Silphen finally stopped outside of the walls of what he could only assume was Sludgetown. He had to follow the river back up for a full day, and then crossed it at a low point.

"To all those holding a mare kidnapped two nights ago, I have come for your heads! Say your prayers, maggots, because you will not escape this place alive!" He screamed, using a silent cast spell to make his voice be heard throughout the entire mining town. His only response from the town was the silence of the night. "So be it. You shall all burn in hellfire."

Silphen then took a deep breath and roared at the gates, a stream of fire leaving his maw as he willed it to be done. He wouldn't let a single bandit survive this night. None would live to see the sunrise.

As the gate burned down. Through the fire a volley of bolts came through. Most of them were aimed in the general direction of where Silphen was. He huffed and created a small wall of stone to duck behind. Once the volley was over, he shoved the wall into the town trying to distract and hurt a few of the foolish archer bandits.

The gate crashed inwards as flames spread to the rest of the vine covered wooden wall. The way clear, Silphen could see the volley archers, most of them unicorns. Being carried up into the air by pegasi. Before he could attempt to knock them from the air, streams of fire lit up from both sides of him. Three dragons on each side were breathing fire towards him. He growled and charged forward, calling up the gems under him to form a relatively heat resistant armor.

He then jumped, using a second spell to help give him the lift needed, he grabbed the nearest dragon and started trying to tear his jaw open. That notion was quickly dissuaded as the dragon on it’s left swatted at him. Its physical superiority gave Silphen no choice but to be knocked away with several bruises.

Silphen growled and roared at them, a purplish mist flowing out of his mouth as he wanted to kill them all. He summoned another spell, the formulas and chants moving through his mind and voice far quicker than he ever had before, and shot several stone spears at the dragons and pegasi.

The pegasi, agile flyers even with their heavy cargo, dodged them quite easily. The dragons found out the hard way that their scales weren’t up to the task of protecting them. Three of them fell from the sky, littered like morbid porcupines with stone shafts. The other three avoided most of the spears by sheer chance of diving to gain speed to ram Silphen. Three jaws were upon him as the Unicorns had finally reloaded their crossbows and were taking aim.

Silphen smirked as he allowed the dragons to get close before turning his armor into shrapnel by exploding it outward and using the spell he had called on to get him higher in the air to leap away from where he just was.

The unicorns fired, as the surrounding volley drew closer to Silphen, before he could do much, he was knocked off balance by a dark shape that almost blended in with the night. The bat like wings and large fangs only emphasized the terror as it held onto him, hissing. Soon they both looked like a large pincushion, falling from the sky. Silphen’s soft metal fur helped protect him from the worst of it, but the mare who looked much worse off than he, was still trying to get a bite off at his jugular.

He growled and called on a spell he remembered from the roleplay he did as Silphen Dardo back on Earth… He set both hands on the mare's chest and growled out, "Solam Lunam Flumine!"

As he finished the chant, a stream of solar energies and lunar energies exploded outside the other side of her, leaving a massive cauterized wound that reeked of burnt fur and dead flesh.

The mare fell to the ground with a crackling thump as her entire body began to singe and burn. The dragons, who had spent this time regaining their bearings, were now under Silphen, their maws lit up with red flames. Their fiery light illuminated the night, revealing three more dark shapes, the edge of each of their bat-like wings sported a gleaming edge.

Silphen growled and used another spell to force the dragon's fire back towards the three figures, more intent on killing them than finding out where Aurana was at the moment. He expected the fool Fuego to have her anyway. The figures surprised him as with their batlike wings they were more maneuverable than the pegasi, spiraling around the flames as they continued moving towards Silphen, which was precisely what he wanted as he simply created a small sun behind himself.

Either it would blind them like the other living beings, or it would kill them like the vampires he suspected them to be. Either way, he could land and rip the throats out of those pesky Unicorns and use their weapons to his own advantage. The three beings burst into flames. Two of them instinctively tried to back away from the object of their mortality, the last one seemingly sped towards it. Although by the time they had reached Silphen, their bodymass was barely enough to leave a large cut on his arm before the rest of them promptly turned to ash, leaving nothing but the metal wing covers to fall to the ground below him.

The three dragons were blinded, but continued their charge from below Silphen regardless. While many of the pegasi had to land with their unicorn charges, unable to fly when the night suddenly turned into day. Silphen took the advantage he had with a malicious smile as he used illusionary sounds to trick the dragons into attacking their allies. He whispered dark secrets into their minds, twisting them into his puppets, even if he only planned to kill them all later. Silphen had a single ace spell, but both him and his hatred for these bandits acknowledged the chance, however tiny, that Aurana would be caught up in it. Instead, he took the distraction as he had intended, yanking one of the crossbows from one of the unicorns, shooting them with the bolt straight through their eye, before etching a symbol in its handle.

He laughed like a madman when he saw it light up and a bolt of pure arcane energy swirled into existence on its string.

The pegasi took to the air, this time without their cargo as the bodies of the three dragons slammed into the ranks of the unicorns, decimating their numbers. Seeing a losing battle, most of the pegasi began to retreat, fleeing the now burning town. But Silphen couldn't allow it, sending his draconic puppets after them as their final command. They'd wake up an hour later, but he couldn't care less. Dragons attacking ponies always drew attention to the dragons and made them become hunted, according to what he overheard from the guards in prison.

Instead, he turned his attention to the hill in the center of the town and made his way towards it, the rest of the town was eerily abandoned. He hadn’t seen a single earthpony yet either. As he entered the hill, he saw why. Many of their corpses were mangled or simply crushed around the form of the largest dragon he had seen yet. Fuego, he presumed, who stood nearly to the ceiling of the hollowed out hill. Next to him was one of the dark vampire-like mares who had attacked him earlier, her expression seemed entirely uninterested in what was happening around her. On the other side of the dragon was a dark blue unicorn stallion, his horn aglow with a cyan light as he struggled to carve out the final lines of the massive magic circle below them Silphen only now noticed.

“And the dark mage comes, after decimating my poor underlings…” The dragon’s voice rumbled, sounding like the rockfalls of a mountain.

"Says the fool that dared to kidnap my only reason to keep from turning this entire world into a barren wasteland." Silphen shot back, spittle flying from his maw as he quickly deciphered that the circle was a blood sacrifice type of teleportation. "Where is Aurana? Return her, and you may yet live."

“She’s right over there, Silphen.” He chuckled as he pointed a claw bigger than Silphen towards the other side of the cave. There, unbound, and unharmed save for bruising, was Aurana, a stone collar inscribed with magic circles was around her neck, a simple Diamond in her grasp as she looked at Silphen with a face filled with horror. “She had watched everything you did to my poor, poor tools…”

Silphen's face fell, the anger and hatred he felt instantly being replaced with horror and regret. Fuego played him… "Aurana… I…" he started, trying to explain himself.

"Stay back." Aurana said, scared of what he might do to her and her sister. "S-stay back and tell me where Jade is."

“As I told you little pony… All dark mages are the same. I’m sure once you were taken, he used her flesh and blood to hunt me down…” Feugo chuckled at his own imagery.

Silphen growled as he turned back to Fuego. "I'd sooner die than see her harmed. Her or her sister. I sent her somewhere safe, somewhere even someone as stupid as you wouldn't dare to go." Silphen then signed the number six towards Aurana, giving her a hint as to where he sent her sister. After all, even she had heard of the Elements of Harmony by this point.

“Ponyville, where the elements of harmony live master Fuego, several thugs were already told to keep a lookout.” The Vampiric mare next to Fuego spoke up. Silphen's eyes widened as he realized he may have just doomed Jade and himself.

"No…" he said in shock before something snapped in him and he began to draw on the nearby shadows and the stench of death to use his ace. A faint chiming filled the air before he looked to the side and saw Aurana, terrified, and dropped the spell. "Aurana, please… I didn't know they were already aware of what had happened. I need to get us as close to Ponyville as I can, and soon."

"Y-you…! You left her alone out there! Half dead with a sickness-!" She started, screaming at him for putting her sister in danger.

"I didn't know they had spies out there, and I sent her to Twilight's place! AFTER I healed her properly!" Silphen countered, his care for Fuego and the two ponies having vanished from his mind for the moment.

“And Jade has already been taken into the element’s custody as an asset of a dark mage.” The mare to Fuego’s side spoke up as the inlay on the ground finished and the unicorn nodded to Fuego.

Aurana's eyes flicked to the Vampire mare before returning to Silphen. "See!? You may as well have killed her, bastard!" She snapped, blaming him for the whole thing.

"And what then?! Become the thing they're saying I am!? Aurana, I did this to get you away from him!" Silphen snapped back, jabbing a finger at the dragon.

"Then you should've just waited!" Aurana shouted, tears finally starting to fall down her face at his betrayal of her, albeit small, trust. "You should've waited…"

"For what? For them to send me an ear and a cryptic message? No. It was this, or death," Silphen said, as his own emotions became so confusing and convoluted that he wasn't sure if he was more pissed at himself, or at the dragon and his bandits.

“All he wanted was to talk! This thing?” She yanked the stone collar off with ease and held it up. “Doesn’t even do anything!”

Fuego chuckled as his entire plan fell through, but knew that the mage Silphen would be distracted a while yet as he nodded towards the tiny, by comparison, unicorn. With little fanfare, and a blood red light, the three of them winked out of existence before the carved stone circle went inert, before cracking the surrounding stone, making it both unusable, and unrecognisable, and causing the hollowed hill to rumble.

Silphen looked up at the crumbling roof in a panic before running at Aurana while chanting in common English, "Tear open the veil and shift the distance of time and space, Portal!" He grabbed Aurana just in time as he dove through it, arriving in the forest just outside of Ponyville. He stood up with a groan and looked down at the struggling mare, who was still very irate with him. "I-"

She didn't give him a chance to speak any further as she punched him, knocking him out.

When Silphen next awoke, his head was pounding and he saw the sulking unicorn mare nearby, holding his bag. He decided not to fight with her over it and simply got up and came over to her. "Aurana…" he started, trying to come up with something to say that would help ease her mind.

“Be quiet and just… open this…” She said, refusing to look at him.

He nodded and opened it, turning the bag inside out so that everything spilled out. Including the Timberwolf cores that he had forgotten about. "Oh. Right. Forgot those were in there…"

She ignored them, grabbing the rations inside before seeing his arm out of the corner of her vision. “Lay down… on your stomach.” She said monotonously

He looked at her worriedly, but did so, groaning as his aches and pains finally caught up to him. "I… I'm sorry, Aurana… if you-"

She interrupted him by yanking a bolt out of his shoulder with her magic, putting a leaf he couldn’t recognise in its place. The area went numb for a bit. She continued on like this for a bit, each time she yanked a bolt out she applied another leaf.

“Why...?” She asked morosely.

Silphen grunted as he tried to keep from crying out in pain as she yanked one of the last few bolts back out. "Why… what…? W-why did I save you? Or, try to at least…? B-because I… I love you, Aurana. I d-don't want to see you hurt. And if that means keeping you and Jade safe by being the villain, then so be it."

“But why go to the lengths you did! Why do you even love me in the first place! You’ve known me all of two weeks! We spent most of that time in jail!” She screamed out as she yanked one of the bolts forcefully, applying the leaf just as roughly.

"Gaah!" Silphen screamed out in pain before the numbness set in. "Because you're the first person in my life to show me kindness and not be related to me! Or just want something from me for the sake of wanting it… Look, if you want me to leave you and your sister alone I will. It's gonna tear me up inside, but I'll respect it and leave."

“... How much of what you told me is a lie? When you told me you’ve never used those… evil spells inside that book… Was that a lie? After what I saw… what you made those dragons do…” The pain from yanking out the last bolt never came, because as soon as he felt her grip on it begin to pull it out, it fizzled just as suddenly.

"Aurana… I haven't lied to you… And I won't lie and say I won't do something like that again, but…" Silphen sighed and started to get back up reaching for his spellbook. "I have a truth cage spell in here. I'll teach you how to set it up and you can ask me anything you want. It'll force me to speak truth."

Silphen felt tears on his back. “You still don’t get it… It’s not that I can’t trust your words… It’s that exact attitude that makes me so frightened of you… That you’re so powerful you think every solution can be fixed by brute force… do you even know the amount of creatures that you killed yesterday in less than five minutes…?”

Silphen stopped, a somber coldness settling into his voice. "So far? I have killed thirty creatures with my own two hands. And another fifty simply by laying siege to Fuego's base, yes I'm counting those sacrificed as being on my hands… Does it mean I feel bad for killing them…? No. And that's what scares me most. That I'm becoming like them…"

“...I won’t ask you to turn yourself in, because even I know Equestria would want you dead just for what you did to those dragons… but… We’ll go get Jade, and I’ll decide what I want then…”

Silphen nodded, looking over at the crossbow he had taken in disgust. He knew he should throw it away, or break it, or something, but he wanted Aurana to have something to defend herself with. From himself. He picked it up and turned around, holding it in his hands. "I know you're going to say you don't want it. But I need you to have something to defend yourself from me in case I truly do lose my mind, Aurana." He then held it out to her.

She looked between him and the instrument of death, images of him shooting a bolt into a mare’s eye flashed before her… She shook her head.

“I- I can’t hold that… thing...” she said in disgust, barely able to even look at it.

He sighed and nodded, respecting her wish. "Very well then. I'll hold on to it and give it to someone you deem capable of stopping me then." He then proceeded to put everything back into his bag, after correcting it to re-enable the enchantment that made it a bag of holding. She sighed at him.

“Lets just… go get Ja-” She was cut off by a high pitched whine and Silphen throwing himself over her to act as a shield from the tangible noise. When it cleared she saw a white unicorn telling her something, but she could quite tell what since her ears were still ringing. She thought she said something in return, but she realized she couldn't even hear herself through the ringing in her ears.

That was until a green glow envelopes her vision and her hearing returned with a pop. She turned around as she felt Silphen's touch on her back and saw that he had somehow put on some more muscle. "She was saying to get away from me." He replied calmly, a small smile on his face.

Author's Note

Woot! Just another chapter or two, depending on if Zemez wants to do a crossover for himself, and Sam and Silphen should be meeting up! How exciting!