The princesses and Deus all watched the battle between Discord and Natura in a tense silence, knowing that the fate of Equestria hinged upon which of the two would ultimately emerge the victor.

Deus was trying and failing to contact Gerhardt. They needed to start using the orbital cannons to destroy large swaths of nature all across the world in order to weaken Natura and make her easier to deal with and only Gerhardt had the codes to use them. He couldn’t care less what repercussions doing so would have on the world. He and Gerhardt could just build machines to filter carbon from the atmosphere in place of the plants or he could augment the ponies enough that they no longer required food or oxygen to begin with. Their quality of life didn’t matter to him in the least.

Celestia was still trying to process everything that was happening. She had never seen such violence or destruction except in the memories that Gerhardt had shown her and experiencing it first hand was honestly terrifying. And to think if Discord truly wanted to then he could easily be just as violent and destructive as Natura. A thousand years ago he could have easily killed both her and Luna with a mere snap and they wouldn’t have even had a chance to use the elements of harmony against him. He had been holding back by a lot the entire time. It terrified her to realize just how powerful these beings truly were. And even now that she, Luna, and Cadance were all in peak magical condition, while they could put up somewhat of a fight now if the three of them worked together they were still completely outclassed. Even worse, their only weapons against such powerful entities had failed. It was all just overwhelming.

Luna was in a similar state of shock. However, she was also furious at both Natura and Gerhardt. She was furious that Natura refused to listen to reason and was killing so many innocent ponies and she was furious that Gerhardt hadn’t warned them about such an immense threat since he had clearly already known about it considering how knowledgeable he seemed on the subject. Granted, she had to forgive Gerhardt somewhat as his daughter had died while he was fighting to protect Equestria, but that didn’t excuse him not warning them earlier. If he had then surely all of this could have been avoided as she and Celestia could have gone to the Everfree forest to speak with Natura while she was still imprisoned. Then perhaps they could have had a chance of reasoning with her.

Cadance, having entered the combat simulators that Gerhardt had made for Shining Armor a few times already, was probably the least affected by this next to Deus since she technically had the most experience. While this was by far the single most terrifying thing she had ever experienced considering the sheer power of what they were up against, it wasn’t anywhere near as horrific as some of the worst things she witnessed in the simulators. It was just on a much larger scale. She was actually quite worried about Gerhardt. Watching him throw himself at Natura until he was reduced to little more than a floating head and torso had been a bit painful to witness. Not to mention watching his daughter die right before his very eyes, fighting his daughter’s murderer and losing, then taking his daughter’s severed head and teleporting off to who knew where for whatever reason would be traumatic for anypony, even someone as jaded as him.

Suddenly a much smaller version of Discord appeared in front of them while Discord’s main body continued to fight Natura. “Well… As it turns out, Natura’s not fighting alone. Apparently there is a god that’s helping her. A nature god I presume considering how similar their energy is. So, uh… While this is a bit embarrassing, I might actually need your help. Well, your help and — as much as I hate to say it — the Spirit of Harmony’s help. You four alone won’t be nearly enough. So I’m going to need one of you to free the Spirit of Harmony then bring Twilight and her friends back here to use the Elements of Natura again.”

“I volunteer.” Deus said, raising his hand.

“What? But you don’t even know where the Tree of Harmony is. You should stay here and help the rest of us hold off Natura while one of us goes.” Celestia said, confused as to why Deus would volunteer.

“Think about it. While I am just as powerful as you in terms of offensive ability, if not slightly more powerful as I know a wider range of more advanced combat and war spells, I am objectively the weakest one here. My body is artificial and is thus not nearly as durable as any of yours due to you having the flesh of demigods while all I have is basic metal. So I would be the one in the most danger being caught in the middle of a battle between two Greater Spirits. The only thing I would be up against on the way to this ‘Tree of Harmony’ would be mere constructs and I am more than powerful enough to crush those. If the problem is that I don’t know where it is then I can have Miss Sparkle or one of her friends lead me to it. After all, you trust them enough to let them wield those artifacts thus it is only logical to assume that at least one of them would know where this ‘tree’ is.” Deus explained.

“He does make a good point. I mean just look at us, we are in far better condition than he is. And he should be strong enough to protect whoever he brings with him.” Luna stated.

Celestia sighed and said, “I don’t like putting Twilight or her friends in danger considering the situation, but I suppose you’re right. All right Deus, go. However, they actually don’t know where the Tree of Harmony is. So have them take you to Luna and I’s old castle. Once you’re there, you need to find a cave, the tree will be in there.”

“They should be somewhere in Canterlot Castle. That’s where I last saw them anyway.” The miniature Discord informed him.

“Understood.” Deus said before teleporting to the throne room of Canterlot Castle.

As expected, the ponies weren’t there. They had to be in some other part of the castle. Walking out of the throne room on his barely functional legs, Deus quickly found a servant and asked, “Excuse me. Have you seen the bearers of the Elements of Harmony? I was told they should be here.”

“Uh… I assume you’re one of Mechanica’s creations?” The servant inquired looking at Deus and his damaged and disheveled appearance.

“Indeed. He is my father. Forgive my appearance, I was just in the middle of helping the princesses fight the being that is causing the storm that is currently ravaging Equestria. Thus the reason I need to speak with the bearers of the Elements of Harmony.” Deus said in an eerily emotionless tone.

“I… I see… Uh, right this way.” The servant said before turning and leading him through the castle to a waiting room in which Twilight and her friends were resting.

As soon as he entered, Twilight's head snapped towards him. “You’re Deus, right? What’s going on? Why are you here instead of at Ponyville helping Discord fight?”

“First, Ponyville is gone. You saw it for yourself, so stop acting as though it is still there. Regardless, apparently there is a god of nature helping Natura so Discord is the one that is at a disadvantage in their battle. I actually have a strong feeling I know exactly who that god is but his identity is irrelevant at the moment. Anyway, Discord requested that one of us go free the Spirit of Harmony and retrieve you so you could actually do something useful. I volunteered since I was the most vulnerable of the four demigods fighting Natura. However, I don’t know where the Tree of Harmony is. However, Celestia informed me it is in a cave near her and Luna’s old castle so I’ll need at least one of you to lead me to said castle. Or at the very least show me where it is on a map and tell me what to look for.” Deus explained in a cold tone completely devoid of any sort of empathy whatsoever.

“Wow… Now I understand why Gerhardt never introduced you to any of us… Wait, demigods? You mean alicorns, right?” Twilight inquired.

“No. I mean demigods. I am a demigod but I am not an alicorn. However, the princesses are alicorns thus making them demigods. Yes, demigods as in we are half gods half mortals. They have known they are demigods since the day my father arrived in this universe, but they kept it from all of you because they wish to be seen as mortals for whatever asinine reason. You can ask them yourselves later, assuming we actually manage to survive this. Regardless, we are wasting time. Can one of you lead me to this castle or not?”

“Okay, wow… That’s… a lot to process... Uh… Anyways, if you think you can free the Spirit of Harmony, I’ll bring you to the castle myself.” Twilight said, getting up off the chair she had been resting on.

“Now hang on there, Twi. If you’re going then we’re all comin’ with you. We ain’t just gonna sit back and let you put yourself in danger alone. Besides, we’re all gonna need to go face Natura together anyways. So we might as well come with ya just to make things a bit quicker.” Applejack stated getting up out of her own chair.

All of the others agreed and got up out of their respective chairs. Twilight seemed like she wanted to object but looking at all of her friends she sighed and said, “All right, but this is extremely dangerous so all of you are going to need to stay as close to me and Deus as possible. No matter what happens just leave the fighting to us.”

“Ehem, I believe you mean leave the fighting to me as I am going to be the one doing most if not all of it if there is any to be done since I am by far the most powerful individual here and am the most skilled in combat. All the six of you need to do is lead me to this Tree of Harmony. Now, if the distance isn’t too far for you could you please teleport us as close to this tree as possible, Miss Sparkle?”

Twilight frowned at him but nodded. Her horn began to glow for a moment before the seven of them disappeared in a flash of light and they ended up near an old ruined castle that was completely overrun with wooden constructs. Seeing this, Deus immediately raised a barrier around himself and the others. Sighing in frustration he said, “Damn. This place is more heavily guarded than I thought it would be. This is going to be a huge drain on my energy reserves, and I’m going to need every last bit of energy I can get to break whatever seal Natura placed on this spirit. Gods damn it all, why couldn’t that old fool have given me the codes to the orbital cannons before he teleported off to the gods know where with Pixel’s broken corpse? It could have been as easy as teleporting back to the castle, vaporizing these constructs with an orbital laser, then teleporting back but no. Now we have to do this the hard way.”

“W-wait… Pixel’s corpse? She… She’s dead?!” Twilight exclaimed, shocked by this news.

“Well considering the injuries she received to her brain I would say, yes. She’s either dead or will be soon… Though, as I said, I did see my father take her severed head somewhere so perhaps she’s still barely alive and he’s trying to save her? Hmph… What a waste of effort. I would just let her die, personally.” Deus explained in an almost bored tone.

All the ponies had slightly different reactions to this news. Pinkie Pie slumped and her eyes started watering, her mane was already completely deflated so it couldn’t deflate any further. Rarity shook her head in disbelief, she didn’t want to believe it. Fluttershy whimpered, knowing another friend was either dead or seriously injured. Applejack lowered her hat slightly. Twilight was just staring at Deus in a mixture of shock and sadness.

Rainbow Dash, however, glared at Deus furiously and demanded, “How could you say that?! She’s your sister and you would just let her die?! What the buck is wrong with you?!”

“Absolutely nothing. I’m merely not bound by petty emotional bonds like any of you. Thus I simply don’t care whether he lives or dies. Regardless…” Deus raised a hand and pointed it towards the army of constructs. A golden aura engulfed his hand and suddenly the entire area was engulfed in flames that were easily twenty feet high. After a few moments, when he assumed all of the constructs were incinerated he lowered his hand and the flames disappeared. “Ugh… That ate up more energy than I would have liked. Regardless, let's go. The rain will have cooled the ground off enough that it should be safe to walk across. Now let’s start looking around. I would have you all split up to help me find it, but that would be unwise as there could be more constructs around. So try to stay close.”

As they started searching for this cave, something emerged from the Everfree Forest. Something massive. A large wooden hydra. As soon as it emerged from the trees it hissed at them before striking. Deus deflected the strike with a barrier. He then looked at the hydra construct and once again wished he had access to the orbital cannons. However, since he didn’t have access to them, he was forced to cast a curse. Suddenly pitch black crystals began to erupt out of the hydra, blocking the arcane energy flowing through it and tearing it to pieces. “More energy down the drain. I’m down to 32%. Oh well, I’ll just have to make do I suppose.”

They continued searching for the cave for a few minutes until they eventually found it. As soon as they entered the cave they saw the Tree of Harmony was completely covered in vines. Deus immediately walked ahead and approached the tree. A golden aura surrounded his hand as he placed it on the tree. A few seconds later he lowered it. “Well, that’s not good.” He muttered to himself.

“What do you mean? What’s the matter?” Twilight demanded.

“This seal is extremely strong and since Natura is actively maintaining it, it is self repairing. I can’t break it on my own. No individual demigod could. And even with help it would take days of constant effort and struggle using the most powerful ritual magic possible without even a moment’s rest as Natura would actively resist us every step of the way and if we let up even for a moment then the seal would just reform. We don’t have that kind of time. I would estimate we have maybe a day at most depending on how long Discord can hold her off.”

“There has to be something we can do! Discord wouldn’t have sent us here if he knew it was impossible to free the Spirit of Harmony!” Twilight exclaimed.

“Oh? Then by all means, go right ahead. If you know of something you can do to break the seal then what are you waiting for? If you can do something, then do it. Otherwise, I’m going to dedicate the vast majority of my processing power to hacking into my father’s orbital cannons since he’s not responding whenever I try to contact him and I will start destroying all vegetated areas on this entire continent in order to weaken Natura enough for Discord to beat her. So unless you want Equestria to be reduced to a barren desert, then you had best figure something out before I finish hacking into the cannons. You have exactly eight hours, forty five minutes, and twenty six seconds. And remember, every second counts. The longer you take to figure this out, dozens if not hundreds more ponies will die.”

“Now hold on just a minute there, partner! You can’t just destroy every forest in Equestria!” Applejack objected.

“Believe me, I can and I will. Look at it this way, if you fail you only have two options. You either let me and/or my father destroy nature thus reducing Equestria to a barren wasteland covered in ash — which your species can eventually adapt to and even recover from I might add — or you will be destroyed by nature and your entire species will be wiped off the face of this planet. There won’t even be so much as a single survivor as Natura will hunt them all down and kill them until there are none left. There are no other options. There are no clever tricks you can pull, there’s no cheating your way out of this, there’s no hidden option or secret weapon we just haven’t thought of yet that will magically save the day and make all of this disappear, and there is there’s no way to convince her to stop and just be friends, there is nothing else any of us can do. So, like I said, you have a little over eight and a half hours before I finish hacking into the orbital cannons. So if you truly believe it is still possible to free the Spirit of Harmony even with Natura actively resisting our efforts then you had better figure something out fast.”

With all that being said, Deus walked off to the side to let them access the tree, and he sent a message to the princesses through their cell phones the same way Gerhardt sent them the emergency messages. However instead of a text, he simply hacked into their cell phones and contacted them directly. “Princesses, this is Deus. I’m contacting you to update you on the current situation. The Spirit of Harmony is impossible to free. Even if the four of us worked together while Discord held off Natura it would take several days. The bearers of the elements still believe it’s possible and are trying to think of a way to solve this. However they have a strict time limit as in a little over eight hours I will have access to my father’s orbital cannons and will start using them to destroy every vegetated area on this continent in order to weaken Natura enough for Discord to defeat her. End of report.” He then hung up on them and began the process of trying to hack into Gerhardt’s orbital cannons.

[Three hours later, in the Crystal Empire]

Gerhardt had done it. He had saved his daughter. He had to pull a few tricks in order to buy as much time as possible, and those tricks would unfortunately have a negative impact on Pixel’s brain’s efficiency and processing power as well. But she was alive… barely… and that was all that mattered to him. Deus had tried contacting him several times as he tried to save Pixel but Gerhardt had ignored him as he wanted to dedicate his full attention to saving Pixel.

Casting a spell he brought her brain out of emergency shut down mode and brought her back to consciousness. Her eyes slid open and flared to life. The first thing Pixel saw when she woke up was Gerhardt’s body absolutely destroyed and the alicorn amulet wrapped around his neck. Normally this would have absolutely horrified her, but everything was so foggy almost like she was in a dream. It was hard to think as her thoughts were slower and more clouded than even a typical human with a purely organic brain. She was barely even aware of what was happening.

“Daddy… Where are we…? Am I… dead…? Is this what the afterlife is like…?” Pixel asked lethargically.

‘No, dear… You’re alive. I managed to save you… We’re in my factory in the Crystal Empire… I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you… I’m a complete failure…’ Gerhardt responded through their built in communications systems due to his vocalizer being shattered. Regardless his voice had lost a lot of quality just as it always did whenever he was particularly sad or distressed.

“It’s alright… You’re not a failure… Why can’t I feel anything below my neck…?” Pixel inquired, trying and failing to move her hands.

‘Your body was wrecked and your head was severed… Your brain was also damaged, but I managed to save you. I also shut down your pain receptors so you wouldn’t have to experience the pain of having your head severed… Now let’s make you a new body. I assume you want it to look the same?’

“Yes, please…” Pixel muttered.

Gerhardt inputted the schematics into the factory and had it start making her a new body. While it was at it, he had it start making a new body for him as well since his current one was completely ruined. This time he altered the design a bit. Instead of resembling his old organic self, it resembled what he looked like prior to coming to Equestria. The only differences were the blood red rubies that replaced the blue sapphires he normally used and the fact the exterior was made of silver instead of copper.

While he was at it, he had his factory make a suit of combat armor for him. It wasn’t power armor as that would take too long for the factory to build. However, it would be made of the exact same metallic ceramic as the power armor thus making him significantly harder to injure let alone kill. The only truly vulnerable areas would be his arms and hands as they would have significantly less plating than the rest of his body so he could use magic while still having very good overall protection.

About an hour later both of their bodies were ready. If they were being built separately it would have taken two hours, however they were being built on an assembly line thus they finished one after the other. When they were ready, Gerhardt brought Pixel’s new body over to her and laid it down next to her severed head. ‘Alright, I’ll be transferring your soul over to your new body now. I’m going to need you to bear with me because you’re going to spend a second or two as a ghost and it will not be a pleasant experience.’

“Alright, daddy… I trust you…” Pixel muttered.

Gerhardt then began the process of carefully removing her soul from her current brain and transferring it over to her new one, trying his best to make this procedure as painless as possible. Once she was in her new body, her eyes snapped open and she sat up. As soon as she looked at Gerhardt, her eyes dimmed significantly. “Daddy!” She squealed in horror before getting up, rushing over to him, and wrapping him in an embrace. “Daddy, what happened to you?! Did… Did you try to fight the spirit because of me? Oh gods… I nearly died! I don’t want to die, daddy!”

‘Don’t worry, dear… I won't let her hurt you again and I most certainly won’t let her or anyone else kill you… Now, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to take my brain out of my current body and put it into my new one. I could do it myself but I would be working blind so it would be quite a bit harder.’

“Yes, daddy… I’m so sorry…”

‘For what?’ Gerhardt inquired.

“For not listening to you and staying in the Crystal Empire… Because I didn’t listen to you I nearly died and you had to resort to using the alicorn amulet and got hurt really badly fighting the nature spirit… It’s all my fault…” Pixel said, sounding like she was on the verge of crying.

‘It’s alright, dear. I’m not mad at you. If anything, I’m mad at myself for not making sure you understood the gravity of the situation and that you would stay in the Crystal Empire. I failed you, and for that I’m the one who should apologise. Now, please help me into my new body.’

Pixel then began the process of removing Gerhardt’s brain from his head and transferring it over to his new body. When that was done, Gerhardt stood up and immediately put on the alicorn amulet again before putting on his new armor. Finally Gerhardt looked at Pixel and said, “Alright. I need to go and this time, stay here. Understood?”

“Yes daddy… I promise…” Pixel said, clearly still upset.

“Good girl. I only want to see something in person, so I shouldn't be long.” He said. A crimson red aura then surrounded his hand and he teleported back to the ruins of Ponyville. As soon as he arrived he remembered his orbital cannons. He had been so caught up in saving Pixel they had completely slipped his mind. He decided to rectify this error and had several of them open fire and start the process of burning all of the vegetation in Equestria to the ground.

He watched as a bright beam of arcane energy the size of a large house descended from the sky and slammed into the Everfree Forest. He then looked at the battle between Discord and Natura and saw that the princesses had apparently joined the greater spirit in fighting Natura, however Deus was nowhere to be seen. He looked just in time to see Natura’s head snap towards the Everfree forest with a look of shock on her massive wooden face. The princesses and Discord also seemed to be caught off guard by this. Thus the battle paused for a moment.

Princess Celestia then saw Gerhardt out of the corner of her eye and called him with her cellphone. “Gerhardt! Deus has hacked into your orbital cannons and is using them to destroy all vegetation in Equestria! You need to stop him!” She shouted as soon as he answered.

“No, he isn’t. I am. And I’m not going to stop at just Equestria. I’ll wipe the very concept of nature from existence. That starts with the destruction of all vegetation. Then I will make the weather and seasons completely automated by machinery. While I do that I will make every surviving organic life form in this world artificial like me and will wipe all knowledge that Nature ever existed from their minds. Thus I will have truly killed Natura by erasing the concept of nature from existence. She nearly killed my daughter, so I will not stop until I kill her.”

Hearing this terrified Celestia to her core. Her absolute worst fears about Gerhardt had come true. He had been corrupted by the Alicorn Amulet and had become just as much of a threat as Natura if not an even greater threat. And since he was wearing the Alicorn Amulet he had become powerful enough to actually fight her, Luna, and Cadance so she wasn’t even sure they could actually stop him. “Gerhardt, listen to me, you need to stop this! This isn’t you, it’s the amulet you’re wearing! Think about this logically—” She was cut off as Gerhardt hung up on her. “Buck! Luna, Cadance, it isn’t Deus doing this it’s Gerhardt! He’s been corrupted by the Alicorn Amulet! Worse, he says he’s not going to stop until he has completely erased the very concept of nature from existence, and that extends far beyond just destroying all vegetation not just in Equestria but across the entire world!”

“What?! Where is he?!” Luna demanded.

Celestia pointed at him. “Right there, but he’s still wearing the amulet! I’m not sure if we can actually stop him!”

“YOU INSOLENT WORM! YOU PLAN TO DESTROY ME?! DO NOT EXPECT ME TO JUST SIT IDLY BY AND LET YOU DESTROY MY FORESTS AND JUNGLES!” Natura roared at Gerhardt. However, before she could try to attack him he teleported himself into the sky and began levitating with telekinesis.

“It doesn’t matter if you sit there and let me do it! They will continue even if you kill me! Besides, the only reason I came here was to see the look on your face as I burn everything you stand for to the ground in person! I’m not stupid enough to stay here and give you the chance to retaliate! You shouldn’t have tried to kill my daughter! Now burn!” He shouted at her. He then teleported himself back to his factory in the Crystal Empire. As he was saying all that, he was actually contacted by Deus and was having a short conversation with him.

‘Father, I can see the orbital cannons have activated. So while I’m glad you are finally putting them to use after wasting hours without doing so, please hold off for a moment. Apparently the ponies managed to come up with an idea to free the Spirit of Harmony. If we can free it then we might not have to resort to this. Deactivate them for now but be ready to fire. I’ll tell you if the ponies fail or not.’

‘No. I don’t care. This isn’t about stopping Natura, it’s about killing her. I’m going to destroy the very concept of nature, starting with wiping all vegetation off the face of the planet. You can imagine the next steps after that.’ Gerhardt told him.

‘I see… Very well.’

[Twilight, moments earlier]

Twilight was pacing nervously, trying her best to think of something anything they could do to free the Spirit of Harmony. She had been at this for several hours and was running out of time. They had tried using the Elements of Harmony on the Tree of Harmony and it had seemed to do something for a moment but it hadn’t been nearly enough. She continued to think until she eventually came up with an idea.

“I’ve got an idea! Let’s try putting the Elements into the Tree of Harmony!” Twilight suggested.

Everyone present looked at her in silence for a moment. “What?” Rainbow Dash inquired in confusion, breaking the silence.

“Well, think about it! The Elements did something to these vines earlier. I theorize that it was because the Tree of Harmony was momentarily charged up by the blast of harmonic energy! So if we put the Elements into the tree then it will have a constant supply of harmonic energy rather than one short burst and should thus be able to break free! Plus there are those odd bulges in the branches with slots in them that are shaped like what the Elements of Harmony used to look like before we got them! So I’ve deduced that the Elements may actually have originally been a part of the tree. So returning them to it may actually make it strong enough to break free of Natura’s seal!”

“And it took you four and a half hours to think of that?” Rainbow Dash said in an irritated tone.

“Well, this is stressful! Also I don’t exactly have a whole lot of solid information to work with here! I might not even be correct and this may not even work! Besides, you hadn’t thought of it either!”

Rainbow Dash opened her mouth to respond but was cut off by Deus. “Hmph… Well, I just received interesting news you all may want to hear. It turns out my father has finally activated the orbital cannons without my input.”

“What?! No! We just came up with an idea that might actually work! You have to tell him to stop!” Twilight exclaimed in a panic.

“I already tried. He didn’t listen. Here are his exact words, ‘I don’t care. This isn’t about stopping Natura, it’s about killing her. I’m going to destroy the very concept of nature, starting with wiping all vegetation off the face of the planet. You can imagine the next steps after that.’ So essentially he’s planning on destroying all plant life in the entire world, making the weather and seasons fully controlled by machines, making all organic beings on this planet who manage to survive this first step fully artificial like us via augmentation, and plans to erase the knowledge that nature ever existed from everyone on the planet’s minds. So I believe he may have been corrupted by the Alicorn Amulet. I mean, he has been wearing it this entire time after all.” Deus informed them.

“He’s wearing the Alicorn Amulet?!” Twilight exclaimed, horrified by the prospect knowing how far he’s willing to go under normal circumstances even without the amulet.

“Yes. He put it on after Pixel was killed and used it to try to attack Natura. His attacks failed, obviously. So I suppose he’s decided that destroying the concept of nature in its entirety is a much more effective means of not just harming but actually killing her.” Deus explained.

“Bucking seriously?! Gah! Seriously, how has this day actually managed to keep getting worse and worse?! I thought it couldn’t get any worse having Natura trying to kill us all, but apparently I was bucking wrong! Now we have to worry about this too?! What’s next?! I seriously can’t imagine how this could possibly get worse!” Rainbow Dash shouted in a mixture of frustration and anger.

“What are we going to do, Twilight?!” Pinkie Pie asked, clearly panicking.

“Deus, where is Gerhardt right now?!” Twilight demanded.

Deus shrugged. “I honestly have no idea. He hasn’t told me. I can think of a few places he may be but we don’t have any guarantees. And even if we do find him, what makes you think he will just let us stop him? He could easily just teleport away again.”

Twilight then proceeded to take the Elements of Harmony out of each of their pieces of jewelry and levitate them over to the Tree of Harmony and said, "I'm hoping it won't come to this, but once we free the Spirit of Harmony we might have to use the elements to stop him." She then placed the element of magic in the middle and all of the rest in random branches on the tree. Suddenly the slots in the tree shifted and moved to match the shapes and sizes of the Elements, all of which started glowing brighter and brighter until the Tree of Harmony flashed with bright white light and the vines were all burned away by rainbow colored energy.

“We did it!” Twilight cheered happily. Her friends began to cheer along with her.

“Yes, yes… You freed this tree from Natura’s influence, that’s all well and good, but what now? As soon as you take the elements back out Natura will just seal it again. And next time it might not be this easy to break her seal since now she knows what to expect. So, what was the rest of your plan, exactly? How can you use this to beat Natura? Or my father for that matter?” Deus inquired.

All of the ponies paused in their celebrations as they realized he was correct. They couldn’t take the Elements back out or the Spirit of Harmony would be imprisoned again.

“That’s what I thought… Alright well—” Deus was cut off as the Tree of Harmony began to glow again. Rainbow colored energy trailed its way down through the tree and into its roots where it stopped. Suddenly a large pink flower sprouted from the root the energy stopped at.

Twilight walked over and poked the flower with one of her forehooves and suddenly it bloomed revealing a crystal box with multiple locks on it.

Deus sighed and looked at the tree. “Spirit of Harmony, if you can hear me, this is not helpful in the least. The box is locked so we can’t get whatever’s inside. So thank you very much for proving that this entire trip has been a complete waste of time and effort."

Moments after he said this, the constant sound of the thunder and rain outside subsided and light began streaming in from the previously dark entrance of the cave, much to all of their surprise.

Author's Note

Alright, there I've rewritten it. Hopefully this version's better. Honestly, this is probably the version I should have gone with to begin with. Anyways, here's a link to the original if any of you are interested in reading that absolute train wreck: Link To Original Version

No fun facts this time.

Anyways, as always, constructive criticism is more than welcome. Please, tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much if not more than I enjoyed writing it!

Stay safe out there everyone!