Part 1, The rise of Crystal King
It is well-known is Equestria rock farming works by an undisclosed method, but did you know that there was a field of research that is about literally farming and growing magical crystals? It has long since lost against rival procedures for creating similar gems but there was a time when it was considered a niche type of research that could save pony/dragon relations. Or, one pony thought it could do so.
See, a magical crystal is similar to a conductor for magic. You can pump magic into it and it redirects it in different ways. These manipulations of magic in-turn can be used to form crystals out of given materials. The aforementioned pony realized the applications of this: Create a solution that is effectively "liquid gems" and place a crystal inside of it. The magic emitting off the crystal will cause the surrounding liquid to solidify around it and in theory it can be done in such a way that the solidified liquid become more of the same crystal doing the same thing.
With this it is possible to create increasingly complex structures limited only by the starting energy and the amount of liquid. In short, automated unicorn horns. It is theorized that a great deal of the magical crystal-like artifacts in Equestria come from a lost but similar ancient method on account of many archeologists not realizing that I have much better ways of creating similar structures.
But I digress, this is a story about the pony that created modern crystal growing, not a story about me. The pony so interested in crystal growing was a very bright pony that went by the name of "Diamond Fantasy". His entire family praised intellectualism for a long time. The caretakers of the Canterlot library as a matter of fact. While Diamond spent most of his life after school researching the crystal growing magic, his older brother, Emerald Fantasy, studied for a job in archiving. This was much more profitable and respected than his brother's fringe research. As time went on Emerald became the "favorite child", even by his parents. Diamond's experiments were frequently interrupted by his parents asking when he was going to be as smart as Emerald. In Diamond's mind he was already much smarter and in retrospect he may have been right.
It's important to note that he never hated his brother, rather, he grew to hate his parents.
"Why does it matter if he records the past if I create the future?" he thought.
While living in Canterlot he found one particular thing to take his mind off of his so-called failings: A young filly by the name of "Shining Armor", A unicorn taking classes in shield generation. Being a fan of the military, Diamond naturally grew fond of "Shiny". They started to become close when Diamond began to educate Shining about the military and defensive spells. While Diamond was never in the forces, he knew a great deal about them.
Diamond was greatly bothered by Twilight apparently being the larger interest of most ponies. Something about "elements" or friendship. Diamond was under the impression that defensive spells would be far more important than whatever Twilight was training for. Shining didn't see a problem even when Diamond tried to explain it. As time went on it became more apparent that Diamond may have not been safe to have around young ponies. The long rants about Shining being the better unicorn didn't help.
The Sparkle Parents eventually put their hooves down and didn't let Diamond "hang out" with Shining anymore. After a very short period of time the Sparkles never saw Diamond again. They had assumed the problem was fixed, but it was far from over. In-fact, the continued existence of Canterlot was at stake.
If Equestria wasn't going to respect Shining's powers, Diamond was going to make them in a way that seemed sane to him: Create a weapon of mass destruction. Now, he knew Shining was far to young to create a shield to stop the device on his own but it didn't matter. As long as people realized that a proper shield spell could have saved them it didn't matter.
Diamond became a shut-in, rarely seen by anyone. Nopony seemed to know what he was doing in his "lab" for all that time, let along guess that it was an insane plot involving a massive orbital magical energy weapon that was part of a convoluted plot to ensure a young colt he vaguely knew would be respected as a shield-maker. Looking back, it's possible that Diamond was not of a sound mind on any level.
But back to the creation of the weapon: He had filled a vat the size of a small lake entirely with "liquid crystals" and placed a seed crystal in the very center. Using magic he created a highly complex device made of every color of crystal using more resources than all of his projects combined. After countless moons of perfecting the device, it was ready to take to the sky.
And that it did. Using an anti-gravity spell Diamond made the device "fall up" despite the surrounding population's confusion. After the launch the entire system was automated. It was one of the most complex things ever programmed into a magical crystal not counting Equestria's computers. Mechanically it was rather simplistic and had a few simple commands:
Fire at any approaching objects.
Hold an orbital course to above Canterlot.
Activate "top" thrusters upon reaching Canterlot.]
It had weapons, but the payload was actually rather mundane. It was simply going to drop to the ground and charge with highly toxic magic. It didn't actually need to generate the toxic magic, that was a product of it's battery. The battery was a large crystal in a constant state of decay which the craft used for thrust and if it needed to local weapons. Just in-case Celestia got crafty enough to try and shoot it down.
Diamond however didn't account for a secret machine from long ago in a deep Canterlot basement, capable of disabling the weapon's sensor array for a long enough time to send up a missle.
Now if only Celestia knew how to turn it on.
Part 2, The Magic Cascade Warhead (extended)
Hiking through the Everfree Forest is always a questionable course of action. But if people didn't explore the unknown and dangerous things would be nasty. This was the logic behind Oak Lovely's explorations. According to legend, this particular region of the forest contained a strange item from untold moons ago capable of disabling magical gem constructs on mass. Not that Oak had any idea there was a massive weapon of exactly that nature pointed at Canterlot, Celestia is yet to tell anybody outside of the Royal Guard.
Very little is known about the aforementioned magical item. All anybody seems to know is that it is an ancient artifact that is able to block magical senses. Many doubt the existence of it. Now it's up to Oak to prove them right or wrong. Knife in mouth, that's exactly what she intended to do. Even by Everfree standards this area has barely any history of habitation. While the forest is much more alive and full of communities than people give it credit for, this section is more like what the citizens of Ponyville think Everyfree is like: This weeds, monsters, darkness and a general unpleasant feeling.
Oak tends to avoid this area as there aren't very many historical artifacts to recover and it's rather painful to get through. More than anything however, Oak was bored. Everyfree was like a second home, possibly even more than Oak's actual home. If Everfree is a house this is the storage closet. After spending the entire day looking for this likely fake temple, it started to get dark.
As if on command, Oak noticed something in the distance: A light. It looked more like an electronic light than a lantern.
"Hello? Is somebody there?" She called out.
No answer.
"Are you lost? This is a very dangerous place to be." In hindsight that could have come out more poetic, but not much can be done about it now.
Could it be that zebra? Perhaps a tribe of creatures that live in the forest? That would explain why they didn't answer, On a few occasions Oak had encountered undiscovered being in the forest that did not speak Ponish.
Oak began walking in the direction of the light, realizing it was the only way to get answers.
Getting closer, it became apparent that this was a stationary light, similar to that of a submarine. It was on the top and center of a small mound. It was too dark to make out, but it seemed to be dirt piled ontop of a small. In the center of this mound there was a rectangle impression, about the size of a door. Wiping away the dirt revealed that it was a door. A very metallic rather modern-looking door. It looked like it had been there for a long time, nearly rusted shut. Thoughts were racing in Oak's head.
"Did ancients make this?" "How did it look so modern?" "If it was built within present times why was it so old looking?"
These thoughts were interrupted by noticing a small device the door had instead of a knob or handle. It had small wheels with numbers on them, like a very small slot-machine. Next to the numbers it was labeled with alien measurements.
And it was counting down.
Millennia: |0||0||0|,|0||0||0|,|0||0||0|,|0||0||0|
Centuries: |0|
Decades: |0|
Years: |0|
Days: |0||0||0|
Hours: |0||0|
Minutes: |0||0|
Seconds: |0||0|
Milliseconds: |0||0||3|
...
Milliseconds: |0||0||2|
...
Milliseconds: |0||0||1|
...
Milliseconds: |0||0||0|
Followed by a short almost inaudible click and a much louder thunk from inside the door. Oak never checked if the door was locked, but it wasn't hard to figure out what that noise meant. Pushing the door open revealed a set of stone stairs.
"This is more up my ally."
They looked much more "temple-like" than the door. After roughly 20 feet of decent writing became apparent on the walls. It was clearly math problems, but they were wrong somehow. Not that Oak could explain how. Figuring it was just the sleep deprivation, Oak continued on. Further down the math had more of that unexplained wrongness and grew increasingly erratic. Around 40 feet down it was totally unreadable. At 50 feet the stairwell opened up to a room. It was a perfect cube, again made of stone.
On the oppisite wall of the stairs was a stone slab seeming connected to a puzzle. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design.
The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design.
The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design. The puzzle was rather simple in design.
Following it's completion, which Oak couldn't seem to remember properly, the slab lifted. On the other side was a crude wooden and rope bridge above a pit of fire with no apparent source or bottom. The bridge terminated at a cylindrical pillar. After going across the bridge, which was unnaturally sturdy, Oak came across yet more stairs. Despite being inside a vertical cylinder the stairs seemed to progress at a 45 degree angle.
Proceeding down the stairs, for what seemed like longer than an eternity, Oak was presented with a long hallway covered with murals and descriptions. They seemed to be theological in nature. Before all the murals was a message burned into the wall:
Alright, You've had your grand entrance. Now it's my turn.
The first one was simply a black square with information under it.
Long before anything started.
Before the beginning.
Before The Gray.
Before nothing.
There was a great darkness.
Filled with less than nothing
And somehow even less.
The next one was the same black background, now with three dots in a triangle.
After an infinite instant.
Three beings "awoke".
They were old beings.
And were the first to ask the oldest question.
Why?
So they thought.
And thought.
And had an idea.
This one had 3 arms reaching from where the dots were located on the last one. Despite seeing it right there, Oak couldn't seem to discern any more information about these arms.
They cast their...
Let's call it "power" into something.
It made a great light.
And it cast many complex shadows.
Now we call these shadows "everything" and "matter".
As time went on the shadows got smarter.
Perhaps the aim of the project changed.
Was this a creation tale? The next one had several stick-figuraes, seemingly standing on their hind legs, standing around a dark green rectangle. They wore white clothes that didn't seem to be any normal clothing.
As the project seemed to be less about finding the creator of the Darkness.
One of the beings that we'll call "DAHKUU" began to go mad.
Eventually it started calling it's self "God" and seemed to legitimately think of it's self as one.
If not the main one.
It collected some of the shadows.
And had them create something amazing.
Something you need to contact the Royal Guard about confirming that you know about the device heading towards Canterlot and that this is the fabled machine that can stop it.
Oak awoke in a cold sweat, not paying mind to the dream described above. It somehow felt less real than most dreams but was also crystal clear. Finally mustering up the courage to face the morning sun with open eyes, Oak saw an all-to-familiar dark green slab at the foot of the bed.
Author's Note
Extended.
