Moon's Blade and the Crystals of Chaos

Chapter 10:
White Peak Mountain

The guardian usually didn't leave its village, but there was no doubt about it. This truly was Naga standing in front of me.

It happened only a few times in the history of White Peak that the guardian dragon had left the village, mostly to just deal with another aggressive dragon that could destroy a great part of the village in a single blow. This time it was different, he had something else to tell than a simple dragon.

"It's about the village," Naga started to explain, "Since a while time and space have been distorted around the mountain."

I looked up at him. "Are you sure?" I asked, although I did not doubt a single word of what he had said.

"Yes," he replied, "The mountain is trapped inside a growing dome of distortion that could drive any animal, including us dragons, insane."

"But the mountain is home to many dragons! How could you leave them like that?" I replied furiously.

"I did not, I warned them when the dome was still smaller," Naga explained, "The dragons have fled by now and so have the animals. Only the villagers I could not save, but it shouldn't matter. They can last long within this distortion without losing their sanity."

His words slightly relieved me, but it still worried me. "I'm afraid I'm of no use anymore," Naga continued, "So I need your help. I'll fly you to the mountain as soon as you're ready."

I looked away for a second, then looked back and said "I'll bring some friends with me. They'll be a great help."

Naga accepted it and I gathered the others.

When the six of us arrived back at Naga, I introduced them to him and vice versa. Rainbow Dash seemed somewhat angered that I tricked her, but forgave me quickly.

"These are the ones you spoke of?" Naga laughed. "You think these puny, little ponies can assist you?" I looked at Naga angrily. He quickly realised I were serious and stopped laughing. "Fine," he said, "Get on my back and hold tight." And so we did.

After several minutes we neared a dome. It was unclear what was inside the dome, but it quickly changed from light to dark and from dark to light.

When we neared the border, Naga descended.

"I can not go any further," he explained, "If I do so, the distortion would drive me insane."

We understood him and stepped off.

"Take care!" Naga said as we started to enter the dome.

"Let's be careful," Twilight suggested, "We don't know what's on the other side."

We slowly crossed the border. For a moment everything seemed blurry, then everything inside the dome became clear.

Everything inside the dome was visible. The distortion was so great that it felt like another place. It wasn't like White Peak anymore. No, this had become a totally different place. Days passed in what seemed minutes. The sun didn't went down, instead it turned invisible for a while, then became visible again. Besides of the time being distorted, the landscape differed from the original too. Pieces of land were missing from the surface and were floating in mid-air.

We couldn't fly up the mountain, since not all of us were pegasi. So I came up with another route, that hadn't been used in years.

"You want us to go through the valley?" Twilight asked, "Is that even safe?"

I nodded in response.

"Spooky..." Pinkie said silently as we walked into the valley.

Not long after entering the valley we started to talk.

"So, how's this valley called? Or does it have no name at all?" Twilight asked me.

"The valley's called the Dragon Valley," I explained, "The valley is called so because it used to be the home of many dragons."

"Many dragons?" Rainbow asked enthusiastically.

"More than you could imagine."

"How many?" Pinkie asked.

"I don't count them. There are too many of them anyways."

"But where are they now?"

"Naga warned them about the distortion and they fled. The dragons are usually very obediently towards Naga, purely because they're afraid Naga will slay them if they don't do what he says."

It was silent for a moment, until Rarity started to speak again.

"There's something I've been thinking about," she said. We looked at her, interested by what she was about to say.

"If time and space are distorted here," she continued, "Wouldn't it be obvious that two of the remaining crystals reside somewhere here?"

She had a point. Twilight mentioned earlier that two of the remaining crystals had the ability to manipulate space and time.

We agreed, and after that it was silent again.

After a while we arrived in front of a gate that seemed to be made out of a material that strongly resembled brass. The gate had a symbol on it that seemed familiar to me, but I couldn't place what it was.

"Fine, how do we get past this?" Twilight wondered, but Pinkie came in quickly with a solution.

"Oh! Oh! Try to touch it!" She said to me.

I followed her advice and touched the symbol. Not long after that a shining light came from the other side of the door, but quickly faded away. The gate slowly opened and a cavern became visible. I remembered the cavern from stories I've heard. We went inside the cavern carefully.

It was dark inside, so Twilight casted a light spell and a bright light shined from her horn.

The cavern seemed one long hallway. The walls were littered with candles that had burnt out many years ago. On the end of the hallways was a contraption that seemed to be made out of the same material as the gate. I recognized it as the ancient elevator built by unicorns thousands of years ago from the stories that I've heard of.

Wise Knowledge used to lecture me about these kind of things, magic contraptions, wars and the history of the village and the mountain it resides on.

"What do we do now?" Rarity asked slightly frustrated.

I examined the contraption. It mainly was a huge, round platform with in the middle an orb. On one side of the contraption was something that seemed like a control panel.

Wise had taught me about these kind of contraptions and how they worked, including the control panel. My memories about them, however, were rather vague.

I tried to remember how the machines worked. I tried pressing several buttons, but nothing happened.

I wondered what I were doing wrong, but then I remembered that the machine works on magic. It must have ran dry since the last time it was used.

I examined the orb, which was the battery of the contraption, as far as I remembered. The orb was slightly damaged, but it should work. However, magic would leak out of it as soon as it entered it.

I asked Twilight to focus her magic on the orb. As she did, the orb slowly started to glow, but became dim again rather quickly.

It had no use, her magic alone wouldn't feed the battery.

Rarity decided to focus her magic on the orb too. The orb started to glow and it's power seemed stable. As long as they kept this up, the system would stay operable.

I tried some buttons to see what they did. By pressing one of the buttons the elevator seemed to try to go down, by pressing another button the elevator stopped moving at all.

I assumed that simply having the elevator go up would cause it to go at a high speed and crush us between the platform and the ceiling. As the unicorns started to tire out, I pressed the remaining button.

The elevator slowly started to increase in speed. After a while the elevator was rushing up, so I pressed the button that would stop it.

The elevator slowed down and finally stopped in the middle of the shaft. I finally understood how the machine worked. I made the elevator go up, and tried to keep it at a calm speed.

The unicorns started to tire even more, so I had to hurry. After not too long we neared the top. I pressed the stop button and the elevator slowed down. It almost seemed not to stop in time and crush us, but on the last second it stopped.

"Ho boy, that sure was close." Applejack said, relieved by the fact the elevator didn't crush us.

We jumped off the platform. Another dark hallway stood in front of us. This time, Twilight was too tired to cast the light spell, but it did not matter. There was light visible on the end of the hallway. The light came from a crack in the wall.

"Let me take care of this." Applejack said and kicked the wall, which then crumbled and a small passageway became visible.

We went through it and arrived behind the village's shrine, in Naga's lair.

"We finally made it!" I said happily. I rushed out, but stood still for a moment. An icy chill filled my body. It was like I were paralysed, by the shock of what I saw.