Chapter 1: To Fall To Ruins
A young blue Pegasus, with a green and red mane and bright green eyes, went flying one stormy night despite several ponies warning her not to. Everything was going fine, she was doing stunts and overall enjoying the rain against her back. About an hour into her flight, a bolt of blue lightning suddenly struck her, knocking her unconscious.
When she came to, she found herself in the middle of some decaying ruins. “What happened?” Elemental asked. She slowly sat up and then immediately fell back over due to a pounding headache. “Ouch! I must’ve hit my head on something” she waited a few minutes until her head stopped pounding, then she tried sitting up again putting a hoof to her head as she did. “Alright, slowly.” She eventually manages to sit up, still holding her head in her hoof. Once the pain subsides enough to where it’s bearable she takes a look at her surroundings. “Just where in Equestria am I?”
After looking around for a little bit, she sees a faint glow in the distance. Upon further observation, she realizes it looks like it’s coming from the entrance to some cave or oddly shaped hallway. She slowly stood up, feeling a little dizzy and seeing stars. “I must’ve gotten a concussion”
She looks up through the hole she fell in and immediately felt a sense of vertigo and almost throws up. Once she recovers she looks up again still feeling dizzy, but this time it’s a little more manageable. “I don’t know what this place is, but I need to find a way out of here.” She contemplates and tries to spread her wings, but feels a sharp and intense pain in her right wing. She gasps and screams, almost passing out due to the pain. “O-ouch...” she says weakly before looking back at her right wing to see that it was broken. “W-well, flying out of here isn’t an option. I guess I have no choice, but to walk down this dimly lit cave hallway?” She thought aloud, not asking the question to anypony in particular.
After walking for about 20 minutes, the cave hallway starts to open up into some sort of cavern. “This place is huge, but I need a way out not a bigger room” she scans the entire cavern, but can’t find another way out, then she notices what’s in the center of the massive cavern. “Is that a sword?” She starts to walk closer to it. Once she’s about halfway between the sword and the beginning of the hallway she came out of, two braziers light up on either side of the sword. “What is this place?”
As she gets closer she hears faint voices seemingly coming out of thin air. She soon realizes it’s the sword itself, and that it isn’t multiple voices but a single voice calling her name. “Hello?” She says with some trepidation. The whispering stops. “Is anypony there?”
There’s nothing, but silence for a few moments, then a loud booming voice echoes from the cavern’s walls themselves, “who goes there?! State your business, why are you here?!”
She’s a little hesitate at first, then she answer back, “I was just flying and I heard this loud crackling sound, next thing I know, I wake up in some decaying ruins with a concussion and a broken wing and no way out. I saw this hallway that looked like my only way out, but it led me here to this cavern instead. I was just scanning the cavern to see if there where any ways out of here, but I couldn’t find any. I then saw the sword and could here my name being called from it. I don’t know what’s going on, but I just want to leave.”
The voice talks, seemingly to itself, “Hmmm, How peculiar, but why now?
“Ummm, excuse me sir or whoever you are, If you could kindly point me in the direction of the exit that would be fi...”
Another voice starts talking, “I know it’s her. Just ask her what her name is.”
Elemental quickly realizes that it is the same voice from the sword.
The booming voice returns asking, “pony, what is your name?”
“My name?” She asks, confusion written all over her face.
“Yes pony, your name!” The two voices say in unison.
“It’s...Elemental, but why? And what or who are you?”
“It is her! I knew it!”
The booming voice replies, “but how can we be certain?”
“Ooh, I know! We can see if she can pull the sword out of the stone!”
“Nah! That’s too cliché.” The booming voice replies back.
“How about...”
“No.”
“Or we could try...”
“Nope.”
“Or what about...”
“That’s too easy! It needs to be a challenge.”
“Then that only leaves...”
“That’ll be perfect!” The booming voice replies back, cutting the other voice off again. Then the voice speaks to Elemental, “To get the sword you have to pass this riddle.”
Elemental, “I just want to know how to get out of here, if you could tell me where that is...”
The booming voice cuts her off again, “are you ready for the riddle? Listen closely!”
Elemental, “Listen, I don’t care about the damn sword! It’s really cool and all, but I just want to get out of here. My head’s throbbing, I can barely see straight, let alone think straight, my wing is broken, I think I was struck by lightning earlier, and to top it all off, I’ve had an overall crappy day and would just like to go home, get my wing wrapped up, and sleep. I mean no disrespect, but please, I just want to leave!”
Silence.
A few minutes later the booming voice starts talking, “Alright, You can leave under one circumstance, you take the sword and keep it with you for the rest of your life.”
Elemental sighs, “ Can I just leave please?”
The sword whispers to the booming voice.
“Uh huh...ooook...are you sure? But...fine, I mean she did say she didn’t care for it. Alright, fine! Alright, listen pony and listen well! You have...passed!”
“Umm, What? Passed? Passed what?” Elemental asks confused.
“The test.”
“What test? I didn’t know there was a test, I just want to get out of here,”
“Well, you passed the test and now you get the sword, that’s pretty much how it works. You asked earlier who we are right?”
“Umm, Yeah?!”
“Here, we’ll show you.” Two ghost ponies appear: one pegasus pony, who comes out of the sword itself, and one unicorn pony, who just appears like he just teleported into the cavern. “We are the guardians of the sword of Elements. No, it is not related to the four elemental swords; earth, fire, water, and air. It’s slightly different, instead of controlling any one individual element, or just being limited to elemental magic, it is actually more like a weather sword, but it’s abilities are different with each pony it belongs to. For instance, with her, it allowed her to walk on water without her having to flap her wings.”
Intrigued now elemental asks, “what about you?”
“Oh me? Did I forget to mention that the sword only works with Pegasi ? To any other pony it is just a normal sword.”
“Oh...”
“Also, you can make the sword seemingly vanish into thin air and even though it is not physically there, you can still get the benefits from it. It’s actually a little crazy if you think about it.”
“That does sound a little bit cool.”
“Ok, one last thing before the sword is yours, since we are the guardians of the sword and we are passing it on to you, you are the new guardian. This sword must never get into the wrong Pegasi’s hooves, who knows what could happen...
No, really, nopony knows what could happen because with each pegasus the sword’s abilities are different. With great power...blah blah! Annnd...the sword is now yours! We can now rest in peace now.” They start to fade away. “Oh! I almost forgot! Here’s some wicked cool armour too! It can disappear and be called upon just like the sword can, also, the exit’s behind you. Deuces!” They fade away completely, Elemental is left alone in a cave with a full suit of crystal looking armour on and the sword strapped to her left side, wing hanging limp down her right side still clearly broken.
She shrugs. “That was...weird, but cool and interesting too, I guess. I don’t quite know what happened really. Maybe I can think about it some more while I walk back home”
She starts to walk towards the direction the ghost pony pointed to only moments ago. As she walks closer to what appears to be a solid stone wall, the wall starts to crumble on fall apart exposing another tunnel/hallway looking path that looks much like the first one did. She keeps on walking past. “This armour is pretty cool and the sword is too, but maybe I should hide it for now. I mean, what would other ponies say back in ponyville? I can just go to my house in the sky next to mountain nearby Ponyville, but they’ll surely know when I’m back. Now how did they say I can make the armour and sword disappear?”
Thirty minutes later and through some embarrassing moments, Elemental finally managed to make the entire suit of armour and the sword disappear just by simply thinking that she wanted it to disappear. “Finally! Apparently all I have to do is think about it, why did I think of all these complicated ways like a flick of the wing or trying to do some stunt that ending with me landing on my face a few times and making my headache worst! If only I can remember what happened when I passed out while flying.”
Author's Note
This is the second draft of chapter one, if anyone has any suggestions or concerns, please let me know and I’ll gladly accept, and maybe even sue, some of them. That aside, I hope y’all enjoy the rest of your day or night and I hope you enjoy the read!
