Crash Land

Approximately eight miles due North-East of Canterlot.

A lone mountain sits in the center of a field of dead trees and brown grass. It has fared through millennium of brutal storms which had stripped the one glorious field of its spring beauty. Yet now it serves a different purpose as a small section at the base of the mountain cracks open, and golden light spills out. Two  creatures, one small and one large, walk out purposefully. They looked like small horses, yet their hide was shiny and black like a nightmare. Green fire engulfed their bodies and they changed color, race, and even size. These were changelings, the bottom feeders of Equestria. Able to change their shape in order to feast on the love of somepony else. They had engaged their cloaking just in case their were any Royal guard patrols coming from either the Canterlot or Crystal Empire area, even though this was very unlikely. "What are we doing out here?" hissed one of them in a near snakelike tone.

"The queen ssssent us to invessstigate what crashed near our borders, ssse if it is Canterlotean or not." said the leader of the small group.

"Ssstill think thiss is ssstupid." the first one replied.

"Do you want the queen to burn your ssstupid brainss out of your skull?!" the leader hissed, he took the smaller spawn's downward gaze as his answer. "Come on," he continued, "the fasster we can figure out what this is, the faster we can ssleep again. About fifteen minutes later, they found the crater of the emerald comet that their astronomer had seen hurtling to the ground. "What isss that Meta?" the young spawn asked. "If I knew I could tell you." replied Meta. An unruly stench in the form of a green gas was wafting from the crater as the changelings moved in further. They soon passed through the barrier of gas and saw what lay smoking in the very center of the destruction. It was a bulbous plant of some kind, partially buried in the hard dirt, and every so often gave out a belch of emerald putrid smoke. Both changeling looked at each other uneasily, yet focused intently on the object. All changelings have some magic, basic telepathy and mild teleportation skills, no matter in which form they are in. So these changelings were able to pry the plant out of the earth and carry it back to the mountain with little effort yet what they didn't see, due to the overwhelming night that there were a set of yellow eyes peering out of a rift between two of the plant's bulges. As they took the disgusting object into the mountain, a faint demonic giggling could be heard from the bowels of the plant. Then the doors shut and the mountain was again dark.

Manehattan 9:47 p.m

Trixie Lulamoon spent her night in Manehatten just like she spent every night, resting in a room rented with the bits earned from her performances as a street side magician. Yet none of this eased the headache she had from using too much light powder in one of her smoke bombs. It had partially blinded her until the show was over, but now there was a scheduled rainstorm for the citizens, and every crack of thunder were like drills boring into her brain. She rolled out of her small cot and laid the blankets back neatly using her magic. She adorned her trademark cloak and hat, and set off from her building. A walk always calmed her mind, no matter what condition the sky was in. As she left the building, she told the doorpony that she would be back within the hour. She smiled slightly as she left the apartment behind her. The doorpony's name was Frosted Quill, an aspiring writer who needed a job before he could start writing a novel. Trixie also suspected that he had a bit of a crush on her, and who could blame him?

Trixie walked until she saw the place where she kept her cart, next to the fountain in the old square of town. She pulled her keys out a pocket in her coat, unlocked the door, and stepped in the overstuffed carriage. At a simple touch of her magic, the carriage would explode into a full-blown stage fit for a king. Trixie lay, soaking, down on the rough wooden floor and remembered her past life of being a boaster and a bully. She didn't like those days. It made her sick thinking that she, Trixie had been like that. Then Twilight Sparkle showed her the true meaning of forgiveness. Even though she did all of those horrible things to her friends and had banished her from her , she forgave Trixie. She gave a slow smile, she would have to do something for that  pony, something that she would enjoy for her lifetime.

Trixie was hurled from her memory with the crack of something in the sky. It wasn't lightning, it was not muffled by the cloud cover. Trixie scrambled out of her carriage onto the cobblestone pooling with water. She stared up at the sky and could not believe what she was seeing. A asteroid as blue as her fur was screaming out of the sky, and was heading straight towards her. Trixie stared with fear until her brain caught up with her. "Run!" it practically screamed, and Trixie obeyed galloping to the left quickly, yet not quick enough as to avoid the projectile completely. The blue tailed meteor crashed directly into her carriage, sending props and wood chips hurtling in all directions. Trixie stopped and turned to see the destruction of her only livelihood since that rock farm.

She stood trembling as the dust settled, and where her carriage, and she had been only a few seconds before, was a giant hole in the cobblestone. As she stood, she didn't see two parallel cracks running straight towards her hooves. She looked down just as the century old stone gave way. Trixie was plunged about seven feet straight down into total darkness. She landed in a rushing river or freezing festering water. She cried out in fright as the air in her lungs was stolen, and her muscles contracted with fear. She tried to light her horn, but the fear in her brain was messing with her magic. She went under for a second time and struggled to get to the surface. She emerged and managed to get a small breath before she plunged again. The breath wasn't enough, she sank, depleted of energy into the dark abyss. Just as her eyes closed, she felt tiny appendages grab hold of her body and bring her to the light. She didn't care, she was dead either way.

The Frozen Tundra of Northern Equestria.

King Sombra was extremely pissed. Not like he never was, ever since his defeat at the Crystal Empire left him broken and powerless, slowly being covered with snow. His horn had survived, so he did also. Nopony knew what it was like to be blown apart, then have to be near frozen while you try to get enough magic to piece themselves back together. Now something had completely demolished part of his beautiful ice castle, and had somehow melted everything within two feet of it. He had been jostled out of his royal quarters, and didn't even have time to re-equip his armor. He altered a part of an ice wall with magic in order to to make a shortcut to the kitchen, where the unknown object had crashed. As he emerged on the other side, he was met with a skeleton of a pony, eyes burning with green fire and black flesh hanging from its bones. He jumped slightly as he met one of his finer skeleton guards. He knew that he could have easily corrupted other ponies while he was a shadow, yet mortals couldn't piece themselves after being blasted to a crater with magic, yet these constructs could.

It didn't remedy the fact that these skeletons were creepy as hell. The skeleton saluted and Sombra merely nodded. "The object is contained, and all heat has been restrained to reduce continued damage." he said without moving his mouth. Sombra shuddered slightly again, "take me to it." he spoke plainly. "Yes sir." the guard clattered again. trotting off with the sound of bone on ice. Sombra kept pace until they reached the kitchen, then he stopped when he saw the destruction. The object had melted straight through the ceiling and had struck the underground pantry. Crystal fruit and vegetables, evolved to still grow in the harsh cold were strewn every which way. Even though some of his unicorn guard had used binding spellsc to suppress the heat emitting from the object, Sombra could smell the magic pouring from the thing. It had an ancient and fiery smell, like aged crystal peppers. He approached the crater the thing was in and looked down at the projectile.

It was shrouded in dark magic to extinguish all heat, but what Sombra could see was that it looked like a huge rock, with massive pores jutting out from its surface to give it the look of an underwater coral on fire. He stared at it until a fireball came hurtling out from one of the pores aimed directly at his head. Sombra reacted faster than any of his bone-headed (heh heh)

guards and threw up a half dome of solid crystallized dark magic. The fireball impacted his shield and started to eat away at the dark energy. Sombra slowly formed the crystal around the fire and lobbed it back into the crater from which it came. It impacted the object in one of its pores, which to his surprise, sucked the glowing crystal into its depths. "Take that thing to the deppest dungeon and lock it there." Sombra said sleepily, even immortal kings of darkness needed sleep. "I will perform tests on it in the morning." "Yes my lord." chattered the skeleton guard. Sombra turned away from them and back through the wall again. As he reached his bedroom, he flopped, exhausted on the lavender soft sheets and covered himself with the warm blanket.

That thing was the least of his worries at the moment. Yet what he didn't know was that that meteor was the key to his new Empire built upon death, fire, blood, and bones.

The Everfree Forest

Zecora, the local town's only herbal medical provider, trotted briskly through the dark bowels of the Everfree Forest with twin saddlebags strapped to her sides. She knew the dangers of the Everfree forest, timberwolves, Red Cap mushrooms, poison joke, and Nightmare Blooms were only a small portion of what actually lived in the forest. Yet these didn't disturb her as she stepped over rocks and the roots of ancient trees. This was the perfect season and time to pick Lunar Roses, a beautiful silver flower that only blooms once a year under the light of a perfect silver moon. They were a key ingredient for her patented sleeping potion that made the user fall into a nightmare free dream state. She was wondering about how much of a brew she could make with her full saddlebags when she stumbled upon the pasture of what should have been the Lunar Roses, but weren't. In their place their was a gorge of upturned dirt and Lunar roses. At the end of the skid there appeared to be some sort of wooden hut. And that's when she heard the growling. Zecora whipped around, but it was too late, timberwolves had ambushed her from the back of the forest and were now whipped into a frenzy for the prospect of fresh zebra meat to eat.

Zecora backed up until she was in the lane of misplaced dirt, roses crunching beneath her hooves. The wolves closed in tighter, and more emerged from the woods to enclose her in a loose circle of fangs, thorn claws and horrible breath. The wrapped the circle tighter like a giant wooden cobra and Zecora closed her eyes and prayed her last prayer to Zaneth Attaria, the zebra equivalent of Celestia and Luna in one. Zecora tripped going backwards and fell onto the soft packed earth. A moment passed then two sweat fell down Zecora's snout. Then she heard a small malformed cackle of glee and knew that this was no timber wolf. Small demonic voices called out "Wolfie!" cried one, "So playful!" cheered another, "Me ride wolfie!" cackled a deeper voice. Zecora opened her eyes and was amazed at what she saw. The timberwolves were being ridden by some kind of creature that she had never seen before.

They were bipedal like minatours, had mottled brown skin, wielded weapons from clubs, to what she could tell was the horn of a unicorn gripped in its little fist. They wore small brown patches of fur over their private areas, "Thank Zaneth for that." Zecora thought. The last thing she wanted was to see these creatures fully exposed. Then she saw that the circle of timberwolves had broken, then she saw why. Some of the small creatures had climbed on top of the timberwolves' bodies and were stroking and petting their branch bodies soothingly, and the wolves seemed to be enjoying it. Zecora got back on all four hooves and looked at the wolves with awe. The ones that weren't being petted were lining  up to one of the small brown creatures wielding a small pickax and wearing a golden helm with a bright red plume going down the middle. The wolves slowly opened their mouth and the brown creature would stick his entire body into their oral cavity. Then he would inspect the teeth by wiggling them with little appendages at the end of his fists, and when he found one he did not like, he smashed down the pickax onto the tooth, causing it to fall onto the soft grass below.

The wooden wolves didn't even flinch as their teeth were pounded from their skull, and when they were done, the creature would climb out and direct the wolf to the creatures that were petting them with a small "Wolfie pretty now!", or "Good wolfie!". Zecora started trotting slowly towards the strange entourage, yet was stopped by another tiny one, who just looked up at her and shook his head signaling no. So Zecora turned and gathered as many undamaged Lunar Roses as she could and trotted back to her hut. She started a small fire and put her large mixing pot on to boil. Then she slowly plucked the petals off of the roses as not to damage them, and mixed them with a bit of night bloom, salt, willow bark powder, and just a hint of Apple Acres patented hard apple cider for taste. Finally she laid back down on her bed with the bottle in one hoof. The fire blazed, leaving her nice and toasty in the bowels of her tree. And for being cold on the inside, and wanting desperately to forget what she had seen Zecora chugged the rest of the bottle of cider. She was out before the alcohol hit her stomach.