Chapters Guardians of the Elements
Sitting in the throne room I can’t help but feel a little bit uneasy with the two bipedal beings, Humans, standing across from my sister and I. Of course, I wouldn’t voice this until they we were gone. Standing on the left, a man, with piercing yellow eyes, snow white shoulder length hair, wearing an equally as white coat unzipped with a grey shirt underneath, and thick but loose white pants.
To the right,sitting on the steps to the dais turned away from us, a woman with eyes obscured by a black hood, turquoise hair that falls all the way to her thighs, wearing a unique outfit of black white and violet with bands and belts crossing to keep it all together.
After a few minutes of silence the man spoke for the first time since greeting us. “You are sure they will allow us to protect them?” Celestia was the first to speak. “They have all been made aware of the situation they are in, and the need for their protection. While I’m sure some may not like the idea, they will still go along with it.”
He nodded, but his question made me raise a brow. “What difference does it make if they allow it or not? We are the ones who contracted you two to protect them.” He actually smiled at that.
“Human honor.” He turned his head and muttered “For those who still have any.” shaking his head, he continued. “While it is true you are the ones who contracted us through our CO, we are sworn to our charges individually. In order to strengthen our connection with Terra, our Deity, we form oaths with our contracts. Those oaths are what give us our strength, our mana, it’s our way of life. Without the oaths we’d be powerless.”
The girl was staring at her hand, electricity dancing along from finger to finger. “Of course, we can still operate while not under oath, it just makes things more difficult and complicated.” She added on. Her accent placed her with an “english” accent as they called it. “Pmuuto ramm, frah yna drao kuehk du kad rana?” she questioned in a language I couldn’t understand.
The man replied to her, in what I assumed to also be the same language.
“Pa bydeahd Trinity, drao ryt du dyga dra dnyeh vnus Ponyville.”
*Third person*
Before either princess could question what they had said, they could hear six voices approaching the throne door. “...aying Twi, is I don’t trust humans!” a brash voice said loudly, as if it didn’t care it could be heard, with a more refined voice following up with “While normally I’m not one to judge, I must agree with Rainbow Dash on this one.”
Trinity merely scoffed at that. “Hud ajah kejehk ic y lryhla, eh?”
The voices were now right in front of the door, but still have no entered. “Come on now you two, they can’t be all bad, we haven’t even met them yet! Ya gotta at least give’em a chance.”
The brash one continued as if it didn’t hear the previous voice. “It doesn’t matter what their here to do, humans are known for all kinds of bad stuff! They’ve fought with every other nation at least once! And won!”
A rather high pitched voice chimed in “Come on Dashie, that’s silly! They only fought and won against the griffons and changelings! They made a treaty with the minotaurs after a stalemate, and made another with the dragons when they lost! That’s only four nations, even I know that.”
Another voice rang out from behind the door. “GIRLS! We’ve been over this, the princesses have already contracted them, and when we had the vote, we all agreed to go along with this! End of discussion!”
With that the door burst open and they all trotted in. All of them looked battered up a bit. The blue pegasus, Loyalty, had a cast on her left wing, the yellow one, Kindness, had one on her front right leg. The orange one, Honesty, had gauze wrapped around her barrel and back left leg,while the pink one, Laughter, merely had a bandaid on her forehead but still looked to be roughed up. The white one, Generosity had her horn chipped, and had a nasty bruise on her face, which she tried to cover up with various cosmetics, and the purple one, Magic, had a black eye.
Magic caught sight of the four others already in the room, and her eyes went wide when she realized they were all staring at the door. “Eheheheh...uh, how much of that did you hear?” the man chuckled good naturedly. “We heard enough.” She shrunk back a little at that. “I’m sorry you had to hear all that, we didn’t mean to offend.”
Magic smiled “pleased to meet you Sir Deka and Sir Trinity, my name is Twilight Sparkle, and these are my friends, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie, from your left to right in that order.” They each exchanged their own little greeting of sorts minus Rainbow Dash, who merely glared and held in her contempt, and Rarity, who simply waved.
Satisfied that the exchange of names had gone over well, Celestia spoke up “Well since introductions are out of the way, I’d like to make you all aware of a few things. Firstly, you can not be out from 11 P.M. To 6 A.M. without one of them escorting you. Second, do not leave town individually, if you must, let your guardians know. Third, they are here to protect you with their lives, so don’t ever feel unsafe around them. They will be able to assist you should they deem the assistance necessary, but do not abuse this.”
Some of them groaned at some of the new rules, while the rest groaned at others, but they all nodded in understanding. Trinity stood up and moved to stand next to Deka, and they both looked over all 6 of the ponies in front of them.
Then they knelt, which surprised all of them.
They looked up at them, and nearly in perfect sync they spoke “Elements of Harmony, on our behalf, and in the name of Terra, we pledge ourselves to your protection. Do you accept?”
Guardians of the Elements
The room fell silent, with the Princesses watching indifferently. It was Applejack who broke the silence with a small cough, then muttering.
“Do you need to ask?”
Rainbow Dash decided to add her thoughts to her friend’s question.
“Yeah, what gives? Didn’t the Princesses alread-” was all she got off before her Twilight interrupted her, pressing her hooves to her friends face, her make a sort of fishy face as a result.
“Rainbow! Don’t you know what this is?” at the shake of her head Twilight sighed, let her go, started pacing and continued
“It’s a Terran Oath! Almost nopony gets to see these! Do you realize how much of an honor this is for all of us?”
Rainbow just rolled her eyes at her friend’s eccentric attitude. “I don’t really see the big deal here Twi, Oaths are just words aren’t they?”
Twilight looks as if Dash just sent her puppy to the moon.
“Terran Oaths are the ultimate show of loyalty! I don’t know how it works exactly, but if a human swears an oath to somepony, they have to keep to it! I thought even you would know at least that much.”
Rainbow Dash, for her part, looks as if Twilight just spit on, punted and curbstomped her puppy then sent the remains to the moon for good measure.
She looks down and mutters to herself.
Twilight, with nothing more to say on the subject, trots up to the two still kneeling humans and sits in front of them. “On behalf of the elements of harmony, we accept your pledge.”
After the words leave her mouth,a small light shines from the left sides of their necks, a little above where the shoulder and neck meet. After the light fades, the mark on their neck is now clearly visible.
A look of relief flashes across both Princesses faces, Luna even more so, but they quickly fall back into their stoic composure. This time Luna is the first to speak.
“Now that this is all cleared up, I believe you should all be returning soon to Ponyville if you wish to make it there before nightfall.”
With that, they all nodded and bowed, saying their goodbyes and farewells to their Princesses, then they all left through the main entrance, on their way back to the train station.
As the six ponies and two humans left the throne room, Celestia turned towards her younger sibling. “That went well.”
Luna, still staring at the door, simply nodded her head.
Celestia adopted a look of concern. “Is something wrong Luna?”
When she got no response she lightly poked her in her side. This got a response out of her.
Luna shook her head and turned towards her sister. “I’m sorry Tia, I was deep in thought.”
She sighed and continued “I have only been back two years and already we are at war. I cannot help but think this is somehow my fault”
Celestia opened her mouth to say something but Luna continued
“Not only that, but being head of our military after so long, i can’t help but feel out of touch, and that the old tactics in my mind are no longer implemented and outdated by something better.”
She turns away and looks down at the ground between her hooves. “Multiple nations are against us, we don’t even have the full support of one! The Terrans send us only two soldiers, and we are forced to use them to protect one of our own assets, and The Dragons are indifferent to war as long as it doesn’t directly affect them. Our own military strength, while respectable, is not enough to fend off three nations, when we are forced to divert all our own troops to defend inside our own borders no less. Our defenses will waver and since we cannot pull together any form of counter attack without leaving a hole in our own defenses, we are merely fighting for time Tia.”
Celestia was silent for a moment. “While the Terrans may have only sent two, the fact they sent any at all is a sign that they are willing help. Had they not cared they would not have sent any at all. We must hope that their Terra is willing as well.”
She looks up and out the window that hangs above the tall throne room entrance as it lets the evening light shine through. “The Crystal Empire has already agreed to aid us, the Dragons haven’t quite said ‘no’ to helping us yet, the Zebra’s have agreed to aid in supply at least, and the Saddle Arabians are far away and will take some time to get here.” She clears her throat.
“So yes, as you put it we are fighting for time. But it's not like that time is all for nothing. We are defending until we can garner enough support from others to be able to fight back. All is not as hopeless as you make it out to be.” she looks away from the window and smiles at her sister, who has finally looked up from her hooves and returns her sister smile in kind. “Have a little faith Luna.”
POV Shift, Third Person, EOH
The group was walking in relative silence, Deka to their left and Trinity on their right. After a moment, Rarity decides to break the silence. “Do you think we might have time to just walk around? Maybe do some shopping, see a play?”
Trinity answers her before anyone else can. “No, the earliest train from now leaves in a few minutes.” Rarity huffs at this and pouts for a moment before a small smirks plays across her face.
“But you swore an oath to us right? Doesn’t that mean you have to do as we say?” Deka burst out laughing, to which Rarity gave a confused look.
“Not even ten minutes and they’re already trying to find a loophole!” his laughter died down a bit and he continues with a smile on his face “Even if it did work that way, it was the princesses who told you all to head back to Ponyville. As such, we have no say over that.”
Pinkie managed to find some form of humor in his response as she starts giggling. “You just got outplayed by the human!” she chortles out as the rest of her friends board the train.
Thankfully, the car is empty, probably because nobody wants to go to a place that was recently attacked. Everyone finds a seat, Fluttershy sits in a corner seat next to Applejack. Rainbow Dash sits next to Twilight; keeping her eyes anywhere else but on the two humans across from her; who sits directly across from Deka and Trinity who are sitting next to each other. Rarity sits a few seats from Trinity, and Pinkie sits a few seats from Deka.
Trinity starts mumbling to herself softly, seemingly incoherently as she nods off leaning her head against her fellow human. Deka replies to her in the same seemingly incoherent way, to which she nods and falls silent.
Twilight’s ears perk up a little bit at this, and she clears her throat, garnering the attention of their guardian. “The way you're speaking, I can’t quite recognize what language it is. Is it some sort of human language?”
Deka smiled a little bit “Yeah, it's THE human language actually. Not many non-humans know it, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone willing to teach you.”
Twilight gains a hopeful look and tries her best at puppy eyes “Would you be willing to teach me?”
He merely chuckles at her. “No, there is a reason not many non-humans know it, sorry.”
Twilight starts pouting and stomping her hooves uselessly against her seat. “But new knowledge! Please teach me! I must know,everypony knows about humans, but there's hardly anything known about your kind!”
Deka frowns a little at this. “I have the feeling I’m gonna get a lot of questions from you aren’t I?”
She nods with a hopeful look in her eye, as if he might change his mind.
He rolls his eyes and sighs “tell ya what. I’ll tell ya the vowels, but the vowels only. Hows that sound?”
She nods happily and leans in expectantly.
“A,E,I,O,U, in that order, translates over to: Y,A,E,U,I. The way our language works, is each letter has a translation.”
She smiles widely and makes some sort of squeaking sound. “Ooooooo, this is so exciting!” she starts to go off on a rant about how much she’s going to learn from them.
POV shift, First Person Deka Pov
I feel a smile coming on from the unicorns enthusiasm towards learning new things, something most humans, unfortunately, don’t share a similar mindset in. I frown a little, thinking about how most just find one thing to lean on, and stick to it. You could say I’m a hypocrite when it comes to that, only using one element. The difference between us and most humans is we can use our element in more than a few ways, while most can only use it in three or four different ways.
I shake my head, shaking myself from my thoughts as I remember something important. Reaching into my front left jacket pocket, I pull out six small gray rhombus shaped gems, and hold them in the spaces between my fingers in one hand. I clear my throat to gain everyone's attention.
Holding them up for everyone to see, I start talking “These are summoning gems. You will each get two, one from me and one from Trinity. They are to be used in cases of emergencies ONLY, as they are very hard to acquire, and are the only ones we have. Do NOT lose these, as you will not get a replacement. Simply throw it at the ground in front of you, and it’ll pull us to you, no matter where you are, including but not limited to: Wormholes, Black holes, Pocket Dimensions, Alternate Universes or Realities, Illusion Incantations, Tartarus, Magically nullified area’s, and almost anywhere in between.”
I get up from my seat, letting Trinity’s head fall, startling her awake. I start handing out the small gray gems to each of them, and Trinity soon pulls out her own which are a shimmering electric blue in contrast to my solid gray, and starts handing them out as well.
“Hopefully you won’t need them, however unlikely that may be.” My companion says. “I assume my compatriot already gave you the rundown of how these work?” she says with a yawn, to which everyone nods. She smiles groggily before spreading her arms in a stretch, then lets them fall to her sides. She jumps back to her seat, seemingly more energized. “When we get to town, we’ll escort you back to your respective homes.” she steals a glance at the clock on the wall above the door. “Which should be in a few minutes…”
I look to Rainbow Dash whose wing is in a cast. “From what I was told, your home is in the sky. Where are you going to be staying?”
She looks at me for a second with a look I can’t quite place, then speaks. “I’m staying with Fluttershy until my wing heals.” she winces as a bit of phantom pain grips her, and rubs at her cast.
I nod and immediately afterwards the trains whistle blows, signaling our arrival at the Ponyville Train Station. The train lurches forward to stop, then we all get up and head towards the exit.
Guardians of the Elements
Escorting and History Lessons
Despite princess Luna’s attempt to get them back before sundown, the sun was already slowly dipping below the horizon. Nopony seemed to be out and about, almost as if it was a ghost town. The damage to the town only added to that feeling.
Deka snapped his fingers to garner the attention of the six ponies in front of him. “I’ll be escorting Applejack, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. Trinity will be escorting the rest of you.” he turns and faces his charges. “I’ll also be watching over you three while Trin watches over the rest of you, that way we’re not wasting time by having both of us check up on one of you at a time.”
They all nodded silently, having no real reason to object to his reasoning. He then snapped his fingers and wordlessly told his charges to follow him with a motion of his fingers as he walked away. Trinity on the other hand, chose to not be so quiet.
“This way to adventure!” she exclaimed cheerfully while pointing a finger into the air and slightly forward. She then marched on dutifully towards Rarity’s place of residence.
First Person POV: Deka
“This way to adventure!” I heard Trinity cheer. Shaking my head, I manage a smirk. She always finds a way to stay positive. Mentally flipping a coin, I decide to take Applejack to her home first. Walking along the edge of town following the wooden fencing that surrounds Sweet Apple Acres, I hear the three behind me having a hushed conversation.
“So…” I trailed off, snapping them from their conversation. “Why does the place seem so empty? I haven’t seen a single pony walking around and the sun is only just setting. You’d think there would be at least somebody walking around.”
There's a small silence before one of them clears their throat and answers my question.
“That’s because there’s a curfew in effect. That and everypony is still pretty shaken up from the attack…” Dash trails off.
Putting my hands behind my head, I look up at the sky. “That’s another thing I wanted to ask about actually. What happened during the attack? I didn’t hear anything about a death count either.”
Applejack speaks up this time. “Thats cause there was no death count. We’re all very lucky that nopony died. As fer what happened...It came out of nowhere. Just another day like any other, then next thing we know, half the town’s on fire, griffons and minotaurs start coming out of the woodworks and hurtin’ everypony.”
Rainbow decides to add her thoughts as well. “I was flying over town when it happened.”
She looks down solemnly. “I tried to help, but some feather brained griffon barreled into me and broke my wing before throwing me to the ground.”
Fluttershy remains silent and stares at the ground as she walks. I can only imagine what it must have been like for someone as faint hearted as her. Poor girl.
Soon after they trailed off, silence consumed us once again. We reached the Apple family residence without much of a fuss, and she bids farewell to her friends before heading inside.
Left with only the two pegasi left, I start heading towards the forest that Fluttershy’s house borders on. We get there quickly enough, and Dash enters the cottage and leaves me outside with Fluttershy who is looking at me uneasily, as if she's contemplating something.
“Deka?” she says softly, so much so I almost didn’t hear it.
I nod to her motioning for her to go on.
“You’re going to check on us tomorrow, right?”
I nod again, and raise an eyebrow in question.
She fidgets a little bit, but apparently musters up the courage to ask what she was going to. “C-could you stop by here first? I know she may not look it, but Rainbow Dash is really scared from what happened. I am too, And being right by the everfree doesn’t help much… it would mean alot to me if you could… You know….” she trails off, scuffing her hoof across the ground.
I chuckle a little at the innocence and care for her friend. “Of course, Fluttershy.” I give her a smile which she returns then trots inside her cottage for some needed rest.
First Person POV: Trinity
Walking through the town gives me the creeps. It's so empty and deserted, and bits and parts are destroyed while others under repair. So much pointless destruction. Makes me wish I was here when it happened, maybe things could have turned out a bit better. I glance back behind me to make sure the others are still following me. They are, and of course, they’re all downtrodden looking at the damage to their home town.
Trying to think of a way to cheer them up, or at least take their minds off the bad stuff, I turn around and start walking backwards, and give a quick whistle to grab their attention. Once all their eyes are on me, I jump back and do a handstand, and resume traveling while walking on my hands. This gets an amused look out of Rarity, and Pinkie Pie breaks out giggling and mimics me, walking on her front hooves. We pass by Rarity’s home and she breaks off from our group with a simple goodbye. I wave my foot at her then continue on through town.
Twilight however, doesn’t seem too moved by my attempt, so I decide to indulge her a little bit. A little history can’t hurt, right?
“Hey Twilight, how much do you know about human history and technology?”
She immediately perks up and looks at me. “Not much, I know it's way more advanced than anything we have though. Why do you ask?”
I decide to switch things up a bit starting to hop on one hand as Pinkie starts trying to one up me by juggling some cupcakes in her rear hooves. Where she got the cupcakes I will never know.
“Well, did you know that at one point long ago, it used to be even more advanced then it is now?”
She seems to have forgotten her sorrows for the moment as the look in her eye tells me I have her full attention.
“Like, way more advanced then it is now.”
Pinkie surprises me by asking a question of her own. “What do you mean? I thought technology advances forward as time goes on, not backwards.” she gives off a confused look.
Twilight catches on and gets confused as well. “What happened?”
“What happened?” I parrot. “Long ago, Humanity had technology en mass, so much so, that it went from a luxury to a necessity that even children were given it. But it bred laziness among our kind, we started to overly rely on it. So nothing major, right? Well, technology expanded in many ways; communications, medicine, entertainment, transportation, and lastly, machina .”
Pinkie chimes in as she again tries to one up me by continuing to juggle and starts hopping on one hoof as well. “What kind of entertainment?”
I sigh and up my game by juggling some balls of electricity with my feet. “All kinds of things. Some of which we still have, such as games, movies, occasionally some rides, etc.”
Twilight still has the confused look on her face. “What's the difference between technology and machina? And that still doesn’t explain what happened.”
I swap to my other hand as the one I was using starts getting a bit tired. “Well, as I was saying, more and more advanced weapons called machina started coming up. People started overly relying on those too, and started forsaking Terra’s oaths, and they started outlawing the use of the oaths. So machina is what we call forbidden technology. As you can imagine, Terra got really angry over this, and lemme tell ya, nothing's more scary then an angry god.”
Pinkie stopped her antics as the story got a bit darker. She decided to not hear the rest and broke off to her home as we passed by it. I decided to stop my antics as well and got back to my feet, still walking backwards to face Twilight.
Twilight seems a little disturbed by this, but her curiosity got the best of her. “...What did Terra do?”
I sigh and chuckle sadly a little. “What didn’t he do… he destroyed it all. Every great machina city, and the people within. He absorbed those who had forsaken him, and banned the use of any unapproved machina. Mostly weaponry but there was a lot lost that day. He summoned roots, trees, vines, etc, from the ground and uprooted everything, the vegetation overtook everything. He also refused to grant us any oaths. And for an whole 10 years, there was peace among all humans. He was appeased by this, and forgave us, granting us our oaths again.”
Twilight looks down sadly “I’m sorry that happened…”
I merely scoffed “Don’t be, it happened AGES ago. Like 30 generations ago. History is learned so it won’t repeat itself, the machina cities of old serve as a reminder to that. You shouldn’t be sorry for what some knuckleheads did thousands of years ago.” Stretching and yawning, I turn back around and point to her tree home thing. “Well, that's the end of our little history lesson. Hope I didn’t bore ya” I say with a cheeky smile. “ And hey, nothing will hurt you or your friends while we’re here. I promise.”
She smiles a bit and heads to the door of her home, and turns to me. “Thank you, Trinity. It means alot.”
First Person POV: Deka
Walking through town is… demoralizing to say the least. I didn’t get to see much of the damage while escorting my charges because they were all going towards the outskirts of town. But now walking through to get to where i’ll be staying, I can see they took massive damage. I look to my left. A demolished group of trees. Beyond that, a broken down playground, next to a charred schoolhouse. To my right, not a single building unscathed; each one seems to be charred or broken up in one way or another. Looking up I see the clouds are normal by my standards. Moving about aimlessly, masterless and free. But here in equestria, thats a sign that the weather team hasn’t been able to keep up with the weather as of late due to the curfew limiting their time, and the lack of manpower I presume. I never really understood that about the ponies, but I guess if you have a gift, you use it. Unicorns can use magic, so they use it; Dogs have a good sense of smell, so they use it; therefore, pegasi can manipulate the weather, so they do.
Coming up on the small cottage that was recently set up for us close to the eastern edge of town, I don’t even bother knocking and just walk right in. “It’s me. And don’t you dare hurl a lightning bolt at me this time!”
I look at Trinity who’s laying on the couch, a bolt of lightning in her hand and her arm cocked back ready to throw. “Awh, you’re no fun, ya know that?” she says as she making the bolt of lightning disappear as she props her head up with her hands.
I sigh and plop down on the couch by her feet. I glance at the clock above a small fireplace, and see that it’s 7:48 in the afternoon. “Did you look around the place?” I ask as I turned to face her.
“Yeah, two bedroom, one bathroom, small kitchen, and you’re in the living room.” she gets a shit eating grin “I also took the liberty of claiming the bigger room, as I got here first so I got first dibs.”
I groan at her childishness, but soon adopt the same shit eating grin as her. “That's fine, but you’re S.O.L. if you wanna take a hot shower in the morning. I always get up before you.” I saw, punctuating my point by sticking my tongue out at her.
She pouts and crosses her arms. “No fair, you can’t just use up all the hot water like that. I don’t get why you even like hot showers, your element is the bloody COLD!” she says, eliciting a laugh out of me.
“Because i’m always cold, so the heat feels nice. Plus hot showers are better for cleaning yourself with, melts all the dirt away; Cold showers don’t do that.” I explain with a chuckle, then I yawn.
Obviously it's contagious as Trinity soon yawns after me. She glares at me and kicks me. “Damnit Deka, you gave me yawn!”
I rub at the spot where she kicked me. It doesn’t hurt, but she does have a hell of a pair of legs on her. “You say that like its a disease. Besides, we should go to bed now. Gotta get as much rest as we can tonight; we have to be watching them regularly, so that means only one night of sleep per week. Anything else is a small two hour nap at most.” I inform her as I get up and stretch, and walk down the hall. I hear her pouting and whining from the living room but I ignore it as a close my bedroom door. I sigh and take off my jacket and hang it on the door, and proceed to strip down to my boxers. Note to self, find some PJ’s. I hear Trinity walking down the hall, followed by her entering her room and closing her door behind her as I do one last stretch before flopping into bed.