Hear the voices of Samuel/HTVO: Arc 1: Samuel

Chapter 32 A Visit to the Reality Warper's Past

(MLP is owned Lauren Faust and Hasbro, Magic Junk is owned by EpicAeromancer33 and Dream Phobic is owned by me. The Chapter you are about to read is EpicAeromancer33's work, enjoy)

Magic sits next to Dream's hospital bed. He just looks at him for minutes on end with a solemn look on his face. This is the longest he's ever gone without smiling, or talking for that matter. Strife and Mat left him alone with Dream, busy patrolling the town for any cult behavior.

The only sound throughout the entire room was that of the heart monitor, that just beeped every other second in a monotonous tone, "Hey Dream." Magic said, finally speaking but in a very saddened tone, "Did I ever tell you that I was an adventurer? Oh…that's right…I never told you about my past, I've always just looked towards the future." He said looking at the brown pony and then to his Cello that was on a stand next to him.

"It was great life, until…that happened." Magic looks at his right foreleg and numbers started to appear, they read, "999,998" and an image of Pinkie Pie and another mare that had a strikingly similar appearance to her flashes through his mind as he quickly bites his bottom lip so hard that it had started to bleed but it quickly healed as soon as he stopped.

"Let me tell you how I came to get this power, along…with my greatest regret." He said as his voice cracked a little.

'Relic, I love you.' A mare's voice rang in his head, "By the way…my real name is Relic."

~100 years ago, on a beach in Austmareia (Australia)~

The sun was shining on the sea as a three story house was the only thing on the beach. A mare was standing outside of it, looking out at the ocean. The house looked very modern for its time. Inside of it was decorated with several kinds of artifacts and treasures decorating the walls.

The door opens and an earth pony mare walks in with a satchel bag. She had a sun-kissed yellow coat, along with a puffy orange mane and tail, and orange eyes, "Oh Relic!" The mare yelled exuberantly, "I've got that book you wanted!" She had a golden, four pointed star with another, duller one, underneath it and the letters "N, S, E, W" on each point of the outer star as a cutie mark.

She trots upstairs, happy as ever while humming a tune and checks each of the rooms on the second floor but Relic wasn't in any of them, "Shoot, I wonder where that silly pony went to." She says as she walks up stairs to the third floor that had one door right at the stairs, leading to a huge room that took up the entire third floor.

She opens the door; the room was littered with overcrowded tables that were full of papers and books, multiple book shelves along the walls, and an enormous unfinished map of the world that filled the entire back wall of the room.

At the map was a pony, it was Magic, but instead of the cutie mark he has now, his cutie mark was a map with a red X on it and several stacks of gold coins littered around the map. He was reading a book and running his hoof across the large wall-map, trying to find a location, "AAAAANNND…there-we-go." He says smiling as he reaches over and pins a picture of a golden dagger on the city of Trotstantinople (Constantinople AKA Istanbul).

"Finally found you, Relic!" The mare says smiling at him.

He turns around, "Oh, hi Compass." He says while also smiling.

"I found that book you wanted." She says as she pulls out an incredibly old looking book, holding it in her mouth.

"Oh you found it!? Excellent!" He says as he swipes his hand over a table next to him and knocks down multiple books and a ton of papers.

She walks over to him and places it down on the table, "Of course I found it. I can find anything, silly." She says, sitting next to him.

The book was dusty grey and the title read, "The Tale of the Divine Crystal".

"What's this book about?" Compass said, asking Relic who was flipping through the book.

"This." Relic said, pointing his hoof at a picture of a ten pointed, rainbow-colored crystal.

"What is it?" Compass said while scratching her head, "It looks yummy!" She says licking her lips while smiling.

Relic laughs, "I don't think you should eat this, Compass. This is The Crystal of the Kingdom. It's a crystal said to have been crafted by God itself, and if somepony were to touch it, they would be bestowed with a fraction of his divine power, and that each power is different for the pony holding it.

According to this book, A Crusader by the name of Sir. Shinning Steel Longhorn was gravely wounded on a battlefield and, as he said, he saw an angel come down from bright clouds and handed him the crystal, saying that it was "a gift from the heavens". After the angel placed it in his hoof he was rejuvenated and in his words, "Stronger than the most well-crafted sword."

He must've been, because apparently he killed "the heathens" by the millions. However he went mad and was killed by his own order. It states that after he was killed that the blood from his body seeped out and reformed the crystal, and it's been lost to history ever since." Relic says as he turns to the end of the book and notes that some of the pages of the book were ripped out.

"OOOOO, where is it where is it where is it!?" Compass said, happily jumping up and down as Relic was flipping the pages back and forth.

"I…don't know." He says looking at the book, but he feels something as he runs his hoof on the back pages, "huh…" He says puzzled.

"What is it?" Compass said pressing her cheek against his, trying to get a look.

"There seems to be a protruding line pattern on these pages." He says as he gets up, "I'm going to have to see if I can find a way to decipher these." He says as he starts to pull out book upon book from the shelves.

As he's doing that Compass just picks up the book, holds it up to the light coming from the window, and bends the covers back so only the pages of it are facing the light, "Uhh Relic." She says, "I think I deciphered it."

Relic looks over to her and his eyes widen, "How did you figure it out?" He says running over to her and grabbing the book.

"Shadows are casted on thin pieces of paper when it's held to the light." Compass says, "You overanalyze everything silly." She says smiling and laughs.

He looks at her with a flat face but then cracks a smile and offers a laugh. He then holds the pages up to the light and sees a very elaborately made tower with a giant clock on it and next to it was a small upside down candle and a rectangle with 10 interconnected circles.

"It's the Trottingham Archives Building." Compass says before Relic could even talk as he looks at her, smiling and raising an eyebrow, "Told you I can find anything." She says smiling back.

"What will I ever do without you?" He says smiling as he walks out of the room while putting the book on a table.

"Try not to think about it." She says jokingly as she follows him outside.

Relic spreads his wings, "Come 'on, get on. I'm going to have to fly all night in order to get to Trotingham from here."

"Nope." She says putting her nose up.

"What? Why not?" He says confused and turning towards her.

"Because the last time I rode on your back I nearly fell." She says looking at him with her checks puffed out.

"Awww, I promise to not let it happen this time." He says, smiling while rubbing his nose against hers.

"Stop it silly." She says, blushing and beginning to smile again while pulling her nose away from his. She looks at him and sees that he put on the puppy-dog eyes, and she starts to laugh at his silly expression.

"So is that a yes?" He says.

"It's a sure, but so help me if you drop me." She says, while getting on his back, smiling.

"I say madam I would never contemplate such an act." He says, trying to put on a posh accent, as he spreads his wings. She just offers a sarcastic "Mmmm Hmmm." And they fly away towards Trottingham.

A few hours later they're flying over a vast mountains range, the night was exceedingly beautiful as the stars seemed to dance around in the brilliance of the moon. Compass was asleep, resting her head at the bottom of Relic's neck.

He looks back and smiles as he sees her beauty only amplified by the soft light from the moon as the wind blows her puffy mane, "I love you." He whispers.

"Hmmm?" Compass says in a tired manner.

Relic quickly becomes wide-eyed, "Errr-ummm-uhhh…OOOOO, thissss issss allll aaaa dreeeeeeaaaaam." He quickly says in a ghostly voice, while moving his hoof up and down.

Compass just smiles, "Of course it is." She says sarcastically as she lies her head back down on his neck while rubbing her check on his coat, "Silly." And with that word and a soft smile she went back to sleep. Relic was blushing heavily with a flat face, as he continued to fly throughout the night.

Its morning over Trotingham as the vibrant pastel colors saturate the city in a hue of orange and yellow. The sun shines on Compass as she wakes up and rubs her eyes, she becomes immediately surprised when she sees the tower so close to them and then becomes petrified and wide eyed when she sees that Relic was sleeping and is about to fly into the tower.

"Relic wake up!" She yells, shaking him.

"Huh what?" He says in a dazed tone before he looks and sees that he's about to crash into the giant clock tower, "Oh sh-" He yells as he quickly shields Compass and they crash through the wall and into the tower.

Both of them cough as they get up, an immense amount of dust was kicked up, blanketing the room they were in, "Are you alright Compass?" Relic says, getting up and checking if he was hurt while trying to find her through the thick dust.

"See, I told you that flying on your back was a bad idea." She says laughing and coughing as Relic finds her and helps her up.

They look around and find the service elevator and take it down to the main floor where the archives were, "Okay, we're going to have to be sneaky here, these archives are guarded heavily by the Royal Guard." Relic said, looking at Compass.

"Gotcha." She replied. A few minutes go by, "Sleeping while flying…really?" She said looking at him while raising an eyebrow.

"Hey, flying all night takes a lot of energy." He said smiling while rubbing his head.

The elevator gets to the main floor and they take cover next to the opening doors. Relic peaks around the corner and sees that there aren't any guards, "Huh? Where's the guards? This place should be swarming with them." Relic says rubbing his head.

"Maybe they're on a coffee break?" Compass says jokingly as they both, sneak out of the elevator and down towards the archives.

The door creaks as Relic opens it and peaks inside, it was empty also. "Thank god, at least now I won't have to sneak around." He says as he closes the door then turns around and sees a sea of book shelves throughout the room.

"Ah crap…how are we going find anything in this place?" Relic said, his voice echoing throughout the room, as he looks up and sees a giant mural on the roof of an angel and above it was a crystal, "hmmm…I wonder if that painting up there will lead us to it."

Relic flies up to the multi-story room and looks at the mural, examining it; the angel was a bipedal creature that he hadn't seen before, it was holding one of its hands upwards towards the crystal and its other hand pointing to the left. He looks over to where the hand was pointing and sees an upside-down candle holder on the boarder of the ceiling. He flies over there and twists it up-right.

Down on the bottom floor Compass hears a noise and looks to see one of the book shelves on the wall sliding open. "Hey Relic." She calls up to him, "One of the book shelves just moved."

'Of course, so that's what that upside down candle was in the book.' He says, just now remembering the clues from the book as he flies down to meet Compass. The bookshelf led to a dark stairway.

"Uhhh…ladies first?" Relic says smiling while holding his foreleg out towards the stairway. Compass just looks at him with a raised eyebrow and a smile, "…Fine…" He says as he begins to walking down the spiraling staircase with Compass following him.

"I still don't see why we couldn't have just bribed those guards instead of having to dig our way in here." A voice said as they approached the bottom of the staircase. They peak around the corner and see several groups of ponies that were dressed in combat armor with a bloody hoof print on the armor's flank. The ponies were digging a large hole in the middle of an even larger room that had a faint blue light illuminating it, coming from seemingly nowhere.

"Stop whining and dig, I sure as hell don't want to get killed by Red Hoof." Relic's face almost instantly tenses up as he hugs the wall even more.

"Oh god not Red Hoof." Relic says uneasily.

"Who's Red Hoof?" Compass asks, wondering why he was so nervous.

"Red Hoof is a psychotic warlord who commands the world's largest mercenary company. He bribes world officials so they keep off his ass and kills anypony who even coughs in his general direction." Relic says as he looks around the corner to confirm that it is his mercenary group.

"He sound's horrible." Compass says, horrified.

"He is…whelp time to go." Relic says as he proceeds to walk back up the stairway but Compass stops him.

"Where are you going?" She says surprised by his sudden change.

Relic looks back at her, "I'm not going to get killed or even worse get you killed over some gem. This guy is a manic and he will kill us if he finds out we're after the same thing he's after."

"Isn't that even more of a reason to get to the crystal first?" Compass says as Relic raises an eyebrow, "I mean, you said that he was absolute psycho with a short temper so he'll probably do much worse with that crystal than anybody else. He'll probably use it to make himself ruler of the world or something else that's cliché." She says, determined to make Relic change his mind.

"But-" "Do what you want but I'm not going to allow some crazy person the rights to divinity." Compass says, interrupting Relic, as she sneaks out from the staircase and continues down a hallway while hugging the ledge's wall to make sure the ponies bellow didn't see her.

Relic thinks for a minute and sucks and blows air through his teeth before reprehensively catching up to her. "See, I knew you were a good pony at heart." Compass said, smiling. Relic just laughed slightly sarcastically.

They duck into a hallway that took them to another room that looked identical to the previous one. "What's with these dark and empty room-" Compass said but stopped after she felt grooves on the floor.

"What did you find?" Relic says as Compass uses her hoof to trace the groove along the floor, "It's a circle." She said.

Relic flies up to see if he can see the pattern clearly. "What do you see?" Compass says.

"Nine circles." Relic says as he thinks for a minute and then remembers the second clue, the rectangle with ten interconnected circles on it. He looks around and sees another connecting hallway and both of them follow it down until they come to an even larger room.

"Ok, try to find the circles on the floor." Relic says to Compass as he flies up to the ceiling. Compass continues to search but to no avail.

"I don't see anyth-wait…what's that?" Compass says, looking at a wall that had the ten circles on it. Both of them gallop over to it and Relic inspects it, upon inspecting it he places his hoof on it and the circles start to glow a bright blue and project outwards and into the wall opposite of it.

Both of them look at it as the circles grow in size and start to form one giant circle encompassing the entire wall and then writing starts to appear on the walls as well as a map with a point on it and several glowing lines that made pictures of several ponies worshipping an entity similar to the angel on the ceiling in the archives, these pictures decorated the entire room and saturated it in a blue hue.

"…Whoa." Both of them said as they look at the blue colored writing being written. As the writing stops both of them look at it, "…I don't understand it." Compass says scratching her head.

"It's "I'kjik'lox"." Relic says as Compass becomes even more confused.

"It's a special kind of language used by the first ponies of the world; it roughly…very roughly translates into "Tongue of the Sun". The Sun being the ancient ponies' version of God and I assume "tongue" would equal "language" in this context so it's actually "Language of God". They're the focal point of the ancient astronaut theory that states that we all were made in an advanced race's image after they came to our planet and jumpstarted our evolution. They must've built this place and the rulers of history covered it up, and judging by this place I'd say that the theory is true." Relic says.

"Whoa Whoa Whoa…you can read this scribble!?" Compass says surprised, "I mean look at this" She points her hoof towards one of the words, "It's…what looks like an L, with four apostrophes after it."

"Oh yeah, It took a long time for me to learn it…and even longer for me to find scribes so I could learn it." Relic responds with a chuckle as he turns his head and sucks in air through his teeth and starts to read it:

"The…say Compass." He says, stopping before he even got past the first few words, "Could you find out where that map is leading?" He says as he points to the drawing on the wall.

"Sure" She replies as Relic continues to read the writing:

"The Ten Pointed Jewel Of The Sun. Crafted by The Creators and given to their creation. Bestowing their power and making us unto them, but at the cost of morality. Stronger from each bearer, fellow pony and kin fall, and land ravaged, not even the most virtuous one is safe from The Oath." Relic finishes reading the writing and stares at it for a minute, "Did I read that right?" He thought.

He looks around and takes notice of the most predominant drawings on the wall. One showing the winged, bipedal creature, on top of a pyramid with its arm out, handing the crystal to the ponies who are bowing and worshiping it, another showing a single pony accepting the crystal from the creature, and a final one showing both, house and pony alight along with the pony who accepted it side by side with a wingless version of the bipedal creature, they seemed to be blurred as they both glow brighter than any part of that certain picture.

"Hmmm." Compass says, snapping Relic out of his thought process as he looks at her, "This island seems to be in the middle of the uncharted portion of the world."

"That's great, let's go." Relic says as they start to leave. Just as they get into the hallway and take a corner they come face to face with the mercenaries.

"Ah crap." Relic says.

"Kill them!" One of them said as they draw the swords from the scabbards of their waist.

They rush both of them, Compass slides under one of them, and past the rest and Relic jumps on their heads, as they swing their swords and barely miss. They both run full force as they approach the stairs, the group of mercs still chasing them, when a merc appears from the stairs and blocks them.

Compass, still running, hoofs him in the face and runs up the stairs and into the archives with Relic next to her and the rest of the guards in back of them. They storm out of the doors and into the hallway of the building.

"Oi, what's going on here?" A Royal Guard says, coming out of one of the rooms with a cup of coffee. They run right pass him as one of the pursuers smashes into him.

"Hey, looks like I was right." Compass says, laughing. They turn a corner into the hallway that lead to the front doors but quickly backed up and ran the other way as they saw a group of guards rushing down the same hallway towards the commotion.

"Quickly up there!" Relic says looking at the stairs leading to the clock tower. One of the guards however jumps on Relic but he bucks him off and through a window that had a bunch of trash cans outside. A group of mercs are busy fighting the guardsponies while the rest are chasing them, one of them, a unicorn, uses his magic to levitate an axe being held by a pile of armor and throws it at them, "Holy crap!" Relic yells, barely dodging it by ducking.

They continue out to the scaffolding that was surrounding the body of the clocktower. They run past a pony who was working who quickly moves out of the way but the lead merc pushes him off as they continued to give chase.

Relic grabs a paint can with his mouth and chucks it at the pursuing ponies, one of them ducks, "Ha! Missed!" The merc yells but then promptly gets hit in the face by a piece of wood, it turns out that the paint can hit a support and knocked the scaffolding out of place, causing it to collapse on itself.

"Bad Idea! Bad Idea! Bad Idea!" Relic yells as the section in front of them collapses. He runs past Compass and uses his wings to clear the distance and once he lands he quickly holds out his foreleg as Compass jumps and is able to grab onto it and they continue to run.

"Hurry jump on!" Relic says as he spreads his wings.

"No!" Compass says.

"What!? Why!?" Relic replies as they jump over a gap and rush in-between falling debris.

"Because I don't want to go careening into the ocean Mr. Narcolespy!"

"Would you rather go careening into the street!?" Relic says as they come to the top and end of the scaffolding.

"Fine." She says sighing and quickly getting onto his back as they fly away and the rest of the scaffolding falls and crashes into the building.

"So where's this island at?" Relic asks as they fly through the noon sky.

"It's in the Southern part of the Marecific Ocean. That part is completely uncharted so you'll have to follow my directions." Compass responds while pointing her hoof to the left, "Over there."

"Gotcha." He says as he flies towards the ocean. A few minutes go by, "…I'm not Narcoleptic."

"I know that. Just try not to fall asleep again; I don't want to wake up in the ocean." Compass says smiling.

"Now, I can't make any promises~." He says, smiling like a doofus.

She laughs, "Silly."

Back underneath the archives, the rest of the squads of mercs were throwing the dead guards into a giant pile and lighting them on fire. While in the room with the writing on the wall stood four regular dressed mercs, two unicorn ponies who were dressed in very elaborate combat suits and a unicorn stallion with a dull white coat, a green mane and tail, dull blue eyes, and a bloody hoof print as a cutie mark.

"Sir! I regret to inform you that they got away." A merc said, saluting the dull white coated pony. The pony only looks at one of the elaborately dressed mercs and a loud bang echoes throughout the room and the merc who gave the bad news lays on the floor, dead.

"You four." The stallion calls out to the four regularly dressed mercs, "Go to Parliament and offer them twenty million to forget this whole incident. If they refuse it, kill them."

"Yes sir." The four ponies said in unison and headed out of the room.

"You want us to find them, Sir?" One of the elaborately dressed mercs said.

"No, we already know where they're going." The stallion says as he looks at the map that was still on the wall, "Nopony makes me look weak." He says as he grits his teeth.

~Two days later, somewhere near the center of the South Marecific Ocean~

"Just a little further." Compass says, holding a map.

"You said that two hours ago." Relic says, comically whining.

"And I meant it, besides…" She says as she takes the map away from her face and places her mouth next to his ear, "You like me on top of you, don't you?" She whispers sensually to him. Relic's face blushes incredibly as Compass laughs at his expression, "Silly." She says as she pulls the map in front of her face again and Relic is still blushing and embarrassed.

"It should be over there." She says pointing her hoof to the left as they both stare at the island. It was a huge island that had what looked like thousands of rivers running through its lush jungle and large archways that encircled the island.

"What's that?" Relic says, seeing smoke coming from the jungle near the coast. They land on a small cliff and look over a large log that was on the edge of it. They see a camp with an airship and a small group of mercs.

"Crap, they're already here. Compass, we need to hurry and find that gem…Compass?" Relic says, not hearing her as he turns around and quickly gets hit in the face and blacks out.

He awakens in a dimly lit room, his forelegs being held by two ponies. As his hearing comes back he hears two ponies arguing, "Like I said. Fuck…You!" He looks over and sees the dull white pony striking Compass, who was tied to a chair, across the face with his hoof.

"Hey!" Relic yells angrily as the pony looks back.

"Ah, so he's finally awake. Perhaps you'll be of more use." The pony says walking over to him, "You're Relic aren't you? Famous treasure hunter, known throughout the world."

"I don't need flattery from somepony who hits mares, Red Hoof." Relic says, still angry.

"Fine, I would like to strike a bargain with you treasure hunter. You look like a daydreamer, kid. So imagine this! More power than you can even dream of! The gem we're after has enough power to allow both of us to be beings far stronger than anypony on this planet. You help me find it and I won't kill you for making a fool of my company, of me, in Trottingham." Red Hoof says looking at Relic.

"Do you really think that Relic would-" "Sure." Relic says, interrupting Compass who looks at him surprised.

"Relic!" Compass says to him.

"It's understandable that he would agree. Release them and bring them to the main room." Red hoof says as Relic takes his arms away from the mercs, unties Compass, and are escorted to the main tent that had a table with a map of the island on it along with the two elaborately dressed mercs that were now levitating assault rifles aimed at them.

"Decipher this and lead us to it." Red Hoof commanded while pointing his hoof at a bunch of pages on the table.

'These must've been the missing pages.' Relic thought as he starts to read them, 'The debt must be paid, of the pony, by bloodied first lo-' Relic tried to read the rest but the pages sustained some form of heavy water damage.

He remembers the pages from the book and how they casted a shadow when held to the light. He looks around and sees a lantern on top of a small table next to them as he grabs the pages and turns on the lantern.

He holds them up to the lit lantern and sees nothing, "That can't be right." He says he continues to move the pages up and down, in and out of the lantern's light.

He looks at the pages puzzled and holds them up again; a small light from a hole in the tent hits the back of them, exposing a part of the pictures, "Of course. Only Sunlight exposes them." He says to himself as he walks to the entrance of the tent and holds the pages in sunlight and he starts to see the pictures.

The pictures showed a star on top of a hill and two stone levers. Relic proceeds to walk out of the tent as one of the assault gun wielding mercs follows him. Relic looks to see if he can find anything that resembled a hill and he sees the only mountain on the island in the distance.

"I think I know where it is." Relic says as the others come out of the tent and look at the mountain, "It should be on top of that mountain." Relic says as he puts the pages underneath one of his wings.

"Good. Continue." Red Hoof says as the two mercs poke both of them, signaling them to start as he signals the other four mercs in the camp to come along.

They take a while, going through the thick brush of the jungle and eventually make it half way up the mountain before Relic and Compass are a fair distance away from Red Hoof and the group.

"Are you really going to just give them the crystal?" Compass says, whispering and not moving her head as to make sure the group didn't know they were talking.

"Of course not." Relic says, doing the same thing, "Once we see the crystal we're going to grab it and you get on my back and I'll fly us out of here. We'll decide what we're going to do after that."

"Gotcha." Compass replies as they come to the end of the road and to a large cave being lit by a multitude of torches that seemed to stretch on forever.

The merc group comes up to them, "Come 'on, get in there." Red Hoof says as the ponies poke them again with the assault rifles.

"Ohhh, you're such a gentlecolt." Compass says sarcastically.

The group continues down the dark cave and comes across a large chasm with a body of water at the bottom. On the other side of the chasm stood an enormous stone door with an angel carved on each of the doors, and on the walls in between them, two platforms are on each side while broken bridges connected them to the ledge at the entrance.

"Hurry up, my future awaits." Red Hoof says as Compass gets onto Relic's back, "Don't get any ideas about flying away, pegasus."

"Yessss Sirrrrr." Relic says bobbing his head while talking really slowly and sarcastically which made Red Hoof grit his teeth.

"Keep your sights on them." He says as the two ponies track them with their guns.

"If I'm correct we're going to have to pull on some kind of stone levers at the same time." Relic says as he lands on one of the platforms, Compass nods as she gets off and he flies to the other one and they find two moss covered stones jutting out from the wall.

"Okay on three. One,Two,Three." Both of them push the levers down and nothing happens for a while and then suddenly the room starts to shake and a large stone walkway rises from the water and connects the entrance of the room to the large doors as they open slowly and a bright light bleeds into the room.

Relic, having already picked up Compass, lands on the other side as the stone walkway stops rising and allows the others to come across. Both of them walk into the bright room and see that the top of the mountain was completely open, allowing the sunlight to shine directly onto the rainbow-colored crystal floating atop a moss and vine covered pedestal. Decorating the walls were several statues of ponies and angels flying around each other.

They're nearly at the crystal when they hear the cocking of a gun, "That's far enough." Red Hoof says as they turn and see him levitating a golden revolver.

"…Run!" Relic says as they run to the crystal and he touches it just as he hears a gunshot. He quickly looks next to him and sees Compass, frozen in place but still as if she's galloping. He looks confused and then turns around as he sees some bullets not moving while being suspended in the air and the mercs assault rifles having fire coming out of the barrel.

"What the hell?" Relic says as he turns back to Compass, "Compass?" He says as he lifts his hoof and touches her check. Suddenly a bright light flashes as he shields his eyes and when he opens them Relic finds himself in a mysterious place.

He looks around, the area's sky had a morning hue with the sun far away in the distance, and the floor was covered in a light fog. Relic goes to touch the floor, seeing if it was just cloud covering or if there was actually a floor underneath the fog, but once he tilled his head downwards he became instantly shocked.

He was standing on two legs; he looks at his hoofs, "What the hell!?" He says, seeing that his hoofs have been transformed into hands. He quickly kneels down and swipes the fog away.

The floor he was on was reflecting glass; he was wearing a white, double breasted suit, his eyes didn't have any irises and were glowing, and he had six wings made completely out of seeable white light with a large sigil-looking halo behind them. He touches his face slowly, seeing that he was no longer a pony as he continues to stare at the floor for a couple minutes until he hears footsteps.

He gets up and quickly looks back, he sees a man who had a golden-yellow suit with similarly colored wings, combed brown hair along with a brown beard and also had glowing iris-less eyes.

"Who are you?" Relic says, completely confused as to what's going on as he remembers the story from the book, "Wait a second, you're the angel that appeared to Sir. Shinning Steel Longhorn and gave him the crystal."

"You are correct, Relic." The man said stopping, his voice seemed to be a mixture of several different voices all talking at once, "You've laid your touch upon the crystal and have now sworn to uphold The Debt and The Oath."

"How do you know my name?" Relic says, still looking at the entity that is standing eerily still and not moving even a bit, seeming frozen in place.

"We know all of our creation's names, past and present." He said, "You're the tenth pony to accept the blessing of the crystal, the power that it entitles you has the potential bend anything to your whim." The entity says as he walks up to relic and grabs the top of his wrist and turns it over.

He looks down and sees the crystal embedded into his skin and is slowly being integrated and combining with his body. The entity was about to touch the crystal when Relic stops him by asking him a question.

"Why did you give this amount of power to us?" Relic says looking at the entity while it looks back at him.

"To see if we succeeded." And with that answer the entity taps the crystal and a bright light fills the area and Relic is back inside of the room with the mercs and Compass. Relic is still in his "human" form as he realizes that time was slowly returning back to its original speed. The bullets hit and pass through Relic as they started to heal nearly instantaneously.

Everybody became silent as Relic touches his forehead where one of the bullets passed through and felt his skull and skin healing.

"What the fuck is that?" One of the mercs said, looking at another who just shrugged immediately.

Red Hoof shifts his gaze over to Compass who was just standing there and looking with her mouth wide open, "Capture the mare! We'll use her as leverage!" He yells as one of the gun totting mercs and two others rush after Compass.

"No!" Relic says quickly, lifting his hand and all three of the mercs burst into ashes and burning embers. Everybody in the room becomes wide-eye as if they weren't already, including Relic who looks at his hand in absolute shock.

"So that's the kind of power the gem bestows…the power to kill just by a thought. I must have it!" Red Hoof says as he quickly takes a knife out and puts it into his mouth while still levitating the gun.

"I'm going to cut you open and take that power!" He says as he gallops and jumps towards Relic. Relic's wings change from white to a gold colored light along with his eyes and Relic immediately grabs Red Hoof by the neck, materializes a sword, and cut right through him, causing his organs to fall out into a bloody mess.

"Ohhh! Fuck this!" The rest of the mercs said in unison as they dropped their weapons and ran as fast as they could out of the room and back to the airship at their camp to get away.

Relic looks at Red Hoof as he draws his last breath and become limp in his hand. He casually throws the top half of his severed body against a wall and stands there.

"R-Relic?" Compass whispered, looking at him and taking one step forward, suddenly Relic starts walking incredibly fast towards her, causing Compass to become petrified as he grabs her by the neck and holds her against a wall.

"Relic!" Compass yelled trying to get free from his grip as he cocks back his arm and points his sword at her heart.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" Relic's voice was heard as the wings and the eye on the side where the sword was being held turned back to being white.

"The debt must be fulfilled by spilling the blood of your first love." The entity's multiple voices said as it forces itself back into the other half of the body, minus the eye. Time seemed to slow down as Relic looked on, the sword stabbing into her chest. Tears started to flow from the eye that Relic was looking from as the entity pulls the sword out from her chest and places her down on the ground.

"The Debt has been completed." The entity said as Relic regained control of his body and then changed back into his pony form.

"Compass!" He says, galloping up to her bloody body and lifting her head up, "I-I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please don't die. I love you…just please don't die." Relic said, his voice continually cracking as he cried while looking at Compass who had her eyes closed. The room seemed to have grown duller even though it was still daytime.

"It's okay." She said, smiling at him as some of his tears fell on her face while he looked at her.

"I-I-I'll heal you! Yeah!" He says as he hovers his hoof above her wound and concentrates harder and harder in rapid succession, "Damn it! How do I use these powers!?" He yells at his hoof while still shedding tears and gritting his teeth.

He feels a hoof touch his check and the room seemed to become devoid of sound as his face instantly becomes un-tense and he looks at her, "Relic, I love you." Compass says smiling as she pulls him closer and kiss each other.

They continue to do so until Compass's hoof falls from his check and hits the ground softly and without a noise. Relic just continues to hug her while sobbing.

~Back in the Hospital, Present Day~

Magic's eyes were heavily bloodshot as some tears ran down his checks, "I buried her outside of our house, towards the horizon that she always loved to look at and I gave up being a treasure hunter while also changing my cutie mark.

Shortly after, the number one million appeared on my foreleg and the entity's voice said that I'd have to kill a million ponies or living things to complete The Oath and that every day I put off killing someone, incredible amounts of pain will surge through me.

The thing is, I said that I would never kill anybody so I've been using my powers to dull it. It takes an immense toll on me, so much so that it nearly kills me each day, but luckily I can heal from any injury, so it hasn't been noticeable for the past hundred years."

Magic looks out the window, it was nighttime, "100 years of being put through tons of pain…well…that was until I meet you and learned of the cults. I figured that if I have to kill that it might as well be cults who kill also."

He continues to look out the window, and stares at the road and trees. Suddenly a knock was heard at the door as a doctor came in, "Sir, visiting hours are over." The doctor said, as Magic nodded, walked out of the hospital and slowly back to the house.