Chapter 4

Wisdom and Promise.

The Great War ended with The Final Battle. It was this war that had ended the life of each and every alicorn within the realm of Equestria, save for a select few that had either survived the battle or had stayed hidden from the war itelf.
After the battle was fought, an agreement was made between the survivors. Ensure that future generations would never fall into darkness again, and keep this complete disregard of ponykind hidden from them as well. None should know about the atrocities that happened in these times.
A strange counterintuitive agreement, but it worked. There was peace in Equestria for several centuries as both sisters reigned magnificently. Soon, a new generation of ponies was born and the princesses made sure that history would never repeat itself.
Until it did. With Luna. Banished. To the moon. But... that is a story for or of another time.

There we stood. On one side of the field we had the Protectors of Harmony, or what was left of them at least, on the other side of the field were the Soldiers of Chaos.
Both armies were simply staring at each other from across the field. As if they were waiting for some sign to tell them to end it once and for all.
The strange creature responsible for everything that happened in the past few decades of war stepped forward and spoke. "Now, now, my little fillies, daddy is quite upset with you, but if you surrender now, I'm sure we can come to a certifiably peaceful compromise!" He said, with a playful grin on his face.
Celestia stepped forward and exclaimed with a booming voice "We are not your little fillies anymore!"
Then Luna did the same and followed up with "We will never surrender! And with the power of Harmony..."
"YOU. WILL. BE. STOPPED!" They both exclaimed simultaneously and with that cry for the attack, the Protectors of Harmony charged forward, ready to fight to the last pony. The Soldiers of Chaos soon followed up with a cry of their own and charged into battle as well.
And then, all hell broke loose on the battlefield.

The night before, we had taken all the information we had on the enemy and gave each and everypony an assigned pony for this battle. They would find their target and end them as quickly as possible before going to help others with theirs. Our numbers and strength were almost even, but we knew that Discord would need to be dealt with by the princesses and the Force of Chaos Sheilla should be dealt with by me and Tracie, the Force of Harmony.
Me and Tracie devised a plan to get Sheilla away from the whole fight since she was the most... Collateral of all our enemies. When that succeeded, we would do anything in our power to stop Sheilla from returning to the battlefield.
And so, as the two armies clashed, we initiated our plan and I tackled Sheilla with Tracie as my shadow. Then, Tracie sucked us into the shadow and we were teleported to a location somewhere in the middle of the Everfree forest.

Sheilla immediately threw me off her with an angered growl, as would be expected when a filly-sized mare trying to keep down an actual mare. After the many battles with her, we had come to know at least some part of how she works. One strange occurrence was that her hair shows her level of anger. Complete green for no anger at all, complete red for an extreme amount of anger.
I landed a few feet away and quickly got up to see another unseen emotion on Sheilla's face, fear. "Where's papa?" She asked, with her hair slowly turning red "What did you do? Where are we? Papa needs me!"
Tracie quickly appeared next to, and with both our faces in a confused expression we asked "Papa?!"
Sheilla nodded with a huff "Yes! Papa Discord! He was the one who made me, duh? He made me from the sweetest cotton candy cloud and the darkest, deepest chocolate he could find!" She then looked a bit off into the distance "At least... That's what he told me..." Her expression suddenly changed to pure anger as her hair started glowing red "Now where is he?!"
Me and Tracie looked at each other with concern "That actually explains a lot." Tracie quipped.
"It doesn't matter... Stick to the plan!" I said to her before speeding off towards Sheilla, charging up my magic with a deep breath. I narrowly escaped the first blast escaping Sheilla's hooves by jumping up and over her with some help of my wings. Tracie quickly followed after me, but evaded to the side, staying on the opposite of my position to Sheilla. The both of us pointed our horns to the ground and with a sudden spark of magic, a runic circle appeared between us, encapsulating Sheilla within its binding spell. Sheilla was forced to lay flat on the ground as the locks of binding formed over her hooves.

Both me and Tracie were focusing all our efforts on keeping this mad pony under control.
"Please," I pleaded "just stay down and nopony needs to get hurt!" Only getting a maniacal laughter from the mare in binding "Nopony needs to get hurt?!" She laughed some more as her entire mane and tail became red and started glowing menacingly "You're gonna be the ones getting hurt after I burst outta here!" With a loud roar of anger, she started to struggle and fight against the binding magic keeping her down.
Both me and Tracie winced at the sudden outburst of power working against us but managed to keep it under control still. "You can't escape, you idiot, it's two against one here!" Said Tracie "Even your power has its limits, you know?!"
This only created more fury within the mad mare. "It does not!" Sheilla roared as her magic seems to get even stronger "My power can reach the strength of even beyond that of GODS! There is no way you two can stop ME!" The binds around her hooves seemed to be weakening, forced by the brute power working against them.
I noticed that my power was fading and soon enough I was forced down with a whin "T-Tracie..." I whimpered "She's getting too strong..." Tracie nodded and seemed to get worked up as well "Yes, indeed, little Light. I think we need to go for plan B..."

Elsewhere, on the main battlefield itself, it seemed that the only beings still left standing were Discord and the Princesses. Neither army was left, either through mutual destruction, or a complete draining of life force, both sides had suffered heavy losses, and now it all came down to this last confrontation.
"Ooh~! Seems like I'm the only one left of my friends." Discord quipped with a grin "Oh, how sad it is to lose friends to a bunch of bad seeds." He shrugged it off "Oh well, I guess the game's over then. Come on, my fillies, time to go home and eat dinner!"
Both Celestia and Luna glared at him with utter disbelief "You think this is a game?!" Luna exclaimed with anger "Ponies lost their lives because of you, hundreds of Alicorns have perished! You almost extinguished our entire species?!" Celestia added with a booming voice "And you still see this as a game?!"
Discord looked somewhat confused at the both of them "Why, yes, of course! I mean, neither of us can kill each other, we're too powerful! I mean, this was all just a fun pass time, fighting each other, while neither of us could actually win in the end! A pointless, mindless fighting, just to keep our minds busy, how else would you go against boredom?"
Celestia shook her head with a deep frown "You are completely insane, and not anywhere close to what our father used to be... This ends, now! Luna!"
They both gathered the power of the Elements of Harmony and with a great explosion of colour, their horns shone their combined magic onto Discord. Slowly, the strange creature turned to stone but not before uttering a last "Oh, bugger..."

At the same time, Sheilla exploded with a mighty fury "PAPA! What happened to papa?! I can't feel him anymore! Let me go! This is your final warning, you pieces of absolute dogsh-" "NOW, Everlight!" Tracie interrupted her. I quickly chanted a spell in an ancient dead and forbidden language, which would roughly translate to:

"With these words, I bind you to me...
With these runes, I banish us three...
From the light into the shadows, from chaos to harmony...

Hear these words, oh power of yore...
And drag us to the land of evermore...
Let there be no strife anymore..."

With a great eruption of magic power, the three of us were enclosed in a vortex. Pure magic power was rushing all around us, with no possibility of escaping anymore.
"What's happening?!" Sheilla exclaimed with a sense of dread rising up. "What did you do?"
Tracie seemed to relax a bit and trot around to my nearly unconscious body to pick it up and gently hold "You see, we were tasked with stopping you, no matter what the cost." She started to explain, as the magical power rushing around started to twist and rotate faster. "We didn't think those binds would keep you down for long, to begin with. But you were such a great threat to ponykind that we deemed it necessary to end you. Since our combined magical power wouldn't be great enough, Everlight looked upon some ancient magic. Magic that would bind souls together and magic that would relinquish one's own soul to the afterlife." She chuckled and waved a hoof around "That is what's happening right now. All three of our souls are linked and Everlight has relinquished her soul to the afterlife, we are to follow her there!"
Sheilla started to worry as the rushing magic grew smaller and smaller. She tried to teleport away, but couldn't; she tried to slam her way out, but couldn't; in fact, none of her magic seemed to work "This is insane! Why would you agree to this?! Why did you need to be linked as well?!"
Tracie smirked a bit and gently nuzzled my head "This little Light can only use that, Light Magic... And this was a combination of Dark and Light Magic. She needed my specific magical power to be able to do what she did. And besides, we've grown quite fond of one another, why wouldn't I help stop an overpowered idiot like you?"
Soon enough, the strange magical power enveloped Tracie and my body "See you on the other side!" Tracie yelled with a chuckle before disappearing into nothingness.
Sheilla roared in fury "NO! This is not the end!" She slammed her hooves against the enclosing magic force "I will not be stopped! This can't be the end! I am invincible!" Soon enough the rushing magic became so small that she could only stand upright with her hooves in the air "This is NOT the last you've seen of me! This, I promise you, Everlight and Tracie!" With a last roar of protest, the magic closed in on her and soon enough seemed to vanish into thin air, leaving nothing but a strange open area in the very center of the Everfree Forest.

After an exact lifetime of 100 years, very young for an alicorn, this is where my life had ended. On my birthday, no less. But as I soon found out, it was but the first of many lives I was born into. You see, there was one aspect of my magic, that I never knew. My soul has the ability to be reborn into a new body. But that will all become clear in the next Arc, for now, this is...

The End
of the first Arc

Author's Note

There, that's the end of the first of many Arcs.
I have plans for many more, don't worry!
Each arc will feature at least 4 chapters.
Hope you guys keep reading!