Twiastasia

Alicorn magic was truly powerful. In a single teleportation, Princess Celestia had wrought 10 bodies, including her own, across the country without so much as a warning. The Echidnans were left with scrambled stomachs.

“Guh… P-please, let us know the next time you do… whatever that was.”

“S-seriously... What even was…”

Anon felt his voice leave him as he took in his suddenly new surroundings.

“... Where are we?”

Celestia blew some hot air from her muzzle, a well-concealed scowl on her face.

“This is southern Equestria, The Badlands, to be precise. I would’ve taken us further, but the same magic that keeps me from freeing Twilight’s mind manifests here as well: We’ll have to walk.”

…

Twilight’s friends described The Badlands as once being a rather hot desert. Apparently, a little to the north, was a boom town called Appleoosa. Their initial complaints of the sky darkening and the dirt cooling were what had roused Celestia into investigation almost a year ago. Word of some strange magic brought the Sun Herald to establish a camp of experienced unicorns to study this new phenomenon, and when they discovered it’s inherent evil…

Celestia sent the Elements of Harmony to dispose of it.

“... And with each passin’ day, the skies grew cloudier, us earth ponies could tell the ground was growin’ weak and unsure. Even now, it almost feels dead. When we found tha’ cave, Twilight, some sorta creature came all a’billowin’ out, ready for ah fight. We’d all been blasted away by wind, only you were left standin’, and then it made this horrible sound…”

“You got blasted by this huge plume of dark smoke! It rushed all around you like ‘fwoom!’ ‘fwoosh!’ and when it was done-”

“... All that remained was your Element, your crown. Ooh, if only that spell worked faster….”

Twilight’s friends all looked away, not wishing to remember losing their friend.

“We searched for days! I was ready to rush into that cave and kick some smokey flank, but the others held me back. So I took to the skies, flying constantly, looking for any sign of you. Fluttershy asked the animals if they had seen you, Rarity was snout-deep in any scrying books they had at the camp… it was a nightmare.”

Twilight took in this information thoughtfully, a weak catharsis settling through her body, yet it did little to alleviate her spirit. She stuck close to Celestia, with Anon gently scratching at her mane.

“So… Is there any other information we should know about this... smoke? Are these… Elements even strong enough to stop it?”

Celestia nodded. “I’ve lived for over two-thousand years, Twilight. I’ve never once come across something the Elements couldn’t contain. After news got out about your disappearance, my little ponies were wild with fear, thinking it to be the end of the world. This isn’t the first time panic has ravaged the country, and though I always hope it to be the last, each new catastrophe paints a clearer picture of Equestria’s weaknesses to be bolstered.”

The princess wrapped a protective wing around her side.

“They also show where our strengths lie, and they lie in you and your friends. Don’t forget that.”

…

A foreboding mountain range loomed overtop of the makeshift camp. Though it hosted many tents of deployed Royal Guards, they were largely for show, to keep the unicorns studying the magic found inside and around the cave they had dubbed Evir’s Folly. The researchers had named it such after some of the initial unicorn crew had claimed to hear the name ‘Evir’ whispered to them in dreams. Soon after that, those researchers were brought back home to Canterlot, and they had begun to be routinely swapped out every few months, for fears of insanity. When one researcher left, another was sent out to take their spot in conducting study.

The camp had been hastily erected, and was slowly building up superior infrastructure and better supply lines to bring in food and materials for the inhabitants, but this was a slow, sapping process. The head of study, as well as the Colonel Royal Guard of the camp gave sharp salutes to their princess upon her arrival into their home.

“Please, at ease High-Scryer Clear Sight, Colonel Mustang. Tell me, have there been any developments in determining the cause of this new magic in the Folly?”

Clear Sight silently beamed at the sight of Twilight Sparkle and her friends, but kept her mask of calmness heldfast.

“Cause? No my Princess. All we can say on that front is that it stems from deep within the Folly itself. We’ll need to send squads into the cavern itself to dissertain that, which cannot be done with the threat level so high near the entrance. All attempts at rolling scrying-spheres into the cave have resulted in the scrying spell almost immediately being cut off, with a heavy psychological toll on the caster. What we have found, however, are deep hollows in the ground being almost constantly dug out, albeit at a rather slow rate. The team has been led to believe that this is not an occurrence of natural magic, but instead of a living, magical being.”

“So, biological then?”

Clear Sight shook her head. “That we cannot say for certain, but our current consensus is no. Perhaps there is a biological controller, but the smoke itself, based on info given from the Element Bearers several months ago, as well as first-hoof accounts from the Colonel’s Royal Guards, is that the smoke is not living.”

“And Colonel? Any reports?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, taking into consideration our inherent situation. More suitable defenses are being layered around the base perimeter as we speak. Current construction of a stable bulwark will be completed in three weeks, if the supply lines remain as they are.”

“I will see to it, thank you Colonel.”

The stallion saluted once again and returned to his post.

The Head-Scryer looked to the human and griffon in Celestia’s party.

“Um… Do they have clearance? I wish to show you something.”

“They, along with the mare, are the heroes who have returned Element-Bearer Twilight Sparkle back to Equestria. I would not have brought them here if they did not, Head-Scryer.”

The hooded mare lightly cleared her throat, quickly turning on her hooves to hide her embarrassment. “Right this way then.”

Anon casted the alicorn a curious glance, smirking.

“When’d you give us that?”

Celestia returned his smirk with one of her own.

“Just now, shush.”

The troupe followed Clear Sight into a rather large tent, which in turn led into one of the only solid standing structures in the whole camp. It was a very spartan enclosure. Clear Sight waited until every pony and creature had filed in, before motioning to a guard to lock the door. In the middle of the room, lay a large crystal prism.

“This is a sample of the smoke tendrils that came off of Evir. The Colonel does not have clearance to know about such things, you see. We understand that the smoke is indeed not alive, but controlled. To the extent of what we know, the prime controller is a being known as Evir. All attempts to make verbal contact with this stallion, and I use that in the loosest of terms, have failed. However, while attempting to drill a well for water, we breached one of his hollows underground. While we expected the worst: the smoke to come billowing out and constricting us all, it instead retreated from the outside world.”

Inside the prism was what looked like a volatile, dark bubble. It bounced back and forth within the crystal, rubbing and scratching against the sides.

“While research into what makes up this magic is currently impossible, due to the violent nature of the smoke, observation on its own has left much room for data collection. Hastily, for the sake of hypothesis testing, a small crystal was lowered into that dark well, and a small sample of the smoke as collected inside it. A unicorn was able to seal up the opening in the translucent gems quickly, and we’ve had this smoke since. Observation has shown us that it eats at whatever confines it’s kept in constantly, and replicates itself to fill the gap, however impossibly small. That ball of smoke in there was as large as a gumball when we first collected it. You see how large it’s become now.”

Celestia eyed the smoke. “So, you’ve built an increasingly larger prison around it each time it gets too close to breaking the shell?”

Clear Sight clopped her two front hooves together happily.

“Precisely! Thankfully, there are many gem veins around the camp, and we have an ample amount coming in from Dodge Junction and Appleoosa, but… we cannot keep it restrained forever. We’ve theorized that, judging from Evir’s presence in the caverns below our hooves, and the actions this smoke performs constantly within its prison, Evir’s primary directive seems to be growth. To what end, we do not know, nor have we appropriately determined his true size.”

“... Concerning. And Evir himself has not aggressed in any way against this camp?”

“No my Princess. My personal theory is that he feels he is not yet strong enough to mount any sort of attack, but his sights are not on this camp.”

“Then where?”

“Equestria at large, my Princess.”

Celestia’s thoughtful look quickly turned to one of anger, but she quickly buried it within her regal mask.

“Well, then it is a good thing we’ve come here now to stop him, isn’t it Head-Scryer?”

Clear Sight smiled.

“Indeed, my Princess.”

…

The march onto Evir’s Folly was rather quiet. No one in Celestia’s party wished to be the first to speak one of their many questions. Her gaze was stoic as ever, trotting gently upon the grey dirt. She seemed totally sure on her course of action, and everyone else just hoped she’d tell what that course was before they reached Evir. There was no wind in this land, just the bleak, distant sun and the oddly cool ground. Hoofsteps were the only noise to be heard. Though the two groups largely stuck with their own, often some of Twilight’s old friends would share fearful glances with her new ones. Twilight herself kept closely by the princesses’ side. The great mountain grew bigger overhead with each step closer, illuminating just how small these creatures were.

‘Clear Sight said that Evir’s magic stretched as far as the camp at least. Could it be filling the whole mountain range? All of the Badlands?’ These thoughts plagued Twilight’s mind, and she was not alone in this.

The Colonel of the basecamp had begged to send at least one legion with Celestia on the journey to face Evir, but, in her mysterious ways, she had refused him. How the little ponies among Celestia’s flock wished she hadn’t now.

Anon spotted some cracks in the dry dirt.