The City of Tambelon was often envisioned in myths as either a ruined, decrepit ghost town or an overly edgy and hyper-adorned hellscape. Which couldn't be blamed on the storyteller, as all a pony or griffon would see Tambelon as would be a second Tartarus. The truth, though, was far from the myth. Tambelon was a prosperous land, a whole realm of it's own, with the City of Tambelon as a capital. That was a common misconception, Tambelon wasn't a city, it was a realm, an Empire of it's glorious own.
It scale was vast, akin to Equestria and it's neighboring allies. The City of Tambelon in question was a thriving utopia in terms of architecture and craftsmanship, with a mountainous Great Wall surrounding the entirety of the city within it's protective embrace, tipped with reconnaissance towers and artillery posts. The 4 gates of the Great Wall were massive structures made of black Osidium, a rare metal formed from a unique reaction between metal and volanic obsidian over thousands of years, the gates were as tall as a dragon and as wide as two, protected by and adorned with a myriad of protective runes and spells.
If one were to enter the city proper, they would be shocked with the sight of sky-high black towers, city block after city block of beautifully designed homes and buildings of various styles, ranging from workplaces to libraries to armories, the Squares of the City of Tambelon were adorned with statues of multiple heroes, chiseled to the most extreme detail as to keep the hero's memory.
The City of Tambelon was a marvel of structural engineering, possessing a layered style that increased in grandeur the further one went into the city, stone paths became brickwork, and that became slick black and golden paths with patterns that were similar to magical engravings, giving the city a mystical glow at night. The buildings were large and stocky but retained some details that gave beauty to the pragmatic whole, an idol here, a yard there, adorned plumbing over there.
The buildings were grand works of art, built for the people of The City, who were as varied in race as any forest was, goats, sheep, donkeys, Kirin and many more creatures walked the streets. Griffons, dragons and gargoyles populated the skies.
Diamond dogs, trogols, minotaurs and centaurs were seen working on architecture, quadrupeds of all varities worked the businesses and services, sky creatures helped both groups aswell as served as messengers.
To any outsider, this city was perfect, everyone went about their day happily and not a single homeless or poorly cared for individual could be seen. And even to most insiders, life was great.
However, to a certain someone, the City of Tambelon and Tambelon itself were a land of near-death life.
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The Emperor's palace was a massive, jagged structure, with dozens of spires and archer posts, it was adorned with idols and statues in the form of the Emperor himself, and every single banner and piece of cloth held outside the palace held the banner of Tambelon, a goat skeleton with red eyes. Thick, black walls made up the base of the palace and the higher up one's vision went, the more variation could be seen, plain walls became windows and balconies, spires and rooftops, great glass panes depicting battles and historical events. And ultimately, one grim tower held itself above all else, the contorsions of magical energy flowed around it, jutting up into the sky and beyond sight.
Deep within the palace, the Royal Donkey Bray was calmly drinking a jug of beer. Life as the Royal Everything for Grogar was... hard. To say the least.
Despite his immortality, Grogar could kill him regardless. Thankfully Bray could find solace in the fact he had lasted the longed in his line of inmortal donkeys. That accounted for something.
He was currently in his private office, having his lunch. While his life was more dangerous than any miner or soldier, he couldn't complain. The benefits outweighed the negatives, the taste of the food here never ceased to amaze him!
Suddenly, a gust of wind blew past Bray's ear, filing into his brain a series of orders. Leave your office, run to the main cafeteria and deal with the issue therein.
The Royal Donkey did not bother finishing his food, and simply did as he was ordered.
In the Cafeteria, thousands of creatures and objects were being sucked in by a strange black blue-lined hole, the insides of which hurt the eye to see. Not like anyone bothered to notice that detail, too busy being sucked in to their demise and all.
All kinds of furniture, decorations, creatures and even chunks of the magically reinforced palace were being sucked in, becoming more and more torn apart the closer they got.
Bray vomitted at the sight of gore mixed in with food, eternally thankful of the runes at the bottoms of his hooves, keeping him glued to the ground, he was supposed to take the Emperor's verbal ire after all, Grogar's voice had more pushing force than this... hole?
But, for all his resilience, this thing was beyond Bray's ability. He would have to notify Grogar.
Suddenly Bray felt his insides twisting and turning inside him, his soul was crushed under a heavy pressure, his very existence being at the brink of oblivion. Bray was familiar with this sensation, he fell into a deep bow, hearing the massive steps of his Master walk by him.
Bray had seen Grogar kill many times. He would sometimes mush the organs together, other times blow creature's minds away, leaving their body a literal statue of flesh, he would break souls, and even erase the very conceptual existence of the most offensive creatures.
But he had never seen what Grogar did to him being replicated, everything was going to be annihilated if he hadn't had his Grogar given immortality.
Once his Master had his back turned to Bray, the donkey looked up, marvelling at the sheer bulk of midnight blue that walked before him, 10 whole feet worth of thickly built ram, yet not a single sound from it's hoofsteps.
Grogar was truly, the Ultimate Miracle and Disaster for Bray.
=================***=================
Grogar stared at the destruction, and the still active thing. With a simple notion in his mind, everything returned to normal, all the damage and death caused by the hole were reversed, and the hole itself was deactivated by a series of intricate nullification spells.
Grogar stared at the crack in everything, now that it wasn't absorbing everything in its vicinity, Grogar realized that it wasn't just a random occurence, no. It held a mix of many energies, from all across his artificial realm. In lay-ram's terms, this was a leak in the plumbing. A cosmic plumbing that would burn the mind of any mortal who tried to comprehend it, but still, it was just plumbing.
When Grogar first began creating the realm to house Tambelon, he first wanted to find a perfect place in the cosmos to place it, Equestria was out of the question, since all the portals to the nothingness between realms were used up, plus Harmony was all over the stupid place. No other place in the planet was as magically charged as the Equine continent though, so Grogar had to find a place that was within the continent as he would require plenty of ambient magic to create a whole realm. Come to find out, the Realm of Shadows was a great spot, unblemished by ponies, untouched by Harmony, and trascendentally larger than any other place Grogar could have chosen.
So he got to work, building layer after layer of cosmological cogs, checking and recheking his chekings over and over for the past 700 hundred years. So how the buck did this happen? Was it the Realm of Ideas he simulated failing? Was it the geometrical axis? Space-time? Was it the aether? What could it be that caused such a thing?
"Uhmmm... Master, is there something wrong? I doubt such a small hole would prove a challenge for you..." Murmured Bray, shaking from fear at the sight of Grogar scowling.
"No..." Grogar almost felt like beratting Bray for even getting that notion in his head, almost. "I will require time to study this, there are things beyond your scope of vision at play Bray, for the time being, I want you to handle the Empire's affairs for the next few hours." Grogar ordered, walking closer to the cosmological hole, crackles of lightning striking his fur and doing little to nothing to slow his stride.
"Yes Master!"
"And Bray... no doddling aye?"
"Y-yesMaster!RightawayMaster!"
As Bray scurried away followed by a good portion of the returned creatures, except for the guards who stood at attention, Grogar had reached the crack and reached his cloven hoof out. The closer it got, the more crackles of magical static struck his body, but instantly ceased once he touched the tear. He looked into it, sensing and analyzing every last detail of it he could, which was everything. Grogar saw that all his previous guesses were right, ALL the cosmology he had created was leaking, everything was faulty.
A deep roar built up in Grogar's throat, but he held it back, his dark magic wanted to kill something, to rend down every last shred of this pathetic cosmology and star over again, maybe just blow the Realm of Shadows away and take over Equestria.... Grogar cast away the thoughts, his rationality told him there was a deeper issue, after all, a single missing cog would break any machine.
Grogar pulled his hoof out of the tear and ignited his magic, the dark blood red aura encapsulating the tear and teleporting it to a safe place. For now, Grogar would take his anger out on something.
He dissmised his last few guards and once they were far enough away, Grogar cast a silence and cloaking spell on his vicinity, before letting out the roar that had built up to a boiling point.
A few hours later, Bray was doing paperwork in Grogar's office library, going through his fourth stack. Until his guts screwed inside him, Grogar was there.
"Master, have you fixed the issue?" Asked Bray.
"Yes, but I have bigger things in mind for it" Grogar walked over to his seat, Bray obviously being in the guest's seat.
"Now Bray, I shall explain a myriad of things to you, your job is to listen. Do not ask questions, do not comment. Just listen and reply to whatever I want you to" Said Grogar as he loomed over the desk, forehooves touching each other's tips and they held up Grogar's chin.
"Yes, Master, but dare I ask... Why is it you need me to listen?" Asked Bray, his tone confused.
"I must speak these words aloud as the brain depends on stimulus to learn, and outside stimulus teaches faster than inside stimulus." These words flew through Bray's ears, but he nodded with a hum nonetheless.
===================***=================
Long, long ago, I became frustrated with the excessive amount of wars, physical, cultural, political, any war you could think of. They rained down on Tambelon, slowing us down, hurting us, demoralizing us. The Griffins would attack our economy with sanctions and unhinged export deals, the Minotaurs constantly skirmished with our borders, Hippogriffs mocked our culture, the list goes on and I need not go on, you were there.
I never quite figured out why, was it my presence? I am the author of many magics that could be called evil, anywhere from voodoo, hoodoo, necromancy, and dark magic. I never used these magics for any purpose that would harm other countries though. Was it just the nature of our culture? Or simply the fact that Tambelon achieved more than these nations did while being a hundredth their age?
Whatever the reason, I could not let us be worn down to their level or worse, so in typical Tambelonian fashion I took to researching the most complicated but beneficial way to deal with this issue. I did not yield, our culture would not be cast aside, and our ways would not be muffled out.
I moved Tambelon to a place where it would not be crushed under mediocre giants. Literally.
I enveloped the entire island nation of Tambelon in my magic and teleported it somewhere else while making sure the planet would not be affected, a gargantuan feat to my old self but one that could have been a simple breath given a few more months of training in hindsight, where did Tambelon go? I thought of that as well.
I had many options, moving to another part of the planet, moving to another planet, or find a portal to Limbo and create a replica of the world's cosmology all for Tambelon. Guess which option I went for.
I believe it's obvious, Master.
So, after I transported Tambelon to Limbo, I had to look for a pocket of it that could expanded and manipulated easily, as I didn't have the time to change the very nature of Limbo. Thankfully, I had already done that beforehand and found what is today the Realm of Shadows, my first act was to make it's outer layer a shroud of magical darkness, making it blend with Limbo to avoid any encounters with undesirables.
I then placed Tambelon within the prepared realm and I proceeded to create all the extremely complex layers and cogs of a functioning cosmology, a universe complete with all the works of the one we hail from, all the scapes, dream, nightmare, mind, soul and their unique, infinite subsets therein, and even deeper cogs of the great machine.
Creating a planet and universe for Tambelon to reside in was simple enough, I just created the matter and replicated the many forces and laws that would allow for said matter to work like your run-of-the-mill universe, I set the stars in motion with my magic, I maintained the physical, magical and fundamental laws of the universes with my soul and I created life from my heart, all for Tambelon. A whole planet, and after time beyond your comprehension, a universe for us.
Soon, I realized this was not enough, as time didn't flow in that realm. Nor did it exist. So I created time, and that led to setting up timelines, and time laws and interweaving time with space and refining space, so on and so forth.
I realized my craft was imperfect, nowhere near enough for a stable existence, so I took a small hiatus, utilizing many perception-accelerating spells I analyzed the cosmology of the world and replicated it to a T.
I replicated the infinities of dimensions that every creature was composed of, from the 0th dimension up to infinity, a common misconception is you are 3 dimensional beings, that is quite wrong. Our base senses simplify the world, not all minds can process the truth, the truth is that mortals are composed of infinite dimensions, infinite geometrical axis, but they all blur together to your perception, as to avoid wasting processing power for your brains, admirable of Evolution to do that.
The world becomes more complex the more geometrical axis are there, they become larger and larger, to the point of transcendence, a typical trend in my cosmology.
With the mere physicality of the world complete, I went to higher levels of existence.
The Scapes were quite simple, a collective combination of certain aspects for all living things, dreams, nightmares, memories, minds, luck, and so on for every possible aspect. Each subset of a Scape that connected itself to a living creature held a hallway, with infinite doors each representing possible futures and possibilities for the creature, a possible dream, a possible idea in a mind, etc.
The issue with this was the fact that I had to stack infinities, some scapes were larger than others to the point of transcendence, such as a mindscape being above a mere lovescape, and each scape was infinite by itself and held infinitely smaller, yet infinite subsets within. Not to mention all the infinite scapes were to be connected to every living creature. However, I achieved it and these scales were mixed together, creating new souls from them for my people and using these souls to separate their existence from Equus.
After that, I had to replicate this process for every timeline in my new cosmology a daunting task, but one I did not shy away from. When all was said and done, I formed a Realm of Ideas, a place where true platonic concepts resided, to give sort of a blueprint for all the scapes and allow for an even more stable world.
A Platonic concept is hard to explain to mortals though... A Platonic concept is an Archetypal concept of a "thing", let's say, Beauty. Beauty in the real world is nothing more than an Imperfect, conceptually inferior replication of True Platonic Beauty, and this Platonic concept exists in a transcendent reality of the Mind. If you imagine a bubble, the Concepts exist in a conceptually Higher Bubble and inform all aspects of the lower bubble. Imagine Platonic concepts like the Soap that made the bubble, it is completely transcendental over all below it, as it informs all of it.
That is what the Realm of Ideas held, both concepts and platonic concepts, and as I toiled away at other projects, I vaguely sensed the Realm of Ideas expanding, I had set up a law that all numbered things required a higher informant, which meant higher concepts kept on spawning in higher realms up to infinity, and infinity times two, and infinity times three.
I like to call these alephs, a single Scape is Aleph 1, a bigger Scape would be Aleph 2, and so on, now that I think about it, the Scapes would represent all Alephs, and the concepts would be transcendent over all of that, and so on. Heh, no mortal words can truly encompass the scale of a cosmology.
I sense your doubt, I shall explain what Alephs are.
Firstly, to properly introduce greater sizes of infinity, it is extremely important to establish a crucial distinction, namely, the one between Cardinal Numbers and Ordinal Numbers. In essence, cardinal numbers are used to denote the exact amount of objects contained within a given set, formally called the set's cardinality, for example, the cardinality of a set of four apples is 4.
On the other hand, ordinal numbers can be defined as being used to denote numbers as well-ordered sets, collections that possess a defined smallest element. Under the standard construction of ordinals, formalized by myself, any given natural number is an ordinal, and the well-ordered set of all ordinals is smaller than itself. For example: 4 is a set of 1, 2, 3, 4. 7 is a set of 1 through 6.
When approaching finite sets of objects, these two notions walk hand in hand, and there is no practical distinction between them. However, when dealing with infinite collections, these two are split, and there turns out to be a very palpable difference between denoting order in sets and denoting the quantity of objects contained in them.
After all finite ordinal numbers are exhausted, there comes the first infinite ordinal number: ω, which can be mathematically defined as equivalent to the set of all natural numbers, or more precisely:
ω = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...}
Exactly after ω, comes ω+1, which is defined as:
ω+1 = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... ω}
Then ω+2:
ω+2 = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... ω, ω+1}
And so on and so forth, until any further operations applied over ω. However, it is important to know that, while all of these ordinal numbers come after ω, and are by factuality, "bigger" than it, the sets that they represent each possess the same quantity of objects, and thus the same cardinality. Indeed, they are countable sets and thus are all represented by the same cardinal number: Aleph-0
After Aleph-0, comes the smallest uncountable cardinal number: Aleph, which is itself indexed by the ordinal number ω1, the set of all countable ordinal numbers. For the purposes of a brief explanation, it is the cardinality of the set of all real numbers, and thus qualitatively larger than a set of Aleph-0, and the same principle is generalized unto any higher cardinal number.
A single concept can then be categorized as a Large Cardinal, The Hierarchy of Large Cardinals is fairly extensive and contains many exotic-named numbers (a sign of my free time), but the most conventional and easily understood entry point to it are the Inaccessible Cardinals: Infinite cardinal numbers that are uncountable, regular (cannot be defined as the union of quantities smaller than themselves) and strong limit (cannot be attained through repeated power set operations), which in Mortal's terms, means that they cannot be reached from lesser cardinals in any way, shape or form, standing beyond their scope entirely. That is what concepts are. As with Scapes, some concepts encompass a larger scope of informing, or simply put, are larger Cardinals than others.
Say, the concept of Love of Battle could be Large Cardinal XYZ, the concept of Battle would be a larger Cardinal. Some of the Large Cardinals I have named are the Berkely Cardinals, Mahlo Cardinals, 0-1 Cardinals and Subcompact Cardinals. There are tens of thousands of other Large Cardinals that I have named, and yet more that I have not named.
Platonic concepts are even more ridiculously larger Cardinals, possessing the same property of progressively larger Cardinals depending on the Platonic Concept, I have not named any of these Cardinals, past their general category that I have named Mountanous Cardinals
And any higher concepts in the infinite layering are successively inaccessible to the last, even larger Cardinals that I haven't bothered naming yet.
You might ask, why would I bother forming such a massive, complex system? Wouldn't a simple Realm of Ideas with simple Concepts be enough? It wouldn't be, the Cosmology from which we hail is exactly like this, and I simply copied it, if it works with such a system, then I will not question it.
Back on track though, The Realm of Ideas is part of the Collective Soul, functioning much like a Scape to put it in underrepresenting terms, the Collective Soul also was composed of the Aether, Elisyum and Jöötunheim.
the Aether is where all magical things hail from, Elisyum is where all Afterlives are located and Jöötunheim is simply the actual Universe, with it's familiar time, space, and dimensions and Celestial Objects containing their own realms.
you can see it as such, the Collective Soul is composed of Jöötunheim, all souls, the Realm of Ideas, Elisyum, and the Aether in that order of transcendence. Jöötunheim, Elisyum, and the Aether do not require Concepts to inform their true existence,
as they are already transcendent over the Realm of Ideas and are thus beyond its scope, and also because I inform their existence with my own power.
Now, why did I need to go on this massive tangent? Simple. I have found the reason why that Tear possesses energy from all realms of Cosmology.
===================***=================
Bray took a few steps back as a reddish warp began surrounding Grogar, as his withers shook. the room's temperature grew, and all of Grogar's creation shook as he roared.
"Some creature has trespassed into the Realm of Shadows!!!" Grogar screamed at the top of his mighty lungs, a creature had punctured a hole in the Realm of Shadows and entered the Cosmology, leaving waves behind it that manifested in a Tear that existed in all planes of the Cosmology. They even dared to sloppily hide their pathetic attempt at...whatever they were doing.
Grogar's magic flashed, multiple sets of runes appeared in his eyes as he spoke a few cryptic, unintelligible words. Bray's spine went numb as every magically sensitive nerve in his body screamed signals to his brain, all screaming of limitless disaster, ultimate tragedy and impossible calamity, a disaster unlike any before was coming, everywhere, at a metaphysical scale.
Bray was going to die. He just knew it.
Thankfully, the ultimate disaster simply passed him by, as a massive flash of teleportation summoned a creature before Grogar. The limitless calamity had fell upon the unlucky soul that had entered the Realm of Shadows, Grogar took a thundering step towards the creature, Bray's very bone marrow shook like jelly.
"What is your purpose in my domain?!" roared Grogar at the intruder, they screamed in pain, their insides were squished under an intense pressure, their soul was attacked and fractured in all its aspects, the creatures' very existence was ready to be erased, however, in an act that could only be described as the ultimate miracle, Grogar spared the creature.
"Explain yourself" Grogar's words healed the creature, allowing their true form to be shown, a mere pony alicorn, dressed in a mild green coat with an emerald and purple colored mane of silky waves.
Her purple eyes stared up at Grogar in fear, her horn light up and shot two dozen spells at Grogar, mimmicking the effects of the rams roar, they all failed.
The mare then whimpered as tears pooled under her irises, the sheer aura that Grogar possessed overwhelming her.
"Please, don't kill me! I was just exploring this place! I held no ill intent!" She yelled as her hooves skidded on the ground, pushing her away from Grogar.
The ram stood silent for a good ten seconds, before putting a massive hoof on the alicorns' midsection.
"Have you any notion of what you've done? Magic and knowledge beyond the scope of your infinite lifetime has been disturbed, do you have any idea of the effort in that?" Grogar hissed, it was a half-truth, the magic and knowledge part was true, but even if the entire cosmology was rendered down to a jiggly mass of writhing energy, he could flick his bell and it would all be fixed.
The mare whimpered pathetically, screaming "no, I don't, no I don't". Grogar silenced her with his hoof, pushing the wind out of her.
"Now, it is far too inappropriate for me to simply murder you. I could, of course, but that isn't your ultimate disaster." whispered Grogar as he stared through the alicorn.
"Ahh, why yes, I shall castigate you. For every nook and crany of my realm that you have damaged, you shall fix, by yourself with no outside help." Grogar ordered these words, his bell summoned a black aura tightening leashes and chains around the alicorn that faded into her body.
She began crying, as black magic began dragging her off into a portal, to begin her punishment.
Bray watched as the poor alicorn was dragged into the portal, as an overwhelming feeling of fear and vomit built up in his throat. Bray felt like he was dying, which made it worse, his Grogar given immortality was the tiny thread separating him from death. He knew that his Masters' fear aura could kill inmortals too, but his own magic did not affect him unless he wished it so.
Grogar was truly the ultimate miracle, limitless in his blessings. But Bray knew he was also the ultimate disaster, limitless in his curses.
Bray was afraid. But he could only smile as his Master turned to him, and ordered a meal.
Author's Note
I am sorry if you have read this and cringed. Truly, this is not meant to be a good story, it's purposes are different.
