The Warlock

Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria, there lived a lone human.

Well, to be fair, the human had not been in Equestria for a while. This would be his first visit to the gleaming gem of the continent, Antera in over a month. The human was currently sitting in his personal shuttle awaiting launch from Luna City. The human looked roughly 25 or so. He was dressed in the protective battle robes he normally wore, and had a small satchel bag strapped to his side. Adorning his left thigh was a chronologically ancient, yet mint condition 1911, the only one of its kind.

The human quietly slept in the pilot's seat in the shuttle. He was fifth in line for the magrail accelerator, and it took twenty minutes to charge for each shuttle. The shuttle itself was fairly small compared to others, seeing as how his was designed to carry two people max, unlike the other, 50+ person mass transit shuttles.

His shuttle would lurch a hundred feet every 25 minutes. Nearly two hours would pass before the human would move. The main console chimed as a transmission came in.

"Come in Soul Of Innovation, this is Heinlein Station, do you copy?" A male Earth Pony (technically a Moon Pony) appeared on the holo-projector in the center of the console. He seamed to speak with a tone of reverence in his voice.

The human awoke with a jump. "I copy Heinlein Station. Am I cleared for launch?" The human sat up a little straighter.

"You are clear for launch, Soul Of Innovation. Unlocking magrail controls now. Do you need lazer assisted thrust?" There was a second chime, as a small red button on the right side of the console lit up. "Do you know when you will be back, Herr Campbell?" The pony slipped back into Basic for a moment. He could technically speak any language he felt like, but Basic would take too long, so he spoke in Gryphic for the most part, as it had a far larger vocabulary.

"I don't know. Tia said something about a temporal distortion. These can take a few weeks to fix, or a few years." He told the control pony. "And no, I have an Ion Thruster." Celestia had asked him to return to Canterlot from Luna City almost as soon as he touched down. he had just come from Ares when she called him over the holonet. He had been at the small city to help set up another business, and was returning to Luna City for a bit of R&R before he went back home.

"Well, good luck with that. I hope you come back soon." He bid the human good bye before he closed the connection.

The human sighed and strapped himself into the seat. After locking himself into the seat with the five-point harness, he reached out and grabbed the steering yolk, he thumbed the button.

An automated voice filled the small cabin. 'Starten Sie in zehn , neun, acht, sieben , sechs, fünf , vier, drei , zwei, eins. Starten.' The entire shuttle shot forward to Mach 7 in a few seconds. The pressure would have been immense, had he not been wearing his battle robes. They absorbed the majority of the G's. He stayed at this speed for thirty seconds, but because he was in a cargo shuttle instead of a personnel transport, the ride was shorter, but the speed shot up to Mach 25 for three seconds at the end. His robe could not absorb most of this, and he had all of the air pushed out of him. He did not mind this. In fact, this was his favorite part of the entire launch sequence.

He could nor breathe for a full three seconds, before the pressure was removed. He burst forth from the underground tunnel at nearly twenty thousand miles an hour.  He got his first glance of the Lunar surface as he shot away from the moon. The terraforming efforts were coming along fairly well. Over twenty percent of the Moon was covered in transparasteel domes containing cities, farms, and suburbs, there were ponies waddling around in p-suits on the surface, and the rovers were scooting around, testing to see if the location was appropriate for a gravity well.

He turned his attention towards Earth, the main planet. Even from this distance, he could see the thousands of oceanic colonies and the hundreds of space stations circling the green and blue sphere. There were dozens of shuttles en route to the Moon. He turned his head to look at the sun. Normally it is a bad thing to look directly at the sun, but because his shuttle normally relied on cameras to see outside the ship, he was fine. Even from here, he could see hundreds of massive cargo ships, each almost as large as a small country, heading off to the Dyson Sphere in construction. Finally, he gazed upon the flashing lights hovering in space that marked out the route to the next nearest planet.

He looked upon the entire ensemble of technology with pride and a grin. A mere two thousand years ago, the planet seemed to be in a perpetual medieval state for thousands of years. Back then the most advanced technology was the steam engine. It had taken him decades to even begin having his ideas taken seriously. But when they were, he had made such immense changes to the world, that it was nearly unrecognizable. In the years after he had started making these changes, he had made thousands of Ponies, Minotaurs, Griffons, and numerous other species wealthy beyond rational thought. He owned almost half of the nearest planet to Earth. All of this was his brain child, his pride and joy. It had taken so much effort and hardships, but every time he opened his eyes, it brought a smile to his face from just how worth it it was. For years, he had been writing notes on how he had done all of this. He had another five hours before he would enter Earth's orbit. He decided that it was time to start.

Putting his shuttle on autopilot, he unlatched the harness and leaned back. Zero gravity was always so relaxing to him. The sense of weightlessness was a wonderful feeling. Pulling out his data pad, he opened the speech to text program. He was not recording yet, but was about to start. He hit the record button.

"Special thanks. To start with, I would like to dedicate this book first and foremost to my wives. You are the light of my life, and the reason I have not gone insane years ago. I also dedicate this book to every single person who I have helped. Weather directly or indirectly, they are the reason the world is as it is. Lastly, I would like to thank my old roommate, Mike. Nobody would know him, but he is the sole reason that I am even here. He was the driving force that lead me to be the person I am. I know you can't here me Mike, but thank you. For everything."

He paused to gather his thoughts. "Prologue. Once upon a time, in a land that was once called Antera, there lived a nation. This nation was a land of mystery, technology, and forbidden secrets. "