Empire of the Sun

His head pounding, the Spirit of Destruction grumpily watched whatever was happening from a hill far outside of Ponyville. He couldn’t tell what was going on, but it was a big deal. Celestia and Luna were there, and Twilight looked frantic at certain times, and incredibly bored on others.

When he had woken up, he hadn’t thought about much. Not the vision, not the blast to the face… Horizon was simply trying to collect himself and sulk in the time being. With blatant envy, he eyed the ceremony that was going on down below. I used to be one of them, he thought to himself, bitterly, I could have been down there. It would have been easy to slip in disguised, but no shapeshifting race enjoyed that. Even the changelings, he recalled, got a bit lonely together sometimes, but at least they had each other.

He continued to swirl in thoughts of wanting and wishing, trying his best to ignore the pain in his head, when a few different colors came into view down in the square. They looked like they were from that far out place… what was it called? Saddle Arabia? They had come over once before, he remembered, and didn’t think much of it. Now that he was thinking about it, however, he was coming up with questions he didn’t know he had. The most basic one being, where exactly is Saddle Arabia? He put together the map of Equestria in his head, and couldn’t find it anywhere. So then, that meant that Princess Celestia couldn’t rule over that land, right? Which means that there are some ponies, that don’t know the influence of Princess Celestia and Luna’s forced Western style culture?

What kind of military do they have? Do they have unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies, or are they all just… horses? What relationship do they have with Equestria if Celestia doesn’t rule them?

As Event Horizon pondered on these strange inconsistencies, the ceremony continued on below:

… and in the direct middle of it, there was a pretty familiar sound.

He didn’t pick it up at first, but his ears started twitching when he did. It broke his thoughts just as he was about to consider possibly making some sort of recording of him overanalyzing the very fact that these types of ponies existed.

It started out faint, but then there was a low, steady, rocky rumble. He perked his head up listening. It was unmistakeable; inconceivable, and most of all… familiar. He snaked up the trunk of a tree and weaved his way through the crown, poking his head out above the branches to clear sky. Sure enough, a small ball of orange glowing energy was faint in the sky and getting brighter by the second. Uh oh. Watching it come closer, he thought about what exactly to do. His primary instinct was to let it crash into the ground and watch Equestria crumble. That was his dream, after all. But his heart was telling him to go quickly to the square where the ceremony was happening and- on second thought, he would rather have them figure it out himself.

Horizon huffed as he crossed his arms. Perhaps it would teach them a bit of a lesson to have to deal with a crisis he knew about on their own. After all, they didn’t want his help before. Although, when he took a break from his stubborn conclusion to check back on the meteor, it had actually changed trajectory. Instead of heading towards Ponyville, it seemed to have curved in the air, heading straight towards the Everfree Forest. Great. Like that place wasn’t bad enough. Curiosity took the best of him more than anything as he shakily began to levitate towards the place where the meteor would crash. He had never actually seen a space rock before him, for the only time he’s ever gotten the chance to, he left before anypony could do anything except stop it.

It didn’t roar as much, in fact, not really at all. It sort of streaked and hissed across the sky, meaning it was actually significantly smaller than whatever had crashed before. The bright light flashed through the weave of branches, and a loud explosion lit up the sky. Initial pressure made a small burst from the site of the crash. Horizon had expected that, and was unaffected. What did affect him, however, was a sudden tidal wave of magical energy that smashed into his whole body. Shock tingled everywhere as an invisible wall smacked him without warning, sending him flying back into a tree. Once again, he hit his head and blurred his vision for a few seconds, before shaking himself off, watching the forest slowly come back into focus.

“What was that?” he asked himself, out loud. His magical energy was unstable from that hit. It was more active than it usually was, it popped and buzzed and crackled in his veins. Most unusual. He took a pause for a second, half expecting it to go down, but in fact it became more active. Soon enough, he was starting to have trouble levitating, until he couldn’t altogether. Event more strange. He had never actually had too much energy to perform magical tasks. But indeed it was; he tried to summon something physical, only to find that there was so much aura to do so, it blocked itself, feeling like an overgrown tumor in his talons. It weighed them down, but somehow he felt lighter… dizzy. He had to shake this feeling off, as he started to walk where the crash site was.

His muscles began twitching and spazzing as he began to become intrigued. There was nothing in Equestria that had ever affected him like this. There was a gigantic wall of smoke on the outer circumference of the crash site, and when he walked into it, he tiredly flapped his changeling wing to blow some away. The ground was barren, and unnaturally hot. A heat that would normally be dangerous, but he wasn’t feeling it as pain, at least for now anyway. There was still smoke everywhere, and he couldn’t see a thing, much less where the rock was. He got down to the ground and eyed it. He found where the blast direction was by the streak patterns in the dirt, so he continued in, finding it harder and harder to actually move. Ugh, he thought to himself as his entire aura was popping. The smoke was starting to clear now, and what had crashed was slowly becoming visible among the black dirt it had charred around it.

Of course, luck would have it, he heard a voice behind him.

“Hey, it’s you!” that sounded like a familiar mare. He whipped around to see Applejack looking kind of mad, Twilight was beside her and Celestia was behind them. Rainbow Dash was just galloping up to them.

“Oh, brother,” he said, rolling his eyes, knowing where this was going, “You think I’m the one who did this, didn’t you?” Celestia stepped to the front of the ponies and looked rather calm, “If you were not the cause of this, who was?” Horizon lashed his dragon tail angrily. The nerve of them.

“If you must know, I actually don’t know,” he said, gritting his teeth, “I’m here for the same reason you are, I just happened to get here first.” Rainbow Dash let out a snort and started to scrape her hoof against the ground as if ready to charge any split second now, clearly not convinced. Twilight was just quiet, standing beside her former mentor, looking like the scared student she used to be. Applejack was giving him a firm stare, as if weighing if he was telling the truth or not. The Princess of the Sun sighed, “Well then, maybe we should find out to-” she stopped mid sentence and suddenly all of their eyes got wide.

“...what?” he asked, “is it something on my face?”

“Do my eyes betray me?” a voice behind him, again, suddenly said. Event Horizon, the Draconequus Spirit of Destruction, Keeper of Entropy and Ruin, screamed in surprise and jumped up, whipping around.

Somehow, there was a pony standing behind him. Except this wasn’t any type of pony. He stood about as tall as Celestia did, so still shorter than the Draconequus, but his horn nearly reached Horizon’s nose. He had a thick white coat, also like Celestia, and wore unknown armor of polished gold. Engravings decorated it, covering every inch of the plated metal. On the sprouting tips of the center piece rested five shining, brilliant blue crystals. His eyes matched this color, also shining a very powerful, bright blue. Of course, a tall stallion in a white coat dressed in armor wasn’t enough, but no, he had a pair of wings at his side, too. That’s right, a pair of wings and horn.

“Are you Event Horizon, the Spirit of Destruction?” he asked, in a strong voice.

Nope.

Event Horizon dove forward as fast as he could and hid behind Celestia, crunching himself up to have her cover him complete, shaking.

“What’s wrong with you?” Rainbow Dash suddenly looked extremely confused. Violently shaking, he answered, “He knows me… I don’t know him. IT’S USUALLY THE OTHER WAY AROUND!”

“Horizon, stop shaking, you’re digging your horns into my back,” Celestia said, moving away from him, and Rainbow Dash pushed him back towards the mysterious stallion, “How about saying hello instead?” she said. The stallion smiled brightly, “Hey there, Rainbow Dash! Let me get to EV, first!” Dash looked a bit freaked out, but Horizon didn’t have time before the white pony grab his talons and shook them up and down repeatedly.

“It’s so great to finally meet you! My name is Sirius A, but you can just call me Sirius. Gotta say, I’m great fan of some of your work, I loved that time you really stuck it to Sombra.” As he kept talking, Horizon couldn’t let his horror show anymore. Sirius “A” then moved onto Celestia, standing slightly taller than her.

“Tis is a pleasure to meet you at last, too, Celestia, we do have much to discuss,” he said, bowing his head down, and then smiling brightly, “As you can see, I know a bit more about what’s going on here than an ordinary pony should. There are some things you should know about.” Celestia was completely dumbfounded. She could only stare with wide eyes, and nod,

“O-of course,” she stammered, “I’ll be happy to meet with you.” The confusion in her eyes was priceless. The Spirit of Destruction couldn’t help himself as he uncontrollably burst into wild laughter, falling backwards onto the floor. She flattened her ears in embarrassment as Sirius looked back, confused, “What did she say?” Horizon could only make vague gestures with his limbs as he struggled to breathe for air while continuing to make fun of the Princess. Applejack rolled her eyes as Rainbow Dash eyed Sirius suspiciously. The two started talking and began heading back the road that the party came, only Twilight giving Event Horizon an eyebrow raise before turning her back on him and following the group.

Once he got up, he noticed that they were well down on the road by now. He stretched, yawning, relieved he got to make fun of somepony before the day was over. Just as he was about to take a step to go follow them, something grabbed his spider arm. Startled, he turned his head back to see a familiar face.

“Discord?” he said, surprised, “I thought you were out-” the Spirit of Chaos had a very serious look on his face. Event Horizon looked from side to side, getting nervous, “What?”