An Unspecified Amount of time later.
“Wait! Holdesest!” Jasper raised his paw and the company came to a stop. The short, stocky diamond dog’s nose began to wiggle as he sniffed the air. The band of mostly ponies, griffons and diamond dogs were settlers for the most part, striking out west past the Whitetail woods in order to establish a town for the glory of the Princess. To build a place where friendship could blossom and hearts could fill with love of all races and blah blah blah. To be perfectly honest, Aristi didn’t particularly care about the idealistic dribble that his entourage spouted.
There was one and only goal for Aristi and that was wealth. Establishing a town or colony meant that the pony responsible got to set the tax laws. Most of those taxes would go to the crown but Aristi estimated a good 20% or so off the top would more than pay for any business ventures he had in the future and establish himself and his family for generations to come. Finally he’d be able to reestablish his family after the disaster that was his great grandfather Ochlo and those damn smooth talking pegasi.
However, the only fly in his ointment was, as he called it, the town’s gimmick. Every town needed something to lean on, at the very start if nowhere else; Manehatten got its start as a humble trading post, Cloudsdale was a giant in weather production, even that podunk town Appleloosa was a rapidly expanding agricultural center! His, as of yet unnamed town, would be a mining town he had decided. Thus the earth pony and unicorn surveyors and the...other depths he had sunk to.
“What is it Jasper?” Asked the yellow coated unicorn, stepping forward and raising an eyebrow.
“Ore vein” Jasper said, his nose still pressed near into the dirt. “Very fine, very nice. Yes. Very nice. Rare. Rare is good for ponies, yes?”
More of the diamond dogs were getting excited now, sniffing out on patches of earth five, ten, fifthteen feet ahead of where Jasper had stopped. Aristi motioned with his head for another unicorn. His name was...Arch or something, Aristi could barely remember. All he knew was the stallion was his head surveyor. The steel gray coated unicorn pulled a small device out of his saddle bags that looked rather like a metal dowsing rod Aristi had seen as a colt; Two metal rods shaped like L’s with a cord or wire going down, connecting to one another, and dead ending in some sort of cup like end that Arch slip onto his horn. Arch’s horn lit up and seconds after it did, so did the ends of the dowsing sticks.
The pony sat in the dirt, and twisted the rods to and fro in his hooves, each one making a series of high pitched squeaks that made no sense to Aristi but seemed to be very intriguing to Arch.
“Well?” Asked Aristi.
“It’s an ore that I’m unfamiliar with, Mr. Crat,” Arch said, still waving his two rods. “But there’s a lot of it. The part of the vein closest to the surface stretches out that way sixteen feet and I’m getting some more deeper down. It’s most similar to the mythril her highness uses to make her guards’ armor. But...not quite that? It’s hard to explain. Good news is it’s a highly concentrated vein, tons at least. ”
Aristi could practically feel the bits dropping into his coin purse. Armor grade mythril was worth three times its weight in gold, easy! If this deposit was anything like that it’d put his town on the map for sure!
“Start putting down stakes,” He told the settlers. “I want tents up in ten minutes. I want three of you to start building a permanent settlement, and the rest of you to start digging! The sooner we can start looking through this ore the sooner we can get to selling it and the sooner we can start getting more backs out here for the labor!”
As per his instructions, the other creatures got to work. Aristi smuggly sat to watch, first on the ground, then inside the comfort of his own tent once they had finished building that. Already several of the earth ponies were felling trees, the diamond dogs were beginning the excavation process, eagerly digging through the dirt and sod for the ore that’d make him richer than his wildest dreams.
Meanwhile, miles away in a cottage in Ponyville
“Hahaha!” Discord laughed
“Oh my…” Fluttershy mumbled, her tea cup lowering slightly as she blinked up at the Lord of Chaos. “But he wasn’t hurt permanently, was he? Did the character survive?”
“My dear Fluttershy, you should know me better than that! I wasn’t going to allow a fighter the likes of Slab Bulkhead to die just like that! Even if I was, they had the expert healer Sunshine’s Grace in the party! I didn’t even have to fudge the rolls! Moondancer somehow managed to roll twelve successes on five dice! Sunshine reattached Slab’s head, Slab has the reputation of walking off a decapitation, and everything was right as-!” Before he could fully finish his statement, Discord’s body suddenly went stiff, briefly followed by a shudder running down the length of his spine causing his whole body to shake like jello. His eyes grew wide, and his mismatched pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks. All color drained from him, leaving the once vibrantly colored Draconequus a starch, snowy, unnatural white. Fluttershy immediately understood that something was wrong.
“Discord?” Fluttershy was up in an instant, tea forgotten. She flapped up to Discord’s face to check his temperature.
“What’s wrong? What happened? Are you sick? Di-” Before she could ask any more follow up questions, Discord disappeared with a flash and a popping noise. A second later, the whole cottage, animals, brook, grass and all, was lifted off the ground on the shoulders of the Draconequus, now looking more panicked than Fluttershy when faced with public speaking. He kicked out with one leg and knocked open a door in the air into the swirling realm of Chaos that he called his home, big enough for the whole slab to fit through.
He charged through as if Tartarus itself were nipping at his heels and the door closed behind him with a sharp snap.
Meanwhile, in an overgrown courtyard in the Everfree forest
Yona hummed an old Yakyakistanian song as she swept the inside of the crystalline treehouse that had once been the Tree of Harmony. The day had been long, the work had been hard, but as a yak Yona was the best at school work despite what her report card might otherwise say! And as the best at school work, that obviously meant that she got done with it the fastest, which meant that she had more than enough time to tidy up their treehouse while the others were working!
“Yaks dream and move forward, longing for another place.” She sang gently as she swept the dust out. “Yaks feel a voice saying ‘Now is the time’. Yaks will not fear, we will find the answer. Yaks will be strong, and move land and sky to find what we are looking for."
The yak with the braided hair was so focused on her task that she failed to notice that the beads and crystals hanging from the treehouse’s bows were starting to move. They quivered and shifted East, directly away from the Whitetail woods and the western wilds beyond. This wouldn’t have been unusual in the slightest, not in the Everfree’s untamed weather. However, at that very moment, the sky was clear, the forest silent with not even a rustle from the other trees. Not even a single breeze blew through the woods, and yet the leaves of the Treehouse of Harmony swayed.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the dragon lands
Former Dragon Lord Torch sank into the lava pool of Ruthrahkein peak. The mountain was easily the highest in the region, two massive jagged horns that pierced the sky with a smokey maw set dead center between. Lava constantly bubbled in the open topped caldera, occasionally puffing smoke or noxious fumes into the sky. It was said that, long ago, their kind had sprung from Ruthrahkein’s maw, born of fire and rage, but nowadays their most ancestral home was used exclusively by those dragons like Torch who had grown and survived to such an ancient age.
Torch sighed as he sank up to his shoulders in the bubbling liquid stone, looking out at the dragon lands before him. He was the largest of those gathered that day, easily. The only other two there that day were, maybe, one hundred years his juniors.
“So,” One of them grunted. “How’s that girl of yours doing?”
“Good enough.” Torch answered mildly.
“Feh.” The second, a female scoffed. “I hear she’s making nice with the pony folk. I’d have never believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”
“Mmhmm.” Torch replied without much enthusiasm.
“Ponies, bah!” Said the first of his juniors. “You wouldn’t have seen it in our day! Dragons and ponies don’t mix!”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Said the female. “Ponies should be giving dragons the gems they find, but that’s about it!”
The two shared a chuckle that Torch didn’t join in on. True, he didn’t exactly see eye to eye with Ember’s methods, but she was the Dragon Lord now and it wasn’t his place to question these decisions anymore. Besides, he couldn’t exactly argue with the results. The ponies were all too happy to share the rarer of the gemstones they found in the name of friendship, so long as the dragons reframed from torching too much of their land. And if a dragon were to fall asleep in the wrong place, or dig through the wrong field, their punishment would be left to Dragon Laws, rather than the laws of ponies, which was a far bit better than the old knighting days, which more than a few dragons had lived through.
As he thought this, all at once, Torch felt something deep in his bones, a chill that ran through the very marrow of his being. The other two paused in their deep discussion of inter-creature relations, they felt it too. Half a second later, before any of them could open their mouths to put words to what they had just shared, the ground beneath them suddenly began to rumble.
Ruthrahkein’s bubbling pool of lava suddenly began to boil with more ferocity. The heat began to go up rapidly, to such a mind boggling degree that Torch, the dragon that had survived countless battles and innumerable odds to an age where his scales were thicker than the walls of most buildings...began to sweat. Immediately, Torch and his two companions in the pool quickly swam to the edge and clambered out. In the time it took them to get there, the lava had gone from uncomfortably hot to scalding, and by the time the tip of Torch’s tail left the lava a large angry boil had formed on the end. The whole volcano rumbled and, for the first time in any dragon’s living memory, lava spewed from Ruthrahkein’s maw, and scorching hot rocks flew up to join the thickening smoke it belched into the sky.
Meanwhile, outside a condo in Silver Shoals
Celestia, Former Princess of Equestria, cake enthusiast, and current champion of the shuffleboard court, hummed to herself as the sun continued it’s dutiful trek over the sky. It was a lovely summer’s day, Luna was tucked in the basement with her head set on and playing some new game, they still had hours before they were supposed to have lunch, and she was enjoying some gardening.
The hobby was not something she had been able to engage in too often back in Canterlot. True, she had a garden, but actually digging in, getting her hooves dirty, weeding the patch of soil and coaxing the tender greens out wasn’t something she had been able to do. The task had been co-opted by several gardeners who had insisted on doing the job for her and thus one of her escapes had been denied her.
The pleasure of the simple task would’ve been just what she needed...if not for The Voice. It had made itself known only a few times in her life, but it was always at times right before a great upheaval hit her; It had warned her to check on Luna a bit more often in the days leading up to her transformation into Nightmare Moon, it had whispered to her about the Tree of Harmony after their first three failed attempts at wrangling Discord, and it had insisted she make the time to walk around the grounds of her school during a certain filly’s entrance exam.
So many times she had tried to determine the source of the soft, lyrical tones, but the only definite thing she could place her hoof on was the fact that it only seemed to contact her during the day and only when something major was about to occur.
“He approaches,” The Voice hissed in her ear, it’s warm glow filling her mind as it whispered to her. “The All-powerful, the Endless one, the Marker of Eons, Ruler of the Age of Gold, the King Killer. He approaches.”
As the voice spoke, Celestia slowly lowered her garden trowel. The Voice’s grave tone insisted itself upon her, emphasizing in a way that no mere words could the danger that she and her little ponies were in.
“Prepare yourself for war, noble one. Much will rest upon your shoulders. Bear it well.” The Voice’s presence faded. Celestia stared down at her trowel, taking just one more moment to steady her nerves. Never, not once, had The Voice told her to prepare for war. Conflict, certainly, trouble, most definitely, intrigue, obviously, but war? The phrasing scared her. If Discord had been a simple conflict...what could fill the role of a war?
In one swift motion Celestia got to her hooves and hurried into the condo she and her sister shared, knocking open the door to Luna’s gaming room with one swift kick.
“We’re needed, Sister!” She declared. Luna sat there in her specially made ergonomic gaming chair (which Celestia had to think was nowhere near as comfortable as her own recliner upstairs) her controller still clutched in the sapphire glow of her magic. The younger alicorn carefully studied the look on her sister’s face and the fierce fire in her eyes.
“My friends...I think I’ll have to call you back...Masher_5234 is in charge while I am away, and if there is any TNT in my abode when I return I’ll personally ban each and every one of you.” She powered off the system and followed her sister into their storage room and to a chest both had hoped would remain closed.
Back at the dig site.
Aristi sat in his own tent, the first built, obviously, sipping at his cup of tea and watching the mounds of dirt rapidly grow. This was the reason why he brought diamond dogs, he thought smugly. All their sniffing at every stray leaf, their stump speech, and their utter lack of refinement had been justified in his eyes in this moment. They’d make the first extractions, uncover the first lump of unrefined ore, he and his ponies would sell it and by this time next month they’d have a proper mine established and those mutts would be given their shiny rocks and left to their own devices in the woods.
Down in the dig site, the dogs were excavating in a way entirely unlike what they were used to. Instead of digging a straight tunnel down into the ground, the ponies had gotten them together and had started making a grid, one foot down, ten feet wide, and twenty feet long. Each pass they went down another foot, and another, most of the ponies working by sifting the clay rich soil, trying to extract what little precious materials they could.
“I don’t like this Mr. Crat” Arch muttered, walking up from the site, wiping some sweat from his brow. Aristi tried to avoid recoiling. The gray unicorn’s hooves were still coated in mud and muck.
“Don’t like what, forestallion?” Aristi asked stiffly, setting his tea down on the saucer.
“This.” Arch responded, waving vaguely at the dig in progress. “Any other ore rich site would have at least some trace elements in the soil, but we’re getting nothing! I’m starting to think we’re digging up something pony-made, not naturally formed.”
Aristi scoffed and rolled his eyes dramatically.
“If it’s pony-made, we’ll dig it up and present the town as a historical site!” Aristi said with a wave of his hoof. “You know as well as I how the princess is! She’ll lap it up and we’ll get more funding to establish a proper settlement!”
Aristi was satisfied with this turn of events and with the win-win situation he found himself in, however Arch continued to look concerned.
“Something...still doesn’t feel right.” Arch muttered quietly.
“Tell me, forestallion, do I pay you for your feelings or hunches?” Aristi asked mildly. “I am pretty sure I pay you for results.”
Before Arch could answer, there was the sound of metal on metal from within the hole. The ponies with their picks quickly backed away and the diamond dogs began uncovering the find with their paws.
Aristi rose, downing the last of his tea, and made his way to the edge of the hole. The canines were scrubbing the dirt off a large, gray...thing. It looked metallic from where Aristi stood, stretching the length of the pit, curved like a crescent moon.
As the diamond dogs unearthed more and more of the thing, the gray metal seemed to sparkle in the light. It was unlike anything that Aristi had ever seen before...very much like the mythril that the guards' armor was composed of, but so...odd. Although the material was metal, it almost seemed jagged, more crystalline than anything Aristi had seen before. He longed to take a closer look, to truly appraise the find...but then the dogs began to reveal the handle. For about the length of one of their bodies things were fine. Then they revealed the finger. It was easily as long as the dog in question was tall, bright red in color, with exposed muscles and tendons showing through breaks in the skin. The moment it hit the air, the finger twitched and the dog scrambled back. The twitching turned into a stir, and then the ground began to rumble.
Dirt began to fall in sheets, trees fell all around the small clearing as the massive two-legged beast rose, taller than any dragon. It’s hairless hide was a mess of pale skin covered with scars thicker than a cart at their smallest, some red and dangerously fresh looking, others pale and almost healed, and still others green and septic, dripping with ooze. The worst of the scars seemed to be (Aristi shuddered) centered around the creature’s groin, to such a degree that the pony couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. It could be a gelding for all he knew!
It’s long hair fell in stringy black sheets around its face, its golden eyes shown with a deep unsettling agelessness. It stood to its full height, dragging the rest of its only adornment, a gray scythe, from the depths of the hole it had been lying in. It planted the end of the shaft on the ground, gripping it just below the blade, and gave a good stretch before looking around. Its lip curved into a satisfied sneer as he stared around at the woods.
“Mmm...good...the world recovered nicely. Although, how, still remains a question.” He, for he was unquestionably male now that Aristi had heard him speak, turned his head upwards to look at the sun. “Seems you got yourself moving again after all. I am glad. Days are so much easier to count that way.”
The massive scar covered foot moved, and crushed the tent that Aristi had been sitting in not even five minutes ago. The thing frowned and looked down, first at the canvas attached to his foot, then at the assembled creatures, all of whom had scrambled back from the dig the moment he had started waking. Five of the griffins had already taken flight, their tiny forms no more than pin pricks in the eastern sky.
“And what have we here?” The scarred creature mused. Aristi couldn’t help it...certain instincts were bred too deeply into him to ignore! He stepped forward and puffed out his chest.
“Sir, I am Aristi Crat, lord of this territory, last in the Crat line, descendant of her ladyship Princess Platinum herself, first mayor and founder of the town you are trodding on, and noble representative of Ponykind on the frontier! I, as a representative of her Majesty Princess Twilight Sparkle, demand to know who and what you are and ask you to vacate the premises immediately! You are breaking and entering!” Had the other creatures not been so terrified, many of them would’ve smacked either themselves or Aristi for that last statement. The giant creature chuckled, a deep and ominous sound that reminded Aristi of late nights when he was a colt and felt certain there were monsters under his bed.
The creature raised it’s mutilated hand and clicked it’s fingers. In an instant, all of the creatures were encased in a golden glow, and smushed into one solid mass of flesh. They squirmed and thrashed, attempting to free themselves from one another, but they found the grip inescapable. The beast raised them in the golden glow of its magic, up to its face.
“My dear, sweet, naive little pony.” The beast crooned. “Allow me to educate you as to whom you’re speaking to. I am Kronos, Lord of Time, Titan of the Harvest, the One and True King of the Cosmos. And you, my little ponies?” The titan’s grin grew far, far wider, chilling Aristi down to his very core. “You, I’m afraid, are breakfast!”
As he was at the front of the bundle, Aristi got to witness the full horror of the Titan, Kronos, opening his giant mouth to consume them all!
