nearly jumped when she heard a sigh eminating from the other side of the tree. She slowly peeked around and, sounding a lot like a certain cream-colored pegasus, whispered "Hello?" On the other side of the tree sat a stallion with a dark grey coat and matted silver mane. "Hello, young foal." Came the low, monotonous reply. "What- hey! I'm no foal!" Twilight cried out indignantly, "I'm a fully-grown unicorn!" "Not by my standards." the stallion replied flatly. "Oh-kay..." she said, ignoring that last remark. "What are you doing out here in the rain, anyway?" she inquired. On closer inspection, she saw his coad was matted and caked in grime and pine-needles. He had been out here for a while. "You could get sick, just sitting there in this weather." she remarked. "My condition is the least of your worries, unicorn" he replied coldly. "What are you- Hey!" the lavender mare cried out as a silver aura wrapped around her body, freezing her joints and lifting her off the ground. "Let me go!" she screamed. "Relax, if I wanted to hurt you, you'd be a bleached skeleton now." His otherwise emotionless voice had the faintest hint of amusement in it. She was not at all reassured by this.
Twilight attempted to cancel out the other unicorn's spell with her own considerable magic, but his telekinetic grip held strong, her horn soon ached with the exertion and she gave up the fight. She was then levitated in front of him so they were facing each other head-on. Twilight finally got a good look at the stallion, he had a wiry, athletic build, yet his stomach was sucked in and she could easily see his ribs, his silver mane was long and messy, his eyes were closed and his horn glowed with a silver aura... His horn, dear Celestia his horn.
It was broken.
Twilight suddenly felt cold fear grip her heart, a unicorn's horn in a way measured the magical strength of their owners, and if it was broken a unicorn would be severely weakened. The horn itself is filled with solidified magic, which appears to be diamond tinted the color of the unicorn, the grooves on the surface of the horn channel and conduct the magic into an energetic state, which is shaped into spells. The stallion's horn was broken approximately two-thirds of the way to the top, yet it was just as, if not longer than hers. The cold fear grew into dread as she realized something else: horns grow back. Although she was not one to boast, Twilight knew that she was easily one of the most powerful unicorns in Equestria, if he could overpower her as if she was just a filly just into magic kindergarten, at full power this unicorn could possibly match an alicorn in sheer power!
Twilight's previous fears paled in comparison to the irrational terror she felt when he opened his eyes.
The stallion's eyes were like orbs of mercury, cold and poisonous. For a moment she thought that she would turn to stone like when she encountered that cockatrace a few years back. Twilight did'nt notice she was whimpering in fear until he lowered those terrible eyes to the ground. "Yeah, I got that same reaction when my last visitor made eye contact." his normally robotic speech carried a dectectable note of sorrow. When he looked at her again, she did'nt feel irrational terror, but the sorrow of several lifetimes. When she finally regained proper brain function, she managed to stutter: "Wh-who are y-you?" he stared at her for a moment, and said "My name, is Ebony."