At first, all was still within the blackness of the water. Nary a current, nor tide, nor trace of a thermal flow disturbed its silent solemnity. All was calm, all slumbered.

And then something changed. An imperceptible shift in the very nature of things that caused the water to stir. And with it, Kaiscillius.

He attempted to ignore the sign of change, holding his great eyes shut, and neither listening to nor heeding the world around him. Eventually, though, the great difference in the way things used to be, and what they were now, became too much to ignore.

The was a great shifting in the water as Kaiscillius ground his head against the jewels and gold under his gigantic skull, seeing none of it in the infinite dark expanse of the water. His eyes were still held shut, and he only moved, even that little bit, to find someplace more comfortable. But there was change now, too much of it, and no matter where he lay his head, something itched at the back of his skull, in a place that simply bending his neck just could not scratch.

Reluctantly, and with the groan of a very heavy weight bending for the first time in centuries, Kaiscillius moved one massive claw to the back of his head to scratch at the infernal sensation. But no matter how hard his talon like steel scraped against the unyielding plate of his armor, making reverberations through the whole of the water and disturbing it further, the itch would not cease.

A rumble escaped his titanic form, the first sound from him in millennia, a grave herald of future firsts.

Kaiscillius lay sprawled out against his massive hoard of wealth, sealed deep in the impenetrable black waters. Another rumble rippled outward, forming waves from the echo of its force. With enormous reluctance to rival that of the weight of the entirety of Equis, Kaiscillius moved.

It was slow at first, a vertebrae here, a claw there, but slowly, and with a few more booms and rumbles of immense displeasure, Kaiscillius folded inward on himself, the sounds of crushing mass and shrieking metal not breaching past the water's surface. But still, it was disturbance, still it was change. More was now different from before than if he had not moved at all. Waves now rippled through the water, gold and jewels had shifted, his giant plates of armor now lay in different, new positions. Things had been set in motion now that could not be undone.

He tried to resist it, of course, to return to his endless, dreamless sleep. The darkness that shrouded his physical form, that had once cloaked his mind as well, he longed to return to it. Yearned with every fiber of his colossal being for its comforting embrace. Alas, not even a creature of his power could fight the machinations of fate.

After an unknowable period of time, as there was no light that pierced this place, Kaiscillius grew to know that his struggle to return to sleep was truly hopeless. As with most who realize this, there first came a great sadness, a sense of unbearable loss, though he did not know why he felt so strongly about this. And that ignorance, his lack of knowledge about his subconscious reluctance, brought fear.

Why? his mind murmured, still nearly entombed in the great coffin of the abyss, Why am I so afraid to wake?

The fear brought anger, Why am I afraid? I am Kaicsillius! A son of Nightmare Moon has no business being afraid of the dark!

Anger wrought solidarity, I will rise from my resting place, and face whatever it is my unwaking mind knows is coming with bared teeth and claws!

Solidarity quieted all others, and bent them to his will. Slowly, Kaiscillius began to move in earnest. His tendons snapped and strained like metal cords as thick as bridge cables. Bones creaked like the hull of a massive ship pulling into the great, tumultuous sea for the first time in decades. His armor clanged and rattled in the water, battering away the silence and peace in hammering strikes.

After what felt like a long while, Kaiscillius stood under the water upon his hoard of gold. Three pairs of eyes ground open resolutely from three different heads, each as large as an average pony in length, and far wider in bulk. His long necks stretched and popped, reaching nearly ten feet in length, still not enough to breach the water's surface. He arched his back, twenty feet long and snapping his spinal column like the thundering of distant cannons. Finally his whipped tail slashed through the water to get a feel for its consistency, it was another fifteen feet at least, and ended in two razor sharp prongs.

Opening and closing his claws on the end of his carriage-sized forelegs, Kaiscillius gazed up to where he knew the surface would be. No light shimmered through the new lapping waves, as there was no sun above that black water to cast such luminous apparitions. With a grunt and a grin, Kaiscillius kicked off from his mountain of plunder, shifting its weighty contents beneath him as he surged towards the open air above his water.

He felt a little unsure of himself, as his memories felt sluggish in returning, but he knew one thing. If he was waking up, then something very important was occurring in the world above. His mother would not jeopardize his life like this otherwise.

With a cacophonous crash, Kaiscillius burst from the water, sending a deluge of the black liquid down upon the rocks that made up a shoreline in front of him. They were black as well, almost as dark as the water, shifting shades of deepest gray made up their intricate strata. Interwoven throughout the rock were small white gemstones. Though only about the size of a penny, they burned with a cold intensity, emitting a glow akin to that of the most distant star. And there were thousands of them, millions of them, embedded in the smooth cavernous surface, all the way from the black shore to the topmost dome of the cave.

The space itself was also quite large, it had to be to contain, and nearly dwarf, Kaiscillius' size. It's perfectly smooth ceiling rose to nearly sixty feet high, the black stone shoreline reached only about twenty feet inwards, where the rest of the easily two hundred foot long cavern was dominated by the dark sea. Kaiscillius turned his head to view the very back of the room, and saw, faintly illuminated by a particularly strong outline of the luminescent crystals, a massive grey throne.

It was simple in design, raised upon a square dais and built for a creature of Kaiscillius' size to sit in, it was adorned with six great skulls that gazed into the front of the room with hollow blackened sockets.

Kaiscillius bowed his heads low, Father, Grandfather, give me the cunning and strength to face whatever trials lay before me.

Now that he was wide awake, Kaiscillius felt more than ready to get moving. But there was something else to it than a simple desire to stretch his legs after such a lengthy stay under the Pool. It was still there, that itch in the back of his head, that unabating sense of urgency. Something was wrong, or was going to be soon.

With that in mind, Kaiscillius turned to face the only entrance to his little abode, a crack in the otherwise perfectly smooth stone, filled with jagged edges, and sharp switchbacks, only wide enough for something the size of a single pony to get through.

Closing his eyes, Kaiscillius reached deep into himself, and was happy to discover the warm sea of power that resided in him was almost half full. He had more than enough magic for a simple transformation, but after that, things would be tricky if he ran into too much trouble.

The well of magic in him shuddered, and was disturbed for a moment, and Kaiscillius felt the itch in his skull heighten to a frantic pace.

"DID YOU FOALS TRULY THINK YOU COULD STOP ME?!" Nightmare Moon roared at the tiny forms of the mere ponies before her, backlit by her vaporous and billowing mane and tale, standing tall against the dramatic backdrop of the shattered marble statue upon which she stood.

The pieces of the Elements of Harmony lay shattered before her armored feet, all six of her assailants were weakened and pitiful before her never-ending malice, finally, she would have her victory!

"Finally, my night will last FOREVER! AHAHAHAHA!" she cackled joyously, unaware of the defiant looks on all of their faces.

"You think you can destroy the Elements of Harmony just like that?" The purple one piped up, and continued before she could quip, "Well you're wrong, because the spirits of the Elements of Harmony are right here!"

This purple one has been fun, but I do feel that she's outlived her naive usefulness, however, as Nightmare Moon brooded, the pieces of the fractured stones that were once the Elements began to pulse with life, and lift slowly from the ground.

What? What is this? Impossible! Nightmare Moon growled, she attempted to halt the reformation process as the purple unicorn grew bolder by the second, rattling off the deeds of her fellows as though she were personally nailing Nightmare Moon's coffin shut herself. An old magic protected the fragments of the stones, and shielded the young ponies from her magic's grasp.

With a final, dreadful word, the purple unicorn did the unthinkable, and somehow, despite having no training, and pulling all of this completely out of her tailhole, summoned the final Element of Magic.

No... no, No, NO! It cannot end like this! But what could she do? She was weak from the thousand years spent keeping herself alive on the barren surface of the moon, far too weak to breach the ancient seals that protected the stones. But... there may be one who could...

Oh, my son, Nightmare thought as Twilight Sparkle began to force magic through her horn into the deadly Elemental Beam, I had hoped to exhume you myself, victorious, but now it seems that you must save me!

With a last squick of power, Nightmare Moon shot out a magical sequence, a code, a key to unlock her greatest weapon. How she felt like a fool for not unearthing it sooner.

Kaiscillius gasped and stumbled, shaking the entire cave with his quaking steps.

Mother, she's in trouble! Alright, quickly, what's the fastest way to travel? Obviously it would be some form of teleportation spell, but the cost of it would be enormous, especially for a creature with as much mass as he had.

Hmm, might it be faster to transform first? No, of course not, it might take less energy overall, but the transformation itself could take minutes, and he didn't even know if he had seconds.

The objective is to save her, I will accomplish this task, no matter the cost, he finally came to a decision, and resolutely set his jaw.

This is going to hurt, he thought, as magic began to course through his veins and run in almost tangible rivulets down his armored body. After a few seconds of intense calculation and geographical ball-parking, the massive form of Kaiscillius blinked out of existence from the cave, creating a loud inward SNAP as air rushed to fill the monster-shaped hole...

... and a thundering BOOM as Kaiscillius reappeared somewhere in the Everfree Forest, his presence displacing the air so quickly that a small shockwave detonated the surrounding plantlife.

Very quickly, Kaiscillius whipped all three of his heads in different directions to take stock of the situation. Nearly no light penetrated this part of the forest, but that wasn't a problem for him, he could See fine. All around, the plantlife emitted a green glow, as well as the grayish brown of rot. All of the Everfree was rotting, it appeared at least some things hadn't changed since his Mother had put him under.

Scanning the area as he was, it didn't take him long to find where he needed to be. To his southwest, there pulsed a great magnitude of energy. It crackled and surged with so much raw elemental power, that the trees even where he stood shook softly. He disregarded whatever other information he may have gathered about his surroundings, he didn't have time to take it all in. Somehow he knew that the energy in the distance was what threatened his Mother, his General, his Queen!

Quickly now, this is no time to hold back, now that the target was "in sight" as it were, it was easy to formulate a much less costly traveling measure that brought him at near supersonic speeds to the edge of a large, misty chasm. Again making a very, very large amount of noise, but it didn't matter, he was in a hurry!

Across the deep ravine stretched a measly wooden bridge that said, in no uncertain terms, "No, I will not accept your weight, you are too large. Fatso."

Huffing with frustration, Kaiscillius stepped back a few yards, nervously eyeing the ever-growing pulses of energy coming from somewhere in the fog in front of him.

Shaking his heads, Kaiscillius charged the gap, what must have been half a hoofball field's length, and leapt like a savannah cat going for a giraffe's jugular. There were several fateful moments where Kaiscillius wondered if his force reduction spells that he'd used to stop most of his downward motion had worked, before he touched down safely on the other side of the gorge.

Well, "touched down" being a euphemism for "crashed spectacularly and kicked up enough dirt to bury a manticore," but at least he'd made it.

Groggily he stood, feeling his stomach grumble slightly as his reserves of energy were being rapidly depleted by the multitude of heavy-duty spells he was firing off. He hoped that he had enough magic left for a fight, there was a large possibility that his Mother would be incapacitated, if she had called for his help before the arranged time, and so he might need to bring something, or several somethings, down.

A large flaring of prismatic energy in front of him snapped him out of his preemptive strategies, and the fog was blasted away to reveal the magnificent, yet fallen, visage of the once proud Castle of the Two Sisters.

Having just recently seen it in its heyday, Kaiscillius was actually shocked to see how far it had deteriorated. The glorious towers and staircases were now collapsed and crawling with vines. The front gate, which had held back hordes of enemies without so much as a groan of complaint, was smashed inward, dilapidated.

Another pulse, this one far larger than the last two, nearly blinding him, and shaking him to his core. He was starting to panic, as he faintly heard his Mother's voice yelling something.

Acting on blind instinct, Kaiscillius used another costly teleportation to get him as close to the sound as possible, standing on a graying stonework terrace just outside one of the main foyers of the castle.

But it was not the weathered carpets, nor the torn tapestries, nor the collapsed crystal chandeliers which got his attention. No, it was the six beautiful mares, all adorned head to toe in fabulous, sparkling jewels of light coloring them like morning dew, all firing a deadly rainbow laser beam straight at his mother.

He cried out as he saw her twist and writhe under the intense glare of the arcing ray, "Mother, I am here, how do I stop them?!"

None of the mares payed him any mind, and they glowed so brightly now that it was nearly impossible to see any of their forms. Six mare-shaped angels, blazing with destructive power, all pointing at the one he was supposed to protect.

With a howl of rage, he threw himself into the room, but was, even with all of his bulk, slammed backwards out, over, and off the terrace by the concussive magical force surrounding the intense battle of wills. Before he could fall far, he teleported again, draining himself further, this time appearing next to his mother's crumpling form. Winds buffeted him, magic lashed at his armor, but he dug his razor sharp claws directly into the stone roots of the castle, and this time he remained immobile.

Kaiscillius could see the sweat on Nightmare Moon's body, the tension as her muscles camped and spasmed, the wild, pained look in her eyes like an animal, and he knew not what tot do.

But it seemed that when her eyes so full of terror passed over him, they became just a little calmer.

My son... he heard her whisper.

Yes, Mother I am here! Quickly, tell me how to stop them!

It is too late now, and you do not have the magic for it, I can see. Besides, she screamed with pain as her back cracked backwards, bending her at an unnatural angle, besides... this spell... I can... break free of it.. on my own. Until then... watch me... prevent my... idiot self from damaging my royal... person.

Watch you? But Mother I-

It seemed that she glared at him then, even through the magical assault and the pain, that she could still make him fear for his safety, You have NEVER failed me, Kaiscillius. Is now the time for you to start? When I... AGH! Need you most?

Kaiscillius was aghast, he looked back and forth between Nightmare Moon's supine form, and the six glowing figures at the end of the hall, encompassed in a corona of unbelievable power.

I... I...

You must go, Kaiscillius, my Sister... argh, she will be here soon. GO!

With one last glance at his Mother's fading consciousness, Kaiscillius slowly nodded, As you wish, Mother, I will await your return.

Kaiscillius turned, and lept from the nearest window, crashing heavily to the ground and shattering some of the outerlying courtyard. Quickly, he concealed his magical aura from view by shrouding it with similar signals as the plantlife and stone around him, forming a detection camouflage. It would never hold up to intense scrutiny, but it would serve fine as a passive shield.

Somberly, Kaiscillius waited in the hedges near the base of the tower in which the fight had taken place, and soon heard voices come from above as a brilliant light shone over all of the Everfree Forest, and the sun began to rise.

"Excellent work, my faithful student!"

That one phrase was all he needed to signal his getaway. He knew that voice. All too well.

And so Kaiscillius stalked off into the Everfree. A soldier without an army, an assassin with no target, only one cause remained left to him. Protect his Mother, until she was ready.

Author's Note

This prologue takes place at the outset of the first season premiere. From here the story will diverge from that of the show for a while, but they will eventually intertwine once more. Thank you, everyone, for reading this, even if you're not interested thanks for stopping by. Hello to returning readers from Remnant, and hello to new friends who choose to go on this new adventure with me!

Kaiscillius has awoken from his long slumber, how long not even he is aware. Things do not start off auspiciously, as he fails in his first, and most important, duty. Now, he must work to fix his mistakes while surrounded on all sides by the enemy. What steps will he take next? How does he plan to watch over his Mother, and ensure her swift and terrible return? Find out, next time.

P.S. : For those who have already read Remnant, know that this is an alternate timeline. Many elements of the backstory, world, and character behaviors will be different from what you have seen before. And to all, thanks! And happy reading.