Author's Note

Another chapter, not super action packed I know, mostly exposition and a little backstory on ebony for those wanting to know more about him and his motives for helping the changeling queen.....so, leave a comment on how you think I should proceed or am doing, am trying, the camping trip helped clear my head a lot, credits to blackdust for tips that helped clean up a lot of what I had

Did someone spike my tea?

~A few days later~

"You're a strange creature no matter what you say", Chrysalis had been studying her new accommodations the past few days as she watched her host slowly modify the building around them into a more secure and sturdy base of operations. She couldn't quite understand why he had saved her group of changelings from losing themselves to the chaos induced ferality if hunger, but she wasn't jaded enough tobe disrespectful to a willing love donor. "You say we can't travel back to the north to warn our kind to the actions of the chaos god because it would risk drawing his attention to the Crystal Empire and that some future force will make the same empire vanish for over a thousand years, in some form of preserving a timeline. Yet you outright helped us which by your own words means you changed the timeline in some way, even warning myself of possible future negative and positive outcomes when first we met. I don't understand your angle, but am thankful for you feeding and housing my hive, but what do you get out of it?"

"Boredom relief honestly", he replied truthfully. "It would have been easy yes to let you do your thing, but I felt it only fair to remove at least one toy from the chaos gods toy chest. At the same time, I get to have someone to talk to while I make my own plans, plans that though I don't want to change to much of the timeline, I know will in some forms or other do such a thing. It's a tricky little bit of business you see, on one hand I know the prime timeline ends with a very positive outcome and resolution, even if its distant potential future is so off kilter, it would make Discord contemplate being orderly. At the same time on the other hand, if i change some small things now, maybe I can make the world a little better and more balanced so when that far flung distant future occurs, it's not so wibbly wobbly. To quote a friend of mine, I am essentially trying to corral a group of wet cats and dogs, in a way that they all get along mostly without burning down the house or breaking to many walls....."

"Do I even want to know how corralling cats and dogs can lead to fire or broken walls?", Chrysalis inquires with one raised eye ridge, honestly both curious and worried at the possible answers.

"Fire breathing hellhounds and winged sabretooth tigers tend to get a little bit violent when stuck in close quarters with one another.....". Ebony casually shrugs as he begins reshaping part of the floor with geomancy to create a set of stairs and begin work on creating a basement for the changelings, having recalled how they do have an insectile love of tunnels and caverns in their hives. "As for feeding you, it's not really that much of an issue tobe honest, I merely am converting a small fraction of my bodies energies into passively released love energy which you and your kind suck up like plants consume sunlight. Any decent magical scholar whose spent a few decades researching energy manipulation and conversion could in theory do the same, either with ambient energy or a focus. In my personal case I am using my own large stores of energy as the focus, I do have far too much as it is...."

Watching Ebony seem to reshape the floor and create new walls in a new basement with his bare hands, Chrysalis paused while thinking over his words. Looking back to her changelings that had been growing slightly restless these past few days now that they weren't starving, she knew staying indefinitely wouldn't be an option, no matter how comfortable the accommodations were. Sighing to herself she walks slowly behind the man as he works on crafting a basement, making notes of where he forms the start of future doorways indication future rooms to this basement." You make it sound like you are a being connected to a celestial body, like the alicorn sisters we heard of in the south, the ones we were intending to investigate before Discord ambushed us and sealed us in a tree. Especially with how much energy you already seem tobe casually throwing around in reshaping this building on an almost whimsical nature. But I know alicorns don't just grow on trees so surely it's something else....."

"You wouldn't be too far off, my true species is like a living adaptive evolving star, we constantly store ambient energy and energy directed at us, like walking living giant batteries. It's something that makes our physical aging all but cease when we are fully mature and why none of my kind has yet died of old age. Sigothi is what my race is called, and when we die it tends to in the oldest of my kind create blackholes like the collapsing of a star, rather messy for whatever planet we happen tobe on at the given time. As for being an alicorn, I do have an alicorn form I can take, but I am preferring to not use that form unless I must, sticking to this humanoid form instead. The last thing I want todo is be chased by two horny female alicorns who might get it in their head to try breeding me to rebuild the alicorn race. No thank you, last thing the multiverse needs is half alicorn half sigothi beings running around, getting into conflicts and creating potentially more blackholes in the future." Pausing in his work he raises a chunk of the floor to make a crude pair of thrones, sitting in the left one and gesturing to the right with his other hand. "I have led armies and groups in the past, my days of being any form of ruler I would prefer remains in the past, I am just a tired old man now, long past the wildness of my youth. This trip is in a way my retirement and vacation rolled into one. A chance to get away from all the burdens and responsibilities i have faced, and at the same time a chance tobe somewhere people aren't trying to kill me on a daily to weekly basis."

Moving to sit in the offered throne, Chrysalis observes him as he speaks, noting that there is in fact an almost tired feel from his posture as he's sitting in repose. " Why here though, if you're a space traveling, dimension and time hoping being, why pick this mudball and time period to visit? Why pick this dimension, if you have so many other options? Heck if you can so freely travel why let any place or responsibility pin you down or even care about what others think?"

"In this world they call it equanimity, in others humanity, all boiling down to maintaining a sense of right and wrong and no losing sight of one's personal values. If I really stopped caring, it would in fact become a lot easier for myself but at what cost. There is only so much one can give up of their compassion and feelings before one because nothing but a twisted shell, something I came very close to becoming on the battlefields in the past. For a time, I even bore the mantle of the horseman of death, working on the side for a close friend of mine who is no longer with us. Apoc wanted me tobe his horseman of war, but I pointed out I would be too good at such a job, and I have a personal love of scythes when it comes to actual weapons. Not to say I am not nearly equally skilled with other forms of weapons; it's just scythes are so much easier to modify and upgrade." He solemnly looks down at his open palm contemplating and remembering the past, both the good and the bad. "In a way, construction, inventing, and tinkering is what helped me keep myself the most in the present, kept me from losing focus. By taking breaks to make things for others, or for pranks I could tame my darker urges and notions."

"Either you have the world's greatest health plan or know an excellent method to repair wounds, because if you have been on as many battlefields as you make it sound, you sure lack the scars to back it up. And though I am not saying you're making it up, you don't seem tobe what most would call a walking embodiment of death, after all you saved the lives of my hive with your actions a few days ago." As she speaks, she makes a no offense gesture with her hooves to make it clear she's not doubting him outright, it's just not every day someone saves you and yours and then says they used tobe Death itself. Although being Death would explain abit of his knowledge of how others were meant to end in her book, making her now potentially wonder just what her own personal future held that she would garner such a creature's attention. "So, I get it, you are essentially on vacation from your travels, but that doesn't explain why here and why help my hive. We aren't ones to refuse to repay a favor owed within decent expectations, but the whys are something that would keep any sensible ling awake at night."

"To answer in order, why here.... because this dimension and world is one of the most peaceful and least violent of the many dimensions i have seen in my observing of the multiverse. Sure, it has its darkness, but that darkness is balanced by the orderly and harmonious aspects within this world. And that leads into why you and yours, I need your lings todo me a small favor of watching over seven ponies, as well as keeping those ponies' lives flowing smoothly when they have to handle important matters. These seven are the pillars of Harmony, or that is what they will be known as later in time. Mage Meadowbrook is an earth pony alchemist, Rockhoof a town militia pony, Flash Magnus is a pegasus soldier, Somnabula a pegasus wisepony, Mistmane is a unicorn sorceress, Stygian who is an earth pony strategist, and lastly Starswirl the bearded. Starswirl is the one who accidently freed you from the tree and tends tobe slightly short sighted and prideful in some of his actions, but he at his core truly does care about the rest of Eques. These seven will play pivotal roles in keeping the countryside safe, and I would prefer their homelives tobe somewhat stable while they keep the rest of the land stable. But at the current time walking around as I am would only attract a lot of attention, while your race being able to blend into society and maintain a sense of order, while also providing information covertly. Once Discord is sealed away and the matter is resolved in the north, having a more stable connections to the ponies of these lands will go a long way to making a more beneficial land for your kind. Or at least that's my intention." He relaxes back in his seat looking at Chrysalis, waiting to see what she decided todo with the information.

"I won't promise anything since I don't know these ponies you want us to work around, but I will give it some thought and see what can be worked out from there. That is the best I can offer all things aside, and I won't deny having a better footing in the nations to rise in the future is appealing." Sitting back in her own crude seat she closes her eyes deciding to take a nap and consider what's being asked and what's being offered.